It's also interesting that the scientific community's objections to further launches actually had an effect. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore -- at least not with Starlink.
There is nothing private about space
So these birds are privately doing things in a public, ahem, space.
Interesting anecdote from one of them (STS-27):
> The day after Atlantis landed, the 1988 Armenian earthquake killed tens of thousands in the Soviet Union. At an astronaut meeting Gibson said, "I know many of you may have been very curious about our classified payload. While I can't go into its design features, I can say Armenia was its first target!" As military astronauts laughed and civilians cringed, Gibson continued, "And we only had the weapon set on stun!"
(Turns out it was actually a synthetic aperture radar recon satellite, not an earthquake machine.)
https://www.livescience.com/x37b-secret-space-plane-facts.ht...
/s
For example, there was only one satellite painted dark, and it didn't work well enough. The next mitigation after that worked well, but not well enough.
What's the alternative? Force anyone who wants to participate in the modern world to live in a city or suburb along a fiber line? Neither public nor private groups have expressed much interest in actually getting internet connectivity to everyone.
My parents live in a rural area in Northern California and only about 5 miles away from a fiber drop point. However, there are only about ten houses on their street and the local ISP and the big one that actually owns the fiber wants $10k USD a pole to bring a fiber line over to them (there's about 80 poles that would need work) plus connection and maintenance fees after that point.
Needless to say, they're _loving_ their Starlink connection.
Logically, it makes sense: while you need to get a lot of things into the city, you can do that at scale in ways that are efficient (like trains, boats, etc..).
Also, if you live in a city, you're probably taking up much less of a footprint. Individual houses are really inefficient. Nevermind driving everywhere! :)
Until the masking and restaurant restrictions were lifted, there were next to no COVID cases in town and no one around us caught it. Meanwhile, my entire friend group (20+ people) in SF all caught it at some point. I'm the only one of the group that hasn't had it.
This is still consigned to coverup/conspiracy theory but these Ionosphere Heaters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater) have the ability to heat up the Ionosphere creating something akin to the bulge on a balloon or car tyre wall where the upper atmosphere pushes out into space.
This has two effects, it push's atmosphere into the low earth orbiting satellites path aking to driving through a sudden bank of fog, only this bulge of atmosphere can bring LEOB satellites down as they are not designed to go through atmosphere.
It also affects the Jet Stream winds in the upper atmosphere circulating the planet which in turn affects the weather of continents, its less predictable but its an alternative to the very localised and resource hungry cloud seeding.
The BBC Horizon program did a episode on "Space Weather" and in the last 5mins of the episode they focused on the EISCAT heater near Tromsø in Norway. In the episode the operator/scientist explained what it does to the upper atmosphere, which is explained above. Obviously this also has military applications because any LEOB satellite can be bought down if these IH's are on a ship somewhere in the middle of an ocean away from prying eyes!
I work on radio astronomy and black holes, and no, that wouldn't happen.
I mean, you probably think it's a good joke, and it may be for the general public. But it doesn't make any sense to an astronomer at any wavelength.
There have been a few "stealth satellites" launched, and it's an interesting problem to detect them without spending a ton of money.
> I mean, you probably think it's a good joke,
That means I thought it was intended to be a joke.
Can you suggest wording that I can use next time that is less confusing?
BTW when the first "they're going to try to make the satellites darker" thing came up, a million redditers seriously mentioned Vantablack. That's not the thing that makes it an obvious joke.
There wouldnt be any wavelengths with a black hole, not even a lead balloon.
You guys read way too much propaganda. Please do a modicum of research first rather than jumping to outrage. It's getting unendingly frustrating.
You personally may not benefit, but LEO internet constellations really do solve a major issue for many people.
But I'm sure that if it all goes tits up the US will fix it all and humbly apologize.
There's a good discussion going on about extending that treaty: stricter rules on deorbiting failed satellites and stages, light pollution, excessive numbers of satellites in narrow orbital bands, and so on.
The idea we could setup mail service to everyone then wire up electricity and finally landlines to effectively every home in a vastly poor societies but can’t solve the internet issue without satellites is disgraceful.