Prof. Sam LawlerIt's a Good Cloud Day. But the goats are very annoyed there was a teeny tiny bit of rain (they really do not like rain).
And now time for my morning radio interview. At least I had time for (most of) a cup of tea first.
hahaha oh no I forgot I was supposed to be on Google Meets for this interview not a phone call! Luckily my computer cooperated and the producer was very understanding. I just am wearing a ratty farm sweatshirt and didn't brush my hair and have a messy room in the background. Oops. Luckily I've got another interview for Saskatoon in 15 minutes so I can try to do better this time...
Interview 2 went much better (which is good, Saskatoon is where it's most likely that pieces would be found, if there are any pieces) and I remembered to say the email address I want people to send possible space junk finds to! AND I got a better camera setup and actually brushed my hair. But I'm somehow going to end up on CBC national news in my ratty farm sweatshirt AGAIN aren't I?
A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
Eric LawtonAnd the US government keeps giving "approval" for more, although this is ostensibly only approval for launch, not for occupation of an orbit.
Effectively claiming jurisdiction over Low Earth Orbit, which is colonialism on a global scale.