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Comment by ShockedUnicorn | Hacker News Reader

For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community.

If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TifUa8ENQes

Most things in life are like this. Wind turbines are a great way to supply green energy, but building them takes a lot of energy. So it is important to also think about things like using low co2 concrete, and making them more efficient. They also kill many birds, but this is nothing compared to the amount of birds that cats kill. And engineers are working on ways to get fewer birds killed.

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>Most things in life are like this. Wind turbines are a great way to supply green energy, but building them takes a lot of energy.

Reminder : we only have one sky.

Things offer both positives and negatives, but

a) generally those things are decided by local powers and authorities that can be influenced by local populations -- not corporations from specific countries that may or may not be far away and without local permission

(those decisions that are made by foreign corporations that modify local attributes is generally frowned upon -- very few like the oil rigs scattered around the ocean, they tolerate them due to the profits associated)

b) very few of these decisions create global impacts, the ones that do (say, environmental issues) have many confounding factors and influence groups working with them, representing many different people and locales.

In just so happens that in the case of 'the sky' we're all 'locals' -- but very few people, with respect to 'the world', had a say in the matter.

This is an excellent summary of a lot of the kickback and risk for Elon.

I think if Elon had gone to, say, the UN and tried to start a discussion about this stuff more generally to establish some ground rules for SpaceX and others, it would have been much better received. It would've given a forum to those affected - communities around the world and astronomers and other satellite operators - where none exists. Some discussions around things like target albedos, orbital parameters, and constellation sizes could've been had before a single bird went up. This would've also made life easier for other operators now working out how to dodge the Starlink constellation on the regular.

But Elon is not that sort of person, which is the great tragedy in all this. Maybe you have to be a screw-the-rest, I'm-going-to-do-it kind of person to succeed as he has (or just inherit a huge pile of cash, or maybe both). But it strikes me that as a strategy he's opted to go it alone until regulators start to step in, which is unlikely in this industry for a while given the global nature.

I think it will take something akin to the blocking of satellite uplinks (that brought the UN into international satellite operations somewhat, and effectively designated such jamming as an offensive act of war) to actually bring regulatory scrutiny to bear. The loss of ground-based astronomy isn't a big enough issue - yet - to justify the engagement. But if these constellations get bigger and bigger and the impact gets larger and larger, then that impact will add up. All we've had so far is the "early warnings" from those paying attention to the early deployments.

I think Starlink and its competitors are a very important short-term part of the global internet access discussion, but it's not a long-term fix; constant satellite launches, maintenance, and deorbiting will not be viable cost-wise over the 20-40 years most fibre installations expect to be around for at a minimum. Fibre will eventually reach everywhere - wireline operators across the globe are seeing Starlink as a short-term thing which may paradoxically make it much harder to justify rolling out a proper fix to the hardest to reach, and which may cause governments to deploy subsidy to offset the risk. In the USA it's a bit mad and distorted because of the insane market that regulators have allowed, but in the EU/UK and most of Asia, govts are making sure full fibre gets to everyone (slowly, in many cases, but it is speeding up rapidly these days).

Just like nuclear, this is a perfectly good stop-gap. But the right answer is renewables - everyone knows it - it's just a matter of timing.

So many ISPs have gone bankrupt trying to make fibre work. Not even Google with all its massive resources could make it economically viable in mid-size cities.

> But Elon is not that sort of person, which is the great tragedy in all this.

If he was, SpaceX and Starlink wouldn't exist. Have you ever tried to handle anything at UN level? That a 10-20 year discussion and even then must likely nothing will be agree on.

The Outer-Space treaty has been argued about for 50+ years and not a single revision has been made.

SpaceX is fully in line with the current interventional space regulation. Nothing SpaceX is doing is qualitatively different then what anybody else does. They just do it more.

In fact, in many way SpaceX fast adjustment and dialogue with astronomy community is forward thinking. The reality is, its not UN and treaties that are gone solve these problems, but the actual stack holders working together.

SpaceX is working with ESA on LEO consolation safety (as ESA has multiple sats in the same region) and work with astronomers to find good compromises and give them the data they need to plan operations.

> constant satellite launches, maintenance, and deorbiting will not be viable cost-wise over the 20-40 years

The cost of accessing to space will drop 10x at least in the next 10 years and likely go down more after that.

> Just like nuclear, this is a perfectly good stop-gap. But the right answer is renewables - everyone knows it - it's just a matter of timing.

Actually nuclear would have been the right answer and the only reason 'renwables' (nuclear is practically renewable as well) are considered is because terrible global handling of nuclear has made it unpractical.

In 100-200 years people will be using nuclear, not renewables, they are the stop-gap for now.

Starlink does create some real increased difficulties for Earth-based astronomical observations.

But by playing its part in SpaceX's goal of driving down the cost of access to space, it also creates real increased opportunities for space-based astronomical observations.

Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1]

Maybe Starlink constellations will be an incentive to finish the JWT, and other space telescopes...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-...

> Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1]

The study you're citing was only studied 4 wind turbines, while the evidence does point towards this working, I wouldn't say that the existing evidence is conclusive. Also, the turbines with the darker blades still killed birds, just less bird than the turbines with standard blades.

Wind turbines don't kill enough birds to be more than a drop in the dead-bird bucket. It's a talking point used by people who were looking for reasons to be against wind turbines, but housecats kill four orders of magnitudes- not 4x, 10,000x- more birds each year.

The percent of human-caused bird deaths due to wind turbines is smaller than the percent of Americans dying in airplane crashes each year, compared to all US deaths each year.

The species of birds that get killed are different. Wind turbines kill bigger birds, cats kill small songbirds.

Both are a non-negligible factor for their respective species.

Windmills generate more than 1% of power. Thus if you scale up the wind turbines by 100x (to cover more than all power generated over the world), they still kill over 100x fewer birds than cats.

seems disingenuous to compare the raw numbers of deaths when windmills still aren’t very common but you want to make them far more common.

not saying i disagree with your point overall but not a fan of that stat

Well judging from your comment it's going to be hard to get your default attitude to change on this. What would change your mind? A popular mechanics article? https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a247495...

Turbines are bad for birds. Period.

I agree, but I disagree about the claims that were made by the poster whose post I was responding to.

So, paint is cheap. Its not like we're talking a multimillion dollar mitigation. Lets paint some turbines and see what happens.

That would be smart of spacex to allocate some profits to do these projects. win-win business orientation

Wind turbines do not kill many birds, that is a myth pushed by climate hoaxers.

They have their drawbacks, but that aint one of 'em.

Where are you getting this information from?

This was a serious question. There doesn’t seem to be a straightforward answer.

https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2193/200...

>The Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) began operations during the 1980s and by 1998 included about 5,400 wind turbines of various models, each rated to generate between 40 kW and 400 kW of electric power, or 580 MW total

>Using mortality estimates adjusted for searcher detection and scavenger removal rates, we estimated the annual wind turbine–caused bird fatalities to number [...] 2,710 (80% CI =-6,100 to 11,520) birds.

That's 1/2 a bird per turbine per year. Or one bird per 110 nameplate KW per year.

That means that they're a bit safer than the average building, assuming that the number of buildings in the US doesn't exceed the number of people by a large amount.

>We estimate that between 365 and 988 million birds (median = 599 million) are killed annually by building collisions in the U.S., with roughly 56% of mortality at low-rises, 44% at residences, and <1% at high-rises.

https://academic.oup.com/condor/article/116/1/8/5153098

And cats kill even more than building apparently. Screw cats, or rather people who let them roam free.

Why exactly is it a problem with cats killing birds? All sorts of animals kill all sorts of animals. Why are you specifically bothered by this pairing?

Because these are often invasive animals supported by people destroying endangered animals.

Because predators usually reach a nice equilibrium with prey species, although it's often oscillatory.

But if people create a constant stream of excess feral cats, then pretty soon cats decimate songbirds.

More like one bird per 210 nameplate kW. It was already pointed out by the grandparent comment that cats are a bigger problem for birds in general. But still, wind turbines kill enough eagles and other larger birds for it to be a significant concern deserving of mitigation.

E.g. the estimate is that the Altamont Pass installation kills ~440 burrowing owls per year, when there's likely to be fewer than 10k breeding pairs of owls left. That's a 2% kill rate (or more, counting the disruption to breeding pairs) from one (larger) installation.

> They also kill many birds, but this is nothing compared to the amount of birds that cats kill.

FWIW, turbines may be worse than cats in terms of harming large birds of prey. You won't see neighborhood cats killing eagles. I'd still agree that it's probably a reasonable tradeoff though, and that it could be further reduced with better engineering.

Like all machines, they will fail. Picking up trash in space is harder then fixing what we did to the environment, even if it impacts us less.

Laying down optics is a much better solution to this selfish problem.

Many people? You mean people in rural US/Canada and Australia. The rest of the world already has been options in most places.

Sure, but don't forget SpaceX is a for-profit organization.

Which is exactly why they’ve been so successful. Capitalism proves effective yet again.

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