Prof. Sam LawlerI really should not work on visualizations of the night sky with thousands of naked-eye visible stupid "AI data center" sun-synchronous satellites at the end of the day. This sucks.
I should note that there's no freaking way we'd ever get this many satellites into this tight of a set of orbits. We'd be in full Kessler Syndrome way before that. I'm just trying to highlight the absurdity of what these awful companies are asking for. (Now up to 4 separate filings for copycat "AI data center" megaconstellations. Fuck you, SpaceX, for starting all of this rampant waste and destruction.)
Medea Vanamonde 🏳️⚧️We need a bit of a Man Who Fell To Earth solution for Musk Global Destabilization
Valerie Roney@sundogplanets I've been thinking, in light of the IPOs this lot are all aiming for, if there is an investor audience for your advocacy and education.
If the securities community can understand this is just space-snake oil they're trying to sell, not anything realistic or feasible, that pull back of investor funds may be a more effective thwarting of harm than the FCC will ever manage.
@vlrny I agree this is avery good idea. Do you have any ideas how I would talk to them? I have absolutely no connections, and they don't seem very excited to listen to scientists about anything...
@sundogplanets that I don't know, I 'm not in that world, other than a lurker. I think Stephanie Ruhle from MSNOW has conversations along these lines, that may have got me thinking about it.
Maybe NPR or something but the financial journalists? Or Canadian financial media to start to build attention?
I think @MissConstrue (if I have the right handle, terrible memory) said something about the index fund grift in all of this. They may have other ideas/connections.
Johanna, CanCon varietyI don't know anyone directly, but as a grad student in a weird meandering nterdisciplinary program ... I've attended some events and learned a number of 'climate' academics are finance and insurance researchers with industry support, because they get more traction going for the bank accounts than the latest glaciology model on the Antarctic.
Have you got academic channels to fintech endowed chairs? Disaster Finance researchers? Who insures such schemes?
Insurance apparently has leverage where all the urban sustainability programming in the world does not, because if they refuse to insure homes when someone wants to build on a floodplain or eroding coast ...
the developer drops out.
Wonder if there's a parallel in space tech?
Deborah Preuss, pcc@sundogplanets if you can make a post asking this question clearly, I'll boost it!
SpaceFlounder@vlrny @sundogplanets Not wanting to sound pessimistic, but you are talking to the same people that invested in blockchain and now invest in AI, I would be surprised if you can sway them with fundamentals. At worst, they would only see this as a moat keeping competitors out, because they don't have the right "tech", thus make them more bullish.
My camera shoots fascistsLe Sigh. If only all these guns that us Americans love so much could somehow shoot all the way up to low earth orbit.
"Them things is movin' pretty fast. How far you figure you gotta lead 'em to hit one?"
"I dunno. Hold muh beer."
More fun than cow tipping.
CyA bullet has very low mass and surface area, and can't get squished like a human, so it's not infeasible to accelerate it to escape velocity, maybe with some sort of improvised backyard railgun. The problem really is aiming it, because of how long it takes a projectile to get up that high. You'd have to lead it to the point that you need to go do some literal rocket science, calculating orbital trajectories that intersect with something up there.
That kind of power and precision is starting to get to the point that only the US military has the capability of putting together. Deliberately. Because the US military wants to make sure nobody else in the nation can do anything dangerous and effective. There's a non-zero chance setting the thing off would get detected, and then there's a lovely room in El Salvador waiting for you.
That kind of power and precision is starting to get to the point that only the US military has the capability of putting together. Deliberately. Because the US military wants to make sure nobody else in the nation can do anything dangerous and effective. There's a non-zero chance setting the thing off would get detected, and then there's a lovely room in El Salvador waiting for you.
Well, yeah, which is why the whole post was completely tongue in cheek ;-)
I was just imagining some drunk farm lads sitting on a hilltop some night and what they might do, should the physics actually be feasible.
Strider Uwe 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽@sundogplanets Impressive, and depressing. What are the parameters you are varying between the different graphs?
@UweHalfHand This has some wild assumptions about sizes (which we have very little info about) and only a little info on orbits. These are different latitudes, seasons, and times of night.
Bill Zaumen@sundogplanets @UweHalfHand Sun synchronous orbits have an inclination of over 90 degrees (which means they are in the opposite direction compared to the earth's rotation). While a number of altitudes can be used, for a data center with fast electronics, it might be necessary to stay below the Van Allen radiation belts to keep errors to a minimum.
Fairness4All@sundogplanets Asking for non astronomers, what am I looking at here and what do the graphs signify
Toni Aittoniemi@sundogplanets Oh my god. That will look horrible.
And they would still suck as data centers too.
Weird 2 - Electric Boogaloo@sundogplanets Is this the same kind of projection, that is used for night sky pollution diagrams?
Otte Homan - remember Geordie@sundogplanets that last one should be proposed as SpaceX's new logo, you know - Space-Ex! The Professional Sky Polluters! EX marks the Spot !
llewelly@sundogplanets the corporate strategy of the last 10 years: Make the future so horrible, everyone gives up.