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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-a...

And thanks to SpaceX (and now Amazon), astronomers will now have to do their observations from space. If only there was a way to get telescopes up there. Oh, wait... SpaceX just happens to have a way to solve the problem it created!

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The video in the article you linked is not a good example of the long term impacts. The satellites were at a lower orbit than their final orbit and not oriented the same way they will be once in their operational orbit. Once they reach their final orbit, which most of them have now, they will be far more spread out, higher, and all around much harder to identify. That and SpaceX is actively working with astronomy groups to try and lower their impact.

Even if they are easily visible, so what. Should we not build roads because then our children wont be able to see things the same as we saw them? It's progress, and really good progress in this case.

All of that aside, I fail to see how it makes a dystopian future. A quick Google says the definition of dystopian is "relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice." I fail to see how internet providing satellites are making people suffer or feel injustice. If they work out they will bring internet to a substantial number of people who cannot get reliable and cheap access to resources you and I take for granted every day.

SpaceX's whole goal is lowering the cost of access to space. Again assuming they achieve that goal to the degree they want to, and Starship is sure looking to be a giant step in that direction, then deploying a space based telescope very well might just be the better option. You can basically make it as big as you want and shipping it to space could be cheaper than shipping it to some random place on this planet to be built.

There were plenty of studies done by astronomers that showed the effect of the satellites can be detrimental to astrology. No, we shouldn't just build them; that's a red herring. There are plenty of other competitors that have comparable bandwidth and don't light up the sky. Of course, the musk effect makes people ignore those.

Yep, I wouldn't like my daily horoscope be wrong because of these satellites.

Astronomers. Thanks :)

What's particulary dystopic about it? Preserving nature is valuable because we rely on the ecosystem, you can't really make that argument for the dead emptiness that is space.

Ubiquitous space access even is a common theme in scifi utopias!

I think it's close but missing one really key point. Imagine if this was being done by some non profit international consortium funded by many nations.

then it would go over budget by 100x, and if it ever did finish, users would be subjected to the intersection of all of those countries moralizing content bans?

> non profit international consortium funded by many nations

that sounds horrible

If you've ever looked up at the sky at night in a dark area I don't think you could honestly say it's "dead emptiness". It's fascinating to gaze up at the stars and taking that away would be a tragedy

It is very dead and very empty. Sure, it looks pretty and is useful for astrophysics. But compare that to the utility of global, low-latency internet.

> where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did.

The past ~80 years of light pollution has already prevented this from happening.

The past ~80 years of light pollution has already prevented this from happening.

Only if you never leave a city.

Dark skies are so important and desirable to people that there's an entire tourism industry that revolves around giving people the ability to look at the night sky.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/travel...

https://www.visitarizona.com/dark-skies

https://www.visitcountydurham.org/opportunities/darkskies

https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/space-astronomy/...

https://cpdarkskies.org/2018/12/13/destination-dark-skies/

https://thepointsguy.com/news/dark-skies-how-light-pollution...

Clearly there are lots of people who value the sky, even if a few billionaires and people on HN who believe in "tech at all costs" don't.

That is true. People go as far as dial 911 the first time they see the Milky Way.

https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd4...

Thankfully (/s), due to the light pollution given off by the city I live near, I can't see them anyway.

I don't think 3000 satellites are nearly enough to completely blot out the sky across the entire planet.

That depends on how big they are. :)

You're technically correct, which is of course the best kind of correct.

But assuming they're not the size of small moons, the surface area of any orbital plane is still bigger than that of the entire planet. That's a lot of space to fill with objects that have to fit into a single spacecraft.

3,000 from Amazon, 10,000 already approved from SpaceX, who knows how many will go up from various companies in Europe, China, India, etc...

This is the beginning, not the end.

Yeah... still not enough. Millions probably wouldn't be enough. It's a really big sky.

Sounds like that plastics industry talking about disposal in the 1970's. Now look where we are.

Again... we're talking about an area bigger by orders of magnitude than that of the Earth itself, where plastic is still not covering the entire surface of the earth or the oceans.

This is simple math.

I know people here are emotionally fixated on their dystopian fantasies, particularly where Amazon is concerned, but no one is launching so many satellites that they will blot the sun and stars from the sky. Aside from probably being physically impossible, there's no practical reason for even launching that many satellites.

"Welcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did?" No... that's just silliness.

I don’t see the connection.

Yup. Sattelites are roughly car sized. Think how many cars are on earth and yet cars aren’t covering the surface of the earth.

And earth orbit is an even bigger surface area.

A world where two billionaires can take the stars from humanity. It's like a fairytale, and yet it can happen.

Next, one of them will sell the moon!

When humanity consistently votes for people who do nothing with space unless there is pork involved, humanity kinda deserves it.

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