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.
🍉 –Hans Bot– 🙃@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Now imagine having a million data centers in orbit, from musk alone. Before long, every few seconds a satellite will come down – with all its payload burning into the atmosphere
@hansbot @mastodonmigration It's every 3 minutes for a million satellites with 5 year lifetimes 😭
@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Yes. And it will likely not become a monopoly. Two competitors in the US, one in the EU, one in China, one in India, and it’s down to 2/min. To replace these, they would need a dozen or so launches per day, adding to the looming environmental disaster