Hacker News Reader

Comment by SiempreViernes | Hacker News Reader

It's great that the LSST can survive this, but there's not much point to building it if all the spectroscopy follow up is killed by efforts to put facebook in front of every face in the world.

Spectroscopy is the fundament on which modern astronomy is built, and it inherently takes long times even with big mirrors. Getting a satellite in the field of view as you take your spectrum most likely means having to start over, and you run out of usable darkness faster.

View on HN

If it can be cheap enough to send 10s of thousands of internet satellites into orbit every 5 years perhaps the same innovation will help drive cheaper space based observance where light pollution, radio pollution, satellite/airplane streaks, and usable darkness aren't a problem.

The problem is size. The proposed constellations are possible because of small satellites. It's much easier to build a large telescope on the ground than it is in space. I don't see the small satellite revolution changing this.

No, you either do spectra slowly or with large mirrors, no amount of ad spend will change the physical reality.

What about space implies fast? Sitting equipment at L2 is all the rage these days and SpaceX has launched there before.

Not that I think this particular case wouldn't work in LEO, just for things that wouldn't there are much better options - we just have historically had trouble getting there affordably/reliably enough to make it worth while.

> What about space implies fast?

Oh, sorry, I though you were going to argue that we don't have to put science on hold just to let all the world stream gagnam style via Elon owned infrastructure.

In any case, a single SpaceX heavy costs about the same as 9 2.5 m telescopes, so good luck making the argument that science won't suffer.

If you put a science instrument in space, you do it because it's the only option, not because Elon says so.

Do you actually want to talk about the real world impacts of this or have you already made up your mind? What your saying is going against what the captions on the image from the IAU site point to and seems to have more to do with your personal opinion of Elon than the actual merits of space based astronomy or the impacts of satellites on ground based astronomy.

pretty snarky to suggest facebook is the only way developing countries would utilise the internet. access to knowledge to better their lives, even turn them into astronomers perhaps

An argument could be made that the "access to knowledge" does mostly not require the high bandwidths which are being provided as the selling point of the Starlink satellites. Surely most parts of the world already have access to internet via mobile phones, existing communication satellites, or the access could be provided for much lower costs than with Starlink, by creating new infrastructure on the ground.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com