Mastodawn

Updating talk slides so you all get to be horrified along with me at the current Starlink numbers.

There are now 7,652 Starlink satellites in orbit (>500 more than there were in February, when I last updated these particular slides).

2-3 Starlinks per day are burning up in the atmosphere. That's a lot of weird metal in the atmosphere (and undoubtedly lots of random bits getting to the ground too).

Starlink is a stupidly wasteful and dangerous way to use orbit.

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Prof. Sam Lawler Jun 3

And before you explain to me that there's 50 tons of meteoroids burning up in Earth's atmosphere every day, remember that meteoroids mostly rocks, not metal, and have an extremely low fraction of aluminum (~0.3 tons aluminum "naturally" burning up per day). Satellites are ~50% aluminum by mass, and Starlink satellites are several hundred kg to ~1200 kg in mass. Yes, it's bad.

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helpsterTee

@sundogplanets https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10139039/

"Despite poor absorption via mucosa, the biggest amount of Al comes with food, drinking water, and inhalation."

Yeah…we need environmental studies now regarding this…

Aluminium in the Human Brain: Routes of Penetration, Toxicity, and Resulting Complications

Aluminium (Al) is the most ubiquitous metal in the Earth’s crust. Even though its toxicity is well-documented, the role of Al in the pathogenesis of several neurological diseases remains debatable. To establish the basic framework for future ...

PubMed Central (PMC)