SpaceX's highly paid lawyers responded to the hundreds of comments and oppositions submitted to the FCC in one letter, that basically shows they didn't actually read our petitions to deny. And now we astronomers and dark sky advocates who are volunteering our time have to do a shitload more work to respond to their non-response. By Friday.
Fuck you, SpaceX.
Yesterday I borrowed a book off @astrokiwi.bsky.social's bookshelf written by @annaleen. Feeling slightly homesick for Saskatchewan after a few weeks in New Zealand, I was DELIGHTED to find that the book begins with "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuGGNsE3_8Y and I'm totally going to channel that Saskatchewan pirate energy into the talks, writing, and meetings I have today fighting satellite pollution.
Aaaarrrr, Matey! Get it? Métis?
The Arrogant Worms - The Last Saskatchewan Pirate1st track from the "Self-Titled" albumThis IS The Arrogant Worms, NOT Captain Tractor, enjoy ! :)Oh, and thi...
WOW SOME SHADE THROWN AT COMPETITORS "In stark contrast to NASA’s productive suggestions, would-be SpaceX competitors like Viasat and Amazon recycle the same tired arguments..."
ALSO YOU FUCKING IGNORE EVERY SUGGESTION FROM ASTRONOMERS AND WE DON'T REPRESENT NASA YOU STUPID FUCKS
OH IT GETS BETTER "Some petitioners—primarily would-be competitors such as Amazon/Blue Origin and Viasat—advance
their standard anticompetitive tropes trying to fearmonger about orbital congestion, operational preclusion, and potential collision risk in opposing SpaceX’s application"
This would be hilarious if I wasn't also COMPLETELY TERRIFIED about orbital congestion and collision risks...
"If Amazon had employed even basic math, it would realize that SpaceX’s proposed system would inhabit only 0.005% of the 1.1 trillion cubic kilometers of space across the 500–2,000 km orbits"
YES BUT IT'S TRAVELLING THROUGH THAT SPACE AT 7KM PER SECOND AND YOU DON'T FUCKING KNOW HOW ORBITS WORK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Ok I need to take a break from reading this or I'm actually going to break something.
@sundogplanets no, encourage them to park their satellites close together to save space! One metre sounds like a nice round number, put them that far apart.
Kessler? Wasn't he in some cooking show?
@moz @sundogplanets Kessler? I hardly know ’er!
But uh yeah, this a complete clusterfuck. Soon literally, IN SPAACE.
@sundogplanets You may know all about this, but read this post:
@[email protected] @[email protected] It seems more likely that it's just Musk hyping his companies for the IPO that's coming, similar to the shenanigans he's indulged in with them buying each other etc over the last year or two. "Orbital data center" never made sense on paper. A big communications satellite might have a total power budget of 20 kW. With individual modern GPU racks at 100 kW or even 250 kW (and they're talking about more in the near future), powering that load in space gets tricky - you'd need a ton of solar panels. But the bigger problem is thermals. Waste heat is a big problem in terrestrial datacenters, but in space, there's no atmosphere to carry heat away by convection or conduction. You can't use evaporative chillers. You can't use A/C, because that just moves the heat around and makes more of it in the process. All you've got is radiative cooling from the dark side of the satellite. And that's not nearly good enough to deal with the megawatts of heat even a small collection of racks would put out. "A million datacenters orbiting the earth" is pure fantasy.
Do, please please please, take a break and look at some beautiful New Zealand scenery.
@sundogplanets The 33 cars in the Indianapolis 500 comprise only 0.5% of the 68,000 m^2 track area they orbit. Therefore they never interfere with each other?
1 Speedway is just over 4km long and about 17m wide for or 68K m^2.
2 Typically 33 cars
3 The cars are nearly 5m x 2m.
Elon Musk, while firing an AK47 into a crowded shopping mall, insisted "It's fine. If you'd done basic math you'd realise the bullets only take up 0.005% of the available space in there."
@sundogplanets the worst part is it's all completely implausible and will never happen, and yet demands all this effort to stop it regardless because it exists to set a precedent that regulation is immaterial and any nonsense is already approved.
Thankyou for your dedication in spite of all this.
... ...
That is not how any of this works.
But once they start running the scam, they really do have incentives to keep it going regardless of the absurdities, don't they?
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. There's always a chance no one will have the fuel to sell them or the first launch triggers a Kessler …
@PCMag HAHAHA oh wow you linked to my very very angry posts. Well, I hope someone important reads it! (The version I am submitting to the FCC has zero swear words, and in order to do that, I have to put a bunch of swear words up here on social media)
Please reach out if you'd like to do a more formal interview, and thank you for writing about these huge issues!
Talk to their insurers. They will listen to their insurers.
@sundogplanets Entirely predictable though, given how Musk runs Tesla and long ago eliminated their PR department. This aligns with his preference not to discuss or even acknowledge anything he doesn't care to talk about, and to try to control the narrative.
I hope you can eloquently point out all of their flaws so that they have to face up to uncomfortable truths, instead of brushing them aside and getting away with it.
I'm rooting for you!
You are doing a very important task which the rest of us are not really able to fully understand.
Please keep on doing it.
Thanks from the current and future generations.
as a software developer since the 70s I have been tempted many times, but then admit it isn't the device I want tossed on a highway, the device is quite a wonder of human collaboration!
It usually resolves to some PARTICULAR humans I'd like to toss out there, requiring much more restraint 🤣
Dartboards can be quite cathartic! Or little effigies and a box of pins …
I'm very grateful to you for fighting this fight for all of us.
Kenneth Fortino
Prof. Sam Lawler
Moz
Pare
LabSpokane
Bill Tschumy
Roy -- the dull one
Darth Osler
Christian Rickert
Charles R. Twardy
TofuTheSquirrel
cognitively accessible math
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DR. NERD 
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groff 🇺🇦
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acm
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Emma needs ☕️ and paying work
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Dan, the US is the threat!
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