The Mega Constellations Are Already Here. The Time for Polite Concern Is Over | Hacker News Reader

The Mega Constellations Are Already Here. The Time for Polite Concern Is Over

forbes.com

22 pointsfortran7735 comments

Why is the public discussion on maintaining the status quo, rather than on pushing the boundaries of astronomy. For example, NASA has proposed to build the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the moon. [0] [1]

Does someone have a financial, political, or military interest in preventing satellite constellations?

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope

Pretty much just a rehash of the various other articles on this topic, several of which have already been discussed here. See this from a few days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291443

This will be fascinating as every country tries to have their own system. If humans were rational creatures, we would build and maintain one system to stop reinventing the wheel and preventing kessler syndrome.

We are rational creatures but we have imperfect knowledge. It's in our nature to advance through search and competition rather than attempt to preplan everything.

But we do occasionally stop competing when we know it harms our own chance of survival, e.g. nuclear testing.

I wonder if filling the skies with over 1-10 million satellites will pose similar types of self-reflection, or if the risk is too low for anyone to care that much.

The problem with a reactionary halt in some area due to a perceived sense of danger is that we often go too far. The campaign against nuclear arms also leaked out into a campaign against all things nuclear. We're only now starting to restore some sanity to the discussion and begin tentative funding of promising technologies in that industry. If you look at the broad history of nuclear power you'll realize that we are far behind where we should be. Power plant design hasn't changed in decades and nuclear power generation is nowhere near as widespread as it should be. Given that the largest contributors to CO2 emissions are electrical power generation and industry you could even make a case that the anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s, which resulted in the drying up of funding and academic interest in nuclear science as well as rampant NIMBYism and political opposition to nuclear reactors, is the reason we are now suffering from the effects of excessive CO2 in the atmosphere. Ironic.

If we "build and maintain one system", we are maximizing our chance of accidentally having zero working systems.

By one system, I mean one with all the redundancies that such a system serving all of man kind would have, assuming man could actually work together across cultures, etc.

I can't see how creating a global communications monopoly could be seen as rational from the perspective of the masses.

It's because humans are rationale that they don't do this. There's very real advantages to operating the system and not being beholden to what a committee of nations wants, especially if you're a large economy that would be contributing vastly more than the smaller nations anyway.

It's finee, compared to the multitude of other problems facing humanity this one is so so small and solvable, it feels like an HoA complaint. It's like demanding that your housemate who likes to talk on the phone at night keep your schedule rather than putting in some earplugs. People love to get mad.

Are these new constellations at low enough altitude to re-enter within a few years, or what?

They are going to be replenished constantly - at least, that's the plan - so unless you prefer this satellite over that satellite nothing's going to change.

Yes, Starlink is at altitudes that deorbit naturally in roughly 5 years.

I see a bright future for satellite de-commissioning craft - I assume by staying in a parking orbit and then zipping around as needed and nudging them out of orbit at just the right time to avoid other satellites and ensure a innocuous (presumably oceanic) landing site for any remaining wreckage.

Not to mention the "insurance" possibilities as soon as the mafia gets one of those!

Gee that's a nice spy sat you have there. Would be a shame if it "caught fire" when you are not looking now wouldn't it. Luckily we have one of our sats nearby to keep an eye out for it, waddaya say?

(To the best of my understanding; I'm not a rocket scientist; etc etc)

You really, really need on-orbit refueling to make this work though. Because if you match the orbit of a satellite, push it out of orbit, well, now you're not in orbit either. So you need enough delta-v to match the sat's orbit, push it out of orbit, get back in orbit, then go to the next satellite (or refuelling depot.)

Another reason to be eager for SpaceX's Starship platform to be operational ASAP!

All Starlink satellites contain ion thrusters to maintain their orbit. At end of life, those thrusters are used to deorbit them. These satellites are in such a low orbit that these thrusters are required to maintain orbit -- if the thrusters fail the satellites naturally deorbit within a couple of years.

Any ion thruster powered satellite de-commisioning craft would take months to reach a failed satellite, so it wouldn't make a huge difference.

I think the night sky would be more interesting with visible satellites zipping around.

And I'm curious who gave a perpetual use agreement of the night sky to astronomers, such that they think their complaints should be considered.

Astronomers don't speak for themselves. Most of them are paid via government funding, and their job is specifically to do things that advance society in ways that the free market would not.

When they speak, they speak for the people, they speak for their students, they speak for the industries that are positively impacted by their research. If you impede astronomers from doing their job, we are all worse off because of it. The astronomers themselves are not impacted that much because they are still getting paid.

Are they speaking for the hundreds of millions of people who may get internet access for the first time though satellite based internet?

I write this with the upmost hope in the future success of private space sector, and with a desire to live to see Mercury turned into a Dyson swarm and to be part of the initial colonisation of Mars or Luna:

There are other ways to get cheap internet, and these satellites serve low-population rural areas much better than they serve cities where most people live.

(Also: Musk does seem to care about the effect on astronomy, presumably because his drive is “prevent human extinction” and astronomy can help with that).

There are other ways to get cheap internet...but Musk et al are actually doing this. No one else is working on some earth-based plan for getting the last few billion people on the internet AFAICT. Google and facebook did some things with balloons and aircraft but that was more of a tech demo than an actual attempt to provide internet service.

Loon is not a tech demo: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/7/21315961/alphabet-loon-bal...

The fact that your disinterest for rural infrastructure projects in Ghana mean you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist. It just tells the reader you haven't bothered to search for something like "Uganda rural internet project"; unsurprisingly for large infrastructure projects in a poor country, it's being done bit by bit and so there are in fact dozens of projects.

The ad hominem is unnecessary and misplaced. I was talking about one large project to give the final billions access, not piecemeal projects helping out a few million people here and there (and disregarding another few million people here and there).

I understand that rural infrastructure projects occur. So what's the realistic timeline for, say, 99% coverage? My question is: How long should rural people have to wait, and how much should they pay for internet access, so that astronomers can have 5% of their observations unaffected by satellites?

There are other good reasons for doing piecemeal projects. Paying SpaceX for internet, transfers money out of already economically backwards areas to a far away private company in another country. Some people will argue that these are neocolonist attempts by West into East.

I can’t find real pricing for Starlink, only guesses.

These are the targets to beat: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-mobile-data-worldwi...

> I write this with the upmost hope in the future success of private space sector, and with a desire to live to see Mercury turned into a Dyson swarm and to be part of the initial colonisation of Mars or Luna:

I agree with this sentiment!

> There are other ways to get cheap internet, and these satellites serve low-population rural areas much better than they serve cities where most people live.

Ironically, people who live in cities will be much less affected by impingement on their night sky because they already deal with light pollution, whereas people in low-population rural areas have a much nicer night sky.

Astronomy is done more in rural and remote areas than in cities, for the same reasons.

If the numbers about bandwidth per satellite and the size of the constellation are right, this type of service could be competitive in urban areas too where the only alternative is a sub-gigabit cable monopoly.

Probably not, but satellites are not the only choice for connecting people to the internet. Sure, they win at the rule-of-cool contest, but traditional terrestrial copper and fiber optics (maybe with some RF backhaul for the really remote places) would have also worked without the complexity of launching spacecraft and building a network of ground stations.

And yet no one wants to or can pay for fiber optics going to all of the rural places that billions of people live.

Maybe the astronomers who complain about starlink can start a fund where they pay to build out rural internet access for the few billion people who don't have access right now.

Let alone the billions that will benefit from the opening of Earth orbit as a new frontier of industry. Good satellite internet is the profitable usecase that will drive development of space. The article already points out that we're already seeing a rush of private and national interests, it's got legs. Start looking for real estate and industries that will be in a postion to support this.

Their job is to argue why satellites are bad for astronomy. It is other people's job to argue for why internet access via satellites is good for certain parts of society. It is the government's job to weigh the various arguments and come up with a ruling that best helps society.

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