SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

spaceweatherarchive.com

303 pointswawayanda212 comments

Seems like this isn't considered to be a big issue, beyond that it is a very visible thing that instinctively 'feels' like a bad idea.

> Rocket engines spray water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ionosphere, quenching local ionization by as much as 70%. A complicated series of charge exchange reactions between oxygen ions (O+) and molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å–the same color as red auroras.

> Once rare, ionospheric “punch holes” are increasingly common with record numbers of rocket launches led by SpaceX sending Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. Ham radio operators may notice them... These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

Will excess radiation leak through to Earth during re-ionization?

If the holes are quickly healed by sunlight, and only local to where a satellite is launched, the answer would seem to be no.

> One famous example occured on August 25, 2017, when a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-5 satellite created a hole four times bigger than the state of California.

Doesn't sound too local to me.

Good point. Deserves some numbers.

California's area is about 500 thousand km^2, and the Earth's is about 500 million, which means the side facing the Sun is about 250 million, so we're talking about 0.2% of the area facing the sun.

Suppose the hole takes six hours to heal (the article makes it sound like it takes much less), and suppose there's a launch every month (since launches have in the past carried 600 satellites at once, that seems plausible, no?), and suppose the hole lets in twice as much of whatever radiation we would like the ionosphere to keep out. Then that's an increase of 0.2 * (1/4) * (1/30) %, which is less than 0.002% -- that is, an increase by a factor of less than 1.00002.

Not negligible, but if the satellites provide a substantial public good, then it seems worth the cost. I feel like due to StarLink's use in Russia-Ukraine war alone, it more than qualifies.

>so we're talking about 0.2% of the area facing the sun

Doesn't sound small at all.

Right, but presumably the effects are greater for the people in California?

Because the hole was similar sized to their state?

I guess so, they will have to deal with increased fame and awareness of the size of their state.

People in Oregon on the other hand will continue to be snubbed.

We'll start seeing placards attached that says it's known to cause

Yeah they get to see red lights and have trouble with HF HAM radio. If youre aware of other effects please share.

Another way of putting it is that it could potentially affect 40 million people.

There are areas of the globe that are more densely populated than California.

But on the other hand, you typically don't launch rockets there.

Oh I was assuming the launch was actually from Vandeburg in California and that’s why people said the hole was the size of California. But it could have been from Florida.

Shouldn't we also adjust for the fact that the ionosphere has a larger radius than the earth when considering it's surface area?

Earth's radius: 6,371 km Ionosphere: 60-300km

... If we use the inner edge of the ionosphere we get about 2% more surface area whereas the outer edge gives us 9.6%. Probably the right number to use is somewhere in between.

Spacex it’s aiming to launch in 2023 about 100 times per year, and they are not too far behind given that they launched already 49 times. The launch cadence is going to drastically increase once starship is available. It seems a quite bigger impact that your numbers show. You used 12 launches per year, so you were off by an order of magnitude.

I applaud the attempt to quantify.

Couple nits: - frequency estimate should be more aggressive, should be looking for an upper bound on all numbers to quantify max potential impact. I would crank that up to once a day or more.

- a hole allowing twice as much sounds like a comolete guess. Could it be 100x, 10,000x? or perhaps less than 10%? Other comments make the ozone layer sound more important. The hole punching effects on that layer are unknown (to me and the article does not mention it). In effect, this could be a light show, or it could be a routine perforation of each layer of the atmosphere (more data needed)

- that extra radiation is not spread out across the area of the earth. Instead how many people and animals are present under that hole. Everyone underneath the hole presumably would get the full blast. Thus, it is simple, those people get twice the radiation, whatever that factor is, it is not averaged across the whole planet because it is a local effect. Thus, the area sizes only matter for determining how many people and animals receive extra exposure.

- starlink donated their services to Ukraine. That one act of donation does not make it a public good. Starlink is a for profit service, not a public good (some services can be quite good, but that is different from "a public good")

Yup, I don’t believe there are any consequences to anyone away from the hole.

I think the right way to approach this is to consider the unshielded radiation flux over the hole and the time that the hole takes to close. This would give a good back of envelope upper bound of the increase in cancer risk. There’s probably other effects, but all I care about is harm to individuals.

Only insignificantly. Most of the radiation is filtered/diverted by the magnetosphere. The only really practical effect of the disturbance is making the already hard to predict sky-wave propagation of HF even more harder to predict and characterize. Which is today realistically of an interest to HAMs and mostly as an fallback for intelligence agencies and diplomatic services.

Edit: It also somewhat changes the scatter/delay characteristics of GNSS, which may or may not cause a somewhat significant error of the GNSS fix (it probably should not, but it can).

What about high frequency trading shops?

That is completely different definition of HF. And if they use radio (lower latency than fiber, in theory and in right circumstances ), it is somewhere between SHF and EHF (C through V in the IEEE nomenclature), ie. what sane person would informally call “microwave”, not HF.

There was a thread on here the other day about HF traders using HF radio.

Yes that's right, also known as shortwave radio.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/wall-street-tries-shortwave-ra...

Well, the article itself does a pretty good job of describing why it is not an exactly good idea. What it does not say (and what probably nobody suggesting that ever though about) is that the sky-wave propagation mode is either about reflection off the ionosphere or refraction effects of the ionosphere, both of which means that the propagation path is significantly longer and in the refraction case over “slower” medium. The resulting latencies are almost certainly large enough that the whole thing does not make sense even before thinking about the bandwidth and frame sizes.

Another thing that got posted here a couple days ago was the Burrito Tunnel: https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

That's where the high-frequency traders should put their fibers ;)

Man that really had me scratching my head for the first few sentences… haha. The fake link was a nice touch to build credibility. I’m not on my desktop where I can view source, but I’m guessing it’s an href pointing back at its self.

Obviously you know more than HFTs which never put thought or engineering into anything. They’re well known dopes who are really bad with technology and money, right?

100% wrong.

This is talking about radio wave frequency, not trading frequency.

The funny thing is that in most ham radio usage, the "high frequency bands" are actually about as low a frequency as most people will ever use. I don't think I've come across anything about low and medium frequencies except in reference materials. People generally use "high frequency", "very high frequency", or "ultra high frequency".

AM radio is medium frequency.

Radio clocks are low frequency.

I’ve found myself explaining that to people a few times. Lower frequencies are also used to communicate with submarines since they propagate better through water.

I’m guessing that when radio first came out frequencies were lower, though I don’t have any facts there.

“Shortwave radio” is another one that’s confusing term these days for the same reason.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/wall-street-tries-shortwave-ra...

Yes, in fact at this moment commercial interests are petitioning the FCC to allocate bandwidth in the HF 2-25mhz range for the purpose of high-speed stock trading: http://www.arrl.org/news/commercial-interests-petition-fcc-f...

They should be banned anyway. The more we can do to make their operations impossible the better.

Their mere existence makes a mockery of the idea of the stock market as a considered reflection of value of companies and explicitly makes it into a gambling den for dead-eyed people competing to have the fastest card counting systems under their suits. If a company is valuable now, it'll be valuable in 5 minutes.

HFTs provide a lot of value to everyone by providing a lot of liquidity and reducing bid/ask spread giving a fairer price to everyone.

> If a company is valuable now, it'll be valuable in 5 minutes.

That’s not necessarily true.

It just so happens that those who advocate and benefit directly from it are the ones who already have the power to make markets. The product of a company is based on its labor utilization, which doesn't change materially in the (very) short timespans of HFT. Liquidity aside, five minutes isn't going to make much of a difference when most people generally wait weeks or months to make major asset purchases like a car or a house, or to be approved for a small business loan. Only the ultra-wealthy car about milliseconds, because they can afford to make such vast and diverse trades in so little time.

Labor utilization is only one piece of a very big puzzle. Other pieces that change more quickly include commodity and supply chain costs, competitor activities, technological advances, and many other factors, all of which can change quite quickly in our globalized world.

"Quite quickly" and "so quickly that a basement full of racks of FPGAs, point-to-point radios, transcontinental fibre runs and optical switches are required to extract our value" are maybe not exactly the same thing.

What technological advances are occuring on millisecond timescales?

>>HFTs provide a lot of value to everyone

I think we are going to have very different views as to what the terms "value" and "everyone" mean

because HFT's provide no value at all to the everyday person on mainstreet just looking get by and maybe put 10% of their wages into the stock market for retirement.

if by everyone you mean "the top 1%" and by value you mean "make lots of money at the expense of mainstreet investors" then sure.

> because HFT's provide no value at all to the everyday person

If you participate in the stock market at all, you indirectly benefit from HFTs lowering the bid/ask spread and therefore getting a better price. Now matter how insignificant, but the benefit is there.

Of course if we're dealing in millions, not thousands, then the benefit is more pronounced, but a couple of cents here or there still make a difference.

At the very worst HFT firms are a net neutral.

> "make lots of money at the expense of mainstreet investors"

Can you elaborate on this further? I don't see how HFTs make money at the expense of mainstreet investors. HFTs make money on the expense of inefficiencies, therefore making the markets more efficient.

I'd wager that without hfts liquidity would be just fine. Maybe smaller stocks wouldn't become the battleground for hft algos, but aside from that they're mostly penny skimming vultures that create the illusion of liquidity as they hop in and out of stuff at fractions of a second.

HFTs turn off their algorithms when the market gets particularly volatile and the liquidity vanishes at the moment it's actually needed.

Idk I think technological progress/humanity would do a lot better in general without the parasitic effects of people making the markets/trading their "job".

If someone writes some software, or grows some food, or balances some accounts, or paints a wall, they are all being endlessly more productive than someone who buys on a low and sells on a high and pockets the difference all within 100ms.

Investment means support and confidence in a venture or resource. I think a lot of the financial industry's problems arise from the switch from "investment in business x because I like what they're doing and am confident they'll succeed" to the mantra of "investment in business x because I don't actually care about the company but the stock history tells me I can make a quick buck". Market stability is a thing of the past, no wonder we're constantly on the edge of a recession.

Have you ever listened to an earnings call? It only takes a few words from CEO or CFO to reduce the value of the traded stock to nearly zero.

So in that scenario, is it beneficial to society that someone who has a 50ms delay live feed can unload their shares at a higher price than someone with a 5s delay live feed? Or the same question for someone who has AI to parse the information and execute trades faster than the human?

There's a benefit to liquidity to everyone, but I don't really see a liquidity benefit faster than a few _minutes_, much less faster than a few _ms_: end individual traders don't even get to trade that fast anyway, they're just artificially disadvantaged against the institutions.

Earnings call is a review of the quarterly earnings document usually released earlier that day. The stonk price fluctuates almost entirely on how accurate the guidance was and what the future guidance is. Even doing excessively good in a quarter can have a negative impact because they didn't give their investors an accurate heads up. I guess maybe some horrible pro-Hitler rant may affect the price, but to zero? I haven't seen that.

Don't believe the ionosphere has any role in any sort of radiation absorption, outside of RF?

The Ozone Layer is considerably lower than the Ionosphere proper, and protects all surface life from ionizing solar UV radiation. It most likely is as damaged by rocket exhaust as the ionosphere, and much more slowly healed.

That undoubtedly deserves its own article, which will unavoidably be confused with this one and be considered old news.

Why would O3 be damaged by H2O? SpaceX rockets are powered by hydrogen and oxygen and produce water as exhaust.

Kerosene and oxygen.. Anyway it's probably that the exhaust plume will contain reactive species like nitrogen oxides, maybe the water vapour could have a role. It's not a big effect.

Hydrazine powered rockets have a much bigger effect (all those nitrogen oxides) and are still not a very big deal.

It may not seem like a big issue but it speaks to the attitude of billionaires. I am no longer free to vent personal amounts of coolant from a refrigerator but Elon Musk can punch all of the holes he wants with his expensive rockets.

They stole the commons from us and hold it ransom.

Where by ‘stole’, you mean granted licensed access to the commons by elected representatives, under strict regulation and monitoring, in order to provide services to the public at competitively bid prices.

I wonder what the total carbon footprint is of the Musk Empire. (Tesla + SpaceX + X + Boring Company + …)

And I wonder how many times over Tesla makes up for it.

Zero?

Tesla's sales of approximately 4.5 million vehicles have each offset about 20 tons of CO2 over their lifetimes compared to a traditional gas vehicle [1]. This equates to preventing a total of 90 million tons of CO2 from entering our atmosphere. As we continue to transition to renewable energy, the environmental benefits of each Tesla vehicle are set to increase further.

In contrast, a SpaceX launch generates around 300 tons of CO2 [2], totaling about 72,600 tons of CO2 for the 242 launches to date. We mustn't forget the wide-ranging benefits these launches provide, from improved weather forecasting and GPS services to crewed missions to the International Space Station.

If we subtract the CO2 emissions from SpaceX launches from the CO2 savings attributed to Tesla, we see a net savings of about 89,927,400 tons of CO2.

90,000,000 / 72,600 = 1,240x

The emissions from his remaining companies are comparably negligible. Furthermore, this calculation doesn't account for Tesla's influence on the automotive industry, propelling other manufacturers to accelerate their production of EVs. As Tesla's sales continue to rise and EVs become more accessible through Tesla's charging network, these benefits will be multiplied. Also, this doesn't factor in the positive environmental impact of Tesla's energy division, which likely offsets the emissions from all of his other companies on its own.

[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

> Tesla's sales of approximately 4.5 million vehicles have each offset about 20 tons of CO2 over their lifetimes compared to a traditional gas vehicle [1].

Aren't you presuming that Tesla is the only seller of electric vehicles, and those who bought Tesla would thus never even consider buying any other electric vehicle?

I mean, currently Tesla represents around 15% of the overall EV sales, and BYD auto alone representing 21%. This means that as of right now around of 85% of all ev buyers are not buying Tesla.

Tesla's role in shaping the EV landscape is undeniable. Their advent redefined the trajectory of electric mobility when major automakers were largely dismissive of the concept. With the success of their Model S, and more the Model 3, Tesla shattered the misconception that EVs lacked practicality, thereby nudging traditional manufacturers to expedite their own electric ventures.

The opening of Tesla's Supercharger network has been instrumental in making EVs from all manufacturers viable for a broader demographic in the U.S. Moreover, for a considerable period, Tesla struggled to meet the high demand for their vehicles, with many potential owners enduring long wait times to receive their cars. Given the limited and less attractive EV alternatives at that time, it's unlikely that these consumers would have opted for another EV.

In the U.S., where Tesla has a market share close to 60%, Chinese automakers like BYD, SAIC, or Geely have not yet established a significant presence. Thus, most American consumers would not have likely considered these other EVs.

Additionally, Tesla's pricing strategy has exerted downward pressure on the overall EV market, making these vehicles more accessible to the masses. Other manufacturers are indeed emulating Tesla's approach, further acknowledging Tesla's influence on the industry's transition to electric vehicles.

As to the emissions offset calculation, the figures referenced consider each Tesla vehicle as a replacement for a conventional gasoline car. Whether a Tesla purchaser might have considered another EV is irrelevant to the emissions reductions associated with each Tesla vehicle. Also the amount of emissions needed to offset SpaceX emissions is comical and obviously Tesla covers those even with a small fraction of the vehicles they sell.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/investing/china-tesla-ev-pric...

https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-ev-production-slow-than...

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1152586942/tesla-price-cuts-f...

https://electrek.co/2021/11/08/ford-ceo-praises-tesla-intern...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/tesla-is-setting-the-bar-for...

https://electrek.co/2023/06/05/gm-ceo-tesla-lead-electric-ca...

https://insideevs.com/news/652293/ferrari-ceo-says-tesla-was...

> Tesla's role in shaping the EV landscape is undeniable.

You're jumping to conclusions. Just because Tesla exists that does not mean that all hypothetical transitions from fossil fuel to electric should be attributed to Tesla.

I repeat: Tesla is responsible for only 15% of EV sales, and nothing leads to believe that the remaining 85% of the EV market does not serve as a substitute good. Claiming that Tesla is an environment protection messiah is peak corporate worship.

You pay out your ass for one of Elons cars and he's credited with the carbon footprint benefits. Why should he get all the credit?

For the same reason the carbon footprint of every Elon rocket launch is being attributed to SpaceX even though some other entity "paid out of their ass" for many of them.

Because it takes two to tango. In both cases "all the credit" or "all the debit" goes to the manufacturer for making the product AND the customer for paying for it.

[1] is interesting as an approximation. The source of electricity is really important for EV. If more teslas are in a place with clean energy, it could be even better.

Though, everyone that bought a tesla, they would have bought a gas vehicle instead? I think that is potentially a very invalid assumption which negates that savings calculation. Yes, EVs can be cleaner than conventional cars, but it still adds an impact. Less bad does not necessarily mean all good.

The mentions of teslas charging network sounds very PR heavy. What if that network flops in 5 years and meanwhile the non-common standard means a global charging infrastructure is never properly developed?

Musk's hyperloop was supposed to be built in a few towns that lost money on the deals and pulled funds from other transit projects. Those transit projects never happened.

I don't think anyone can at all decide whether musk, tesla and his companies are yet a net good without the benefit of more time and 20/20 hindsight.

The harm they cause to public transportation (such as politically stalling rail systems with Hyperloop) outweighs the good they do with their cars, especially now that car companies that don't directly hurt more efficient forms of transport are making electric cars.

And self driving taxis, if they ever do make it which is still waaaaay out even by Elon time, are not going to balance it out.

Indeed, Elon Musk made an effort to halt the California high-speed rail project, but failed, leading to the project pushing forward. The repercussions have been billions of taxpayer dollars funneled into a project that remains considerably far from completion. The budget has skyrocketed from a modest $9 billion to an eye-watering $128 billion. Adding insult to injury, the first phase isn't expected to kick off until 2030. Given the speed at which FSD is advancing, it's quite likely that it will be fully developed before this rail service even gets off the ground. Interestingly, the original 2008 target completion date for the rail project was 2020, but not a single mile of track had been laid by that time. As such, blaming Musk's efforts for the state of California's issues seems misplaced. One can't help but wonder if things might have been better off if his attempt to cancel the project had been successful.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/29/california-h...

> Indeed, Elon Musk made an effort to halt the California high-speed rail project (...) As such, blaming Musk's efforts for the state of California's issues seems misplaced.

Ok. So you agree Musk tried to sabotage California high-speed rail, but as he failed then... We should ignore it?

Not sure if you read the rest of my comment, but I'm saying it wasn't a negative thing that he tried to get the project canceled and it seems like he was right about how it was going to go. So maybe not ignore it, but praise that he tried to get it canceled?

- If someone bought a Tesla we can assume that they would have bought a fossil car if Tesla didn’t exist

- If Musk tried to sabotage something and he failed: his intent doesn’t matter

- But the project that he tried to sabotage probably should have failed anyway

— The Musk Prayer

> Not sure if you read the rest of my comment, but I'm saying it wasn't a negative thing that he tried to get the project canceled and it seems like he was right about how it was going to go.

That's specious reasoning at best. It's absurd how you try to depict a Robber Baron move as a simplistic fiscally responsible stance. It's even sillier once you realize the only reason Elon Musk did his best to sabotage the program was because he believed it would be a success and thus a threat to his bottom line.

I really do not understand this corporate worship nonsense, specially when dealing with this specific corporation.

> That's specious reasoning [...] the only reason Elon Musk did his best to sabotage the program was because he believed it would be a success and thus a threat to his bottom line.

The only specious reasoning I'm seeing here is the weird assumption that one high speed rail line in California would meaningfully suppress Tesla car sales. It's competing with air travel, not car ownership.

It's ridiculous enough to suggest that it would suppress the sale of cars generally. It's especially ridiculous to suggest that it would suppress sales of Tesla vehicles. It's a 760 mile round trip between SF and LA — not an issue for an EV if you're doing it occasionally. But someone buying a new car for the specific purpose of driving this route simply wouldn't consider an EV.

The idea that Hyperloop had any impact at all on public transit is just nonsense.

It had literally zero impact on California High-Speed Rail.

You would be surprised. It takes several years for the low emissions of an EV to compensate the increased emissions during fabrication compared to ICEs (and disposal: ICEs are mostly steel and plastic, with fewer fancy chemicals as batteries). Teslas, being large and heavy, also use way more energy than they should to move around 100 kgs of human. Energy that is not free of GHG emissions.

EVs are mostly good over the long term, but they are not an instant win button.

Yes, the batteries are very energy intensive to produce. Which is a very strong incentive to build lithium ion battery factories where cheap electricity is available, which most likely means hydro, or other renewables (because hydro, wind, solar tend to be far from population centers). I've seen some really unfair analyses of the CO₂ produced by EV production that assume all energy inputs are from renewable sources at the US average (just 21% of electricity in 2021), which is not true.

So battery production is a good way to transport energy from where it's cheap to produce to where it's needed, much better than bitcoin.

EV are heavier but more efficent because electric motors are more efficent.

Yes, in isolation. But it the electricity production is burning gas, the inefficiency is moved to the power plant rather than avoided (this still makes EVs better, just not as good as they could be in a completely carbon-free grid).

The main effect of mass is when comparing 2 different EVs: one that is twice as heavy has ~twice the initial production emissions, as well as twice the energy consumption (and emissions, as the case may be). Even with EVs, large and heavy cars are very wasteful.

Larger power plants are far more efficient then ICE engines you can put on a car.

> Even with EVs, large and heavy cars are very wasteful.

Yes, I am pretty anti-car and anti-big car so sure that is true.

Depends whether you factor in the CO2 certificates Tesla sells to ICE OEMs or not.

Or how many times over they don't make up for it.

Generally for EVs it matters where the electricity comes from. (From memory), coal fired electricity has a EV break even at 110k miles, hydro power break even is down at 20k. (I'm on a phone, but can try to dig out the article that looked at this exact question - it also mentioned that a lot of places where we get rare minerals for the batteries are run by warlords which use child labor.. so it is not all roses)

Venting refrigerant does actual measurable damage that takes decades to repair, this does not (that we k ow of) and is undone in a single day

I get what and agree with what your trying to say but a better comparison is needed

ionosphere is not the ozone layer, and nobody is allowed to vent freon from their old refrigerators

Why do you want the ability to vent such potent greenhouse gasses?

I'd like the ability to visit space at some point in my life, and I'd like our species to become experienced at doing things in space. Like, if we need to be able to deploy something in space to decrease the amount of heat we're taking in to try and buy more time to decarbonize before we're completely F'd because of all the people venting potent greenhouse gasses from their HVAC systems, it'd be nice if we already had a space industrial complex capable of supporting that goal.

The space industrial complex would pollute a whole lot more than today, and let’s hope space tourism it’s not something too feasible, aside from stroking egos it wouldn’t do much, space is very human unfriendly after all. I for one hope we move slower not faster.

It’s not just stroking egos; if you read any accounts by astronauts, there’s a profound effect on people that get a chance to look back at earth, and see how it’s actually not infinite. I hope every powerful person gets the chance to do that, I think it’d go a long way in reducing the petty bullshit we engage in.

You could do that with a VR headset

Or, you know, you just check your ego from earth. Not sure how much of an impact the trip had on Bezos, and I wouldn't put my hope on such trips fixing the other ones.

Stroking egos is all that that would do.

It seems that most of our most powerful leaders (so-called) are sociopaths or psychopaths.[1] Are people who are pathologically incapable of basic empathy and compassion going to be moved by a joyride to watch the Big Blue Ball? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eBN_9rMoVI

I mean, we have a precedent; did Bezos' trip substantiate radical pro-human changes in his businesses?

The only thing I read about resulting from that trip was Shatner's induced depression over the sight.

My impression is that Bezos isn't involved in day-to-day operations anymore?

> if you read any accounts by astronauts, there’s a profound effect on people that get a chance to look back at earth, and see how it’s actually not infinite

Still no astronaut says that they don't want to go back because it contributes to destroying the planet, do they?

Don't get me wrong: I would probably throw my principles out the window if I got to become an astronaut. But I don't think we can say that going in space makes you a big environmental activist.

The carbon footprint of an astronaut going into space on eg a Falcon 9 is on the order of that of a couple average American families for a year. It's not a huge impact compared to how much they advance our understanding of how to live in space (back of the envelope, ~150 tons of kerosene yielding ~500 tons of CO2, 50 tons for the average American family for a year). I haven't run the numbers on Starship, but my impression is that it'll be significantly more efficient.

> The carbon footprint of an astronaut going into space on eg a Falcon 9 is on the order of that of a couple average American families for a year.

You certainly mean the direct carbon footprint, right? Not counting what was involved in building the rocket, importing the material, test launches while developing the technology, etc?

> It's not a huge impact compared to how much they advance our understanding of how to live in space

Not sure I get that comparison. So you say "it's okay to contribute destroying life conditions on Earth in this case, given how much it helps us understand how to make people survive around Earth"? We can't move the Earth population to live in orbit once surviving on the ground is impossible, so it's a bit like saying "the carbon footprint of burning tires is not huge compared to how practical it is as a way to get rid of tires", IMO.

We won't, as a species, go live in orbit, we won't go live on the Moon, and we won't go live on March. And we quite certainly will not ever reach the next star (which is what, 4 light-years away?). We don't need to understand how to live in space in order to survive on Earth. And right now we are destroying Earth. We need to first learn how to survive on Earth, and then maybe we can consider playing with human spaceflights again.

> I haven't run the numbers on Starship, but my impression is that it'll be significantly more efficient.

Again, you're missing all the indirect impact, and then all the rebound effects. Every success of SpaceX gets us into a world where the space business (because it is now a business) emits more CO2. I don't know why people don't get the memo, but right now our survival depends on reducing our CO2 emissions, not increasing them.

I've gotten the memo, thanks, I've devoted a good amount of time to this stuff, and yes, some things are useful enough that they're worth emitting their relatively insignificant amounts of CO2 for. Obviously, it's the wrong direction on CO2, but we don't have an alternative for lifting stuff into space, yet. And even if they got to 10,000 Falcon 9 launches per year (they're at ~80, so >100x), it would add something like 0.02% of our current global emissions.

wrt direct vs. indirect emissions, rockets are incredibly thin cans full of fuel that immediately gets burnt. The direct emissions will almost certainly dominate the embodied carbon from manufacturing, especially when they're launched >10 times. Once you start including the infrastructure, it's less clear, but it's a close-enough estimate for setting the context in an internet comment. Is the value we get from an astronaut doing work in space worth the carbon footprint of a few American families for a year? I think so, I get the sense that you don't agree. That's fine.

> Is the value we get from an astronaut doing work in space worth the carbon footprint of a few American families for a year? I think so, I get the sense that you don't agree. That's fine.

You make it sound like we get a lot of value from astronauts surviving in space, and that the CO2 footprint of the space business is almost nothing.

I disagree with both. They don't really make any useful work (that could not be done by robots) other than surviving there, and the carbon footprint of the space business is going to grow much bigger (if those companies are successful) than what you seem to believe.

> it's less clear, but it's a close-enough estimate for setting the context in an internet comment

It surely is convenient to ignore them :-)

There are thousands of people responsible for planning, certifying and monitoring the operations of these launches. Within SpaceX, but also the launch site owners, the FCA, journalists covering it all. There are comprehensive environmental impact assessments, with opportunities for comments from the public. One of the thousands of people involved in all of that is a billionaire.

Furthermore it’s an issue that affects all launches, by ULA, NASA, ESA, whoever, not just SpaceX.

But sure, go ahead and ignore all of that and make a thoughtless dig against one person, in one country, running one rocket company for the crime of being successful at it.

Evaluations from SpaceX employees needs the biggest grain of salt. Their jobs depend on a certain result and their boss is notoriously pushy.

Journalists are not scientists.

Did you mean FAA rather than FCA?

The FAA did ask SpaceX to do a lot of additional ground level items: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/13/faa-spacex-starship-environm...

The reviewers at th ed FCA were unlikely to be in the thousands, the rest mentioned I would completely discount.

The "crime" is that one person is not stopping to ask whether we should. There is a lot of hubris is there. Regardless, nobody should get a free pass to wreck the earth (but this is kittens, putting tons of C02 in the air is generally free, so... yeah...)

Looks like the biggest "green" issue is the rockets burns tons of fuel. Thd FAA review was a green light. This phenomena of punching holes was hopefully considered by the FAA (but at this point, can only hope that everything was at least considered)

Yes sorry, FAA. I’m a Brit so not as familiar with the US institutions.

My point is there is extensive and persistent oversight, debate and opportunities for input and objection. Journalists play a role in the public interest in any democratic society.

One person didn’t ask whether we should? Space technology has been controversial since its inception. Citizens, journalists and politicians have been questioning it throughout its history. You really honestly think you’re the first person, or this is the first time anyone has stopped to wonder about it?

Incidentally, there’s one particularly famous example of this from 1970 that’s a bit of a classic: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

Of course nobody should get a free pass to wreck the Earth. That’s a cartoonishly absurd caricature of what’s going on.

>Of course nobody should get a free pass to wreck the Earth. That’s a cartoonishly absurd caricature of what’s going on.

>My point is there is extensive and persistent oversight, debate and opportunities for input and objection.

the point that other commentators have made, which has seemingly been ignored, is that being the person with the most wealth in the entire world allows one to ignore a lot of the checks and balances associated with any activity.

A lot of the 'extensive and persistent oversight' comes from 1) internal employees and 2) government officials that have been 'taken out to dinner' enough times that they don't want to lose the opportunity to schmooze with what amounts to be the most and influential people in the world.

this is essentially how all of American aerospace operates, and I speak from personal experience -- most groups don't have the luxury of being a cult of personality on top of the thick wallets, however.

You can call CO2 harmless all you want, but the reality is that we have a tenuous grasp, if any at all, on what spilling hundreds of tons in a minute will add up to [0], and that's only a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the environmental accumulative 'unknowns'.[1]

In effect Musk's pass to wreck the Earth was by no means free, he paid for it. The problem is that someone , anyone with money and pop interest, can do that.

I'm by no means anti-space, but this trend of pretending that there isn't a sacrifice made on Earth to fuel these mega-ventures is absolutely naive, and the tragedy is that the every-person is going to be the one paying the bill; it won't be Musk's redirected billions.

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220713-how-to-make-rock... [1]:https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/greenhouse-gas...

> which has seemingly been ignored

I read comments like this almost every time SpaceX is mentioned here, and climate crisis extremists bang on about it endlessly. It’s impossible to ignore, it’s just that most people disagree.

>you can call CO2 harmless all you want…

I did not do so, thank you very much. I’m aware of the issues. Climate change is a real problem, but exaggerated histrionics aren’t going to solve problems.

>Musk’s pass to wreck the Earth… pretending that there isn’t a sacrifice being made…

He has no such pass, and nobody’s pretending anything of the sort. See above about exaggerated histrionics. They’re so obviously absurd it does the climate change cause no good whatsoever. To mainstream voters it makes extinction rebellion folks look like a fanatical cult dissociated from reality, and by association undermines the credible and important climate change cause. A cause Musk has probably done more to physically advance through direct personal action than all but maybe a handful of other human beings on Earth.

So, let's see the hard evidence of how thoroughly the problem of launching rockets has been studied. What percentage of the SpaceX budget is dedicated to studying why SpaceX should not launch rockets?

Journalists are great, but it's not like they have a many million dollar budget to study this. The hole in the ionosphere seems to be news, seemingly this is an area where humanity is missing _lots_ of knowledge.

There are some interesting reads on whether Musk is a net benefit or not (reasonable people can disagree here)

> this brings us to the first fundamental problem: Elon Musk does what he wants and wants everyone else to do the same. He only sees the advantages of his approach, without ever asking himself about the consequences. It is certain that the aerospace industry has played a fundamental role in the study of climate, thanks to the weather satellites placed in orbit. The problem is that Elon Musk wants to multiply the number of satellites by 20, which will directly disrupt space operations and astronomical research.

https://bonpote.com/en/elon-musk-solution-or-nightmare-for-t...

Personally, I think the AI car thing has been a distraction and has been an excuse for continuing to put all of our transport eggs in the single-occupancy-vehicle basket. Had Musk pushed the EV numbers he is pushing now back 20 years ago - I would agree that he had done a lot. As-is, for EVs, I view Musk a bit like Steve Jobs, brought the touch-screen phone forward by several years and helped the market adoption, but touch-screen phones would have happened without Jobs.

There are some other interesting reads too from less biased sources:

> It's not surprising that Musk’s socially-responsible message of warning about environmental crisis combined with his massive capital success building electric vehicles (EVs) has given him a messianic status among some of his many admirers. But this status also means that by attacking the Build Back Better legislation, which is by far the United States’ most significant legislation ever aimed at fighting climate change, Musk is providing ammunition to climate deniers and fossil fuel industry opponents of efforts to protect the U.S. from climate change, create good jobs, and lead the world in technology and policies.

> If Musk is really serious about combatting climate change, we need him to support an all-hands-on-deck approach. The commitments, innovation, and investments of private companies must be matched with government policies and incentives.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margooge/2022/01/17/where-does-...

And then this article is perhaps the best so far:

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-isnt-a-climate-hero-just-becau...

> Let’s look first at Musk’s achievements in both electric cars and solar power, which Manjoo singles out. In many ways, Tesla is certainly deserving of a lot of praise

> Meanwhile, Musk has dismissed the idea of improving existing public transit—which experts say is arguably more important in cutting emissions than popularizing electric cars.

Sorry to pile in a bit, it's tough as there is a lot to comment on.

> "I read comments like this almost every time SpaceX is mentioned here, and climate crisis extremists bang on about it endlessly. It’s impossible to ignore, it’s just that most people disagree."

Respectfully, I feel you are responding to those comments, rather than the ones placed here. How can anyone disagree with the statement that the impact of rocket launches on the atmosphere is not well understood. AFAIK, that is fact. If there are such studies, that would be super interesting, to my knowledge, those studies have not been done (and could not be done because nobody was launching rockets at an appreciable frequency for anyone to even study it).

If those studies had been done, I would not expect the punching of holes in the ionosphere to be news.

I'll note that exploring space is very different from commercializing space.

> You really honestly think you’re the first person, or this is the first time anyone has stopped to wonder about it?

I don't think that, I didn't imply that, and wondering if I was the first person to ever wonder that for the first time is putting words in my mouth.

My question is whether anyone that was in a position to know and was also not being payed off wondered this. Given the lack of science around this, the major players I think are more concerned with going further than they are in really studying exactly whether they should. That makes no sense for SpaceX to devout half of their budget to study why they should not be launching rockets. If they are not studying that, who exactly is?

> Of course nobody should get a free pass to wreck the Earth. That’s a cartoonishly absurd caricature of what’s going on.

There have been plenty of free passes to wreck the earth. Examples are subsidies going out to industries that pollute. These free-passes go back in time, recall the train companies giving free tickets to those that would shoot Bison from the windows of the train. We can also talk about deforestation, that most old growth forests have been chopped down and so many tree farms are now taking their place (tree farms grow overly dense, and very sickly trees that have nowhere near the same positive impact as old growth does). There are so many examples of free passes being given.. Why else are so many rivers toxic and unswimmable? The fact we have so many things and areas that are wrecked serves as counter-point.

Beyond this, I think 'serf' responds pretty well, I will not add further.

Totally stupid Q: Can we harvest any of this energy>?

Solar Panels

Who measures light wavelengths in angstroms rather than nm?

I was curious too so I checked Wikipedia [1].

Apparently, angstrom was invented exactly for measuring light wavelength.

Its (arguably more common today?) usage for atoms and other microscopic structures actually came after that.

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

Huh, learned something new.

Everyone? It’s the preferred unit for electromagnetic wavelengths.

Just try to extrapolate when tons more rockets punch the skies and let harmful radiation do its toll on life on Earth. We already have tons of junk, nobody has the responsibility to "clean after themselves." Wh would've imagined that the plastic bottles that are now in every river, in seas, and oceans will pollute the entire planet with "benign" micro- and nanoplastics.

We humans are stupid. We always underestimate the consequences of small stuff that simply adds up over time. This is a pattern. We polluted the planet with forever chemicals, lead, and tons of other pollutants that our descendants will have to deal with and suffer from!

All this needs to be regulated, a risk-benefits analysis made, and there needs to be a huge excise tax for all such activities!

A technically correct, but insignificant headline which appears dangerous at first glance; yeah that seems par for the course of modern journalism.

This is blog post by someone who finds it interesting

Not being able to tell the difference between a news article and a blog post is par for the course of modern society.

It's pretty clearly both, being an article posted on a news blog.

It’s honestly astounding you consider them to be distinct

Different eras. Journalism used to be bound by much stricter ethics.

It probably was to some extent. But also true is that readership used to have fewer means to question the writing of journalists, or to learn of others' criticisms.

Or truth from fiction, even from supposedly reputable organizations

"molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å – the same color as red auroras."

Anyone else have this use of Ångström trigger an exception in their brain? The unit of default for wavelength is nm, not Å… (1nm=10Å)

my trigger is from like the 1980s or 1990s where angstrom was a computer I couldnt afford...

Angstroms are used pretty commonly in molecular/nuclear physics.

If you look in another field, the default wavelength (wave number) unit is 1/cm. Meaning, there's not really a default wavelength unit.

I don't know if there's a "default" unit, but most people I interact with would use SI units (i.e. km, m, cm, mm, micron, nm, pm). Maybe more to your point, 630 nm is the same number of characters and a slightly more familiar unit. Writing a wavelength as 6300 angstroms is a bit like saying a marathon is 421,950 cm.

Anecdotally I've only really heard angstroms used in material science / condensed matter physics, where most small structures are small integer numbers of angstroms across.

Starlink plans to deploy 12,000 - 42,000 satellites. What if two competitors want to do the same? Can the low earth orbit handle 150,000 satellites that turn into space debris at some point?

Yes.

The waste, waste majority of sats never turn into space debris. Every single sat that launches today in the West has a deorbit planned. The only sat that turn into space debris will be those that brake unexpectitly and totally unrecoverable.

And the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever.

And in general, yes LEO can handle millions of sats.

We have like 150k cars in a single tiny country on earth right now.

Freudian slip.

It's just phonetically in a german accent.

Damn, you are on the spot. German is my first language and I have dyslexia.

Cars don’t constantly move thousands miles an hour uncontrollably

Cars also don’t move in easily predicted patterns for decades without turning from their predetermined path.

They sort of do though.

Cars, for the most part, follow the road and the direction they're already going. They (usually) signal if they're about to make changes. And to be safe, we've built an arrangement that they only travel on these specific paths at specific speeds, modifying their speed to match the other cars they might hit.

The challenge with satellites is that steering is hard and very limited. And they don't have brakes they can slam to come to a stop if they need to suddenly avoid a collision.

It is well known that potential points of conflict are a huge issue. That's why a round about is safer then intersection.

> And to be safe

Tell that to the 40k people killed and the millions hurt by cars in the US alone.

Cars constantly turn and intersect routes with other cars without any planning, even if perfectly handled and most of time they are not.

> The challenge with satellites is that steering is hard and very limited. And they don't have brakes they can slam to come to a stop if they need to suddenly avoid a collision.

They don't need to break, they just need to know the position of speed of other objects and correct position ahead of time.

The only reason why this is even a program at all is because only the US has even minimally invested in monitoring. If each nation just did the same our accuracy would be far, far higher and things would be way better.

So, as of now, we have minimally invested in solving this problem and it isn't a big issue. Slightly more investment (that is justified if we 10-100-1000x the amount of sats) is required eventually.

But compared to what it takes to make cars not crash into each other its nothing.

(Unless its like US infrastructure design that seems to want to make cars crash into things, but I hope in Space we can avoid that)

Cool thing about satellites is if you're on the same path, you must also be going the same speed.

Collision avoidance in LEO is quite elegant. When two satellites are predicted to pass uncomfortably close to one another, one satellite will fire its station keeping thrusters to raise its orbit above the other. No brakes or swerving needed, just a slight push well ahead of time. Starlink sats do this over 1000 times per week.

Even better, energy used for avoidance reduces energy needed for station keeping on a 1:1 basis. Avoidance maneuvers are effectively free.

What powers those thrusters? Never really thought about it.

They are powered by solar electricity that is saved in batteries. But to actually move you need something to throw out. That can be many things, anything from normal water, metal or noble gases.

Starlink initially used Krypton for its thrusters. But they have now switched to Argon since its incredibly cheap and available. Xenon for a long time was the standard, but its to expensive and rare.

Some sats also have chemical power, often a Hypergolic propellant, like dinitrogen tetroxide plus hydrazine. Specially for larger sats this is the case.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

They do. We call those paths roads.

And cars never take a sudden unpredictable turn off the road?

They do. Now make them move ten times faster than an airplane. What happens?

Mind you I'm not the one who came up with the TERRIBLE analogy with cars. Millions of people a year die in car accidents, and this was somehow the example that's supposed to convince us that if "cars are safe" then satellites travelling 100x faster than a car over our heads (and 10x faster than an airplane) are also safe. The whole construct betrays extremely sketchy thought process.

Cars move much more uncontrollably / unpredictably than sats.

> the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever.

Is that right? Scientific American seemed to think it could be a problem in 2019[1]. Space.com says Starlink satellites orbit at an altitude of about 342 miles (550 kilometers)[2]. And the Wikipedia article on Kessler Syndrome[3] (which is a chain reaction of satellite debris) mentions an incident at 555km that was problematic:

"In 1985, the first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile was used in the destruction of a satellite. The American 1985 ASM-135 ASAT test was carried out, in which the Solwind P78-1 satellite flying at an altitude of 555 kilometres was struck by the 14-kilogram payload at a velocity of 24,000 kilometres per hour (15,000 mph; 6.7 km/s). When NASA learned of U.S. Air Force plans for the Solwind ASAT test, they modeled the effects of the test and determined that debris produced by the collision would still be in orbit late into the 1990s. It would force NASA to enhance debris shielding for its planned space station."

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starlink-...

[2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Space junk at that altitude does turn into debris, but it tends to deorbit on its own in around 5-10 years.

The real danger is space junk that's at much higher altitudes. OneWeb and Telesat Lightspeed (in planning) operate at 1000+ km, where space junk will take 1000+ years to deorbit on its own. And OneWeb has already had a satellite failure where it can't deorbit the satellite.

I don’t have references for this, but my understanding is that you have more to worry about space debris that is higher/faster than lower/slower. The atmospheric drag is such that any out of control craft at [some threshold] or under will deorbit themselves fairly quickly, and the debris will burn up entirely. I believe that threshold is around 450-500km, but it’s also probably not a literal height, more of a gradient of risk. Higher/faster, they will be up there for longer (years? decades?) and it’s harder to predict where any broken pieces will go over time.

Higher orbits are slower, not faster. Very low orbits as you say though are less an issue due to atmospheric drag deorbiting debris. A bit higher and debris will stay up much longer, even higher up though and there's so much room we can't possibly put out enough material to fill the orbits yet. The mid point of that scale is the dangerous region.

Higher altitude orbits are slower in angular velocity, but faster in linear velocity, assuming a circular orbit. Faster debris ends up in higher orbit.

Higher altitude circular orbits are slower in linear velocity too. Look it up or work it out by equating the centripetal force with the gravitational attraction, which is the condition for a circular orbit.

The decay where the waste majority of it is gone in 10 years is just not long enough to meaningfully have a Kessler syndrom. The reality humanity wouldn't even have the launch capacity to put enough into orbit in that time period for it to matter.

The real concern for meaningful space debris issues is in the regions where decay requires 100+ of years.

The articles mentions the ASAT because that's what they used to study orbital behavior and decay.

Also generally, Space.com is universally agree to be the single worst 'space news' page known. I would never use it as a source for anything.

just because I appreciate it when people do it for me

waste -> vast

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vast

Thank you for this. Is 'waste' used in a specific vernacular? I've never heard of someone saying waste instead of vast before.

No, it was almost certainly a typo. There is no condition under which "waste majority" makes sense, but the poster was talking about waste, and the two words share 3 letters in common, so an easy mistake to make when typing quickly.

But for anyone who's not 100% comfortable with English, "the vast majority" is not simply a case of a descriptive adjective modifying the noun "majority," but it's actually a common phrase. People don't say "the big majority" or "the large majority," it's specifically "the vast majority."

If you wanted to use a different adjective, you could say "a large majority," and that would mean something like "most but not all and the 'but not all' is kind of significant" where as "the vast majority" means "nearly all of them, and the 'not all' is insignificant."

I have dyslexia and English isn't my first language.

This is the case where GPT enabled spell checkers could help.

None of my business of course but Dutch or German by any chance?

Swiss German

Most satellites are deorbited in a planned fashion and thus generate very little if any space debris. If the orbit is low enough, the orbit will decay by themselves by aerodynamic braking after a few years.

Compared to that, anti-satellite missile bust a satellite into pieces and carry indeed the danger of creating a Kessler syndrome. In case these would be used on a large scale, WW III would be imminent anyways. Apart from that, missiles are too expensive to knock out Starlink satellites, and the latter are comparatively easy to replace.

Except that all distinct orbits at the same altitude eventually collide.

What do you mean? If they're both circular orbits, they'll have the same period, so they'll never collide—they'll always be on opposite sides of the Earth. In fact, this goes for any two orbits with identical periods.

Once anything collides with anything in orbit it has a slightly different trajectory. Any movement up or down will make its orbit more ellipsoidal than the original orbit. Also the atmosphere moves up and down in response to solar wind and therefore varies in both time and space. Atmospheric drag is apparently still a factor up to 600km https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impacts/satellite-drag

Debris in a crowded orbit will eventually collide, no matter how synchronized it all was initially.

From the article you linked:

> Debris between 1 cm and 10 cm (approximately 500,000), referred to as the “lethal” population, are the most concerning as they cannot be tracked or cataloged and can cause catastrophic damage when colliding with a satellite. Objects smaller than 1 cm (approximately 135 million measuring from 1mm to 1cm, and many more smaller than 1 mm) that could disable a satellite upon impact are termed the “risk” population

There is no such thing as an identical period. It may seem identical when you compare them casually but over time the little differences add up and sooner or later the two will intersect, unless either one of the two moves to a different orbit or de-orbits. Satellite orbits are not locked together by magic, they are all independent of each other.

Perfect, well, when they have circular orbits we’ll give you a call.

Yeh, but what happens when they all burn up?

It’s pollution of the upper atmosphere on a huge scale and we don’t know what side effects that will produce

LEO is big, but only a few orbits are desirable and all circular orbits at the same altitude cross twice, by definition. It’s like slot cars, but much lower probability of an “intersection event.”

That’s fun! Of course, we do already have something analogous to FAA altitude separations. But that requires everyone everywhere to cooperate in real-time, and mandates some degree of maneuverability. I guess orbital decay is only a concern for aircraft when they aren’t trying to land.

What you have to watch out for is the eventual rise of the Kessler Cult, who (according to me) will seek to block all access to space intentionally ;)

You also have people who would largely prioritize for astronomical observations over rural internet—perhaps because they think people should be living in cities anyway. I’m only being mildly sarcastic.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

(They can just be awfully hard to count, no matter who counts.)

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Glad to hear it! Because I know a large family that doesn't have a computer. I'll send you their address so you can mail them yours!

I have a couple extra. Will relatively recent mini-desktop with a consumer Intel chip, 4GB of ram, wifi, and a 128GB ssd do the job?

These families surely own a smartphone? You know the powerful computer in your pocket you potentially used to browse this website.

These families surely own a smartphone? You know the powerful computer in your pocket you potentially used to browse this website.

You think that all government, education, banking, employment, and healthcare web sites work on phones or have apps? That's adorable!

Same can be said for actual web on desktop.

The fact is they have a device that connects to the internet, shifting the goalposts in the argument does not make that less true.

Which is absurd when you consider where most professionally-done astronomical observations happen (hint: it ain't in cities, least of all ones with fiber).

Starlink satellites only last about 5 years before they run out of gas and are decommissioned with an end of life maneuver which sets them on course to burn up in the earth's atmosphere. I doubt many others besides maybe amazon will want to launch satellites at the same height as spacex's, especially considering how insanely expensive and complicated launching something like the starlink network is. Another point to consider is how small they are compared to the area they occupy, they have plenty of room to spread out and they're constantly monitored to calculate the probability that they might collide.

China is already planning something similar: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-to-counter-musks-st...

I saw the launch from southern california. My first ever seeing a rocket go up. It was pretty amazing to watch the thing streak across the sky. Sadly, missed the red glow though.

Commercial space is a tragedy of the commons in the making. What is its "carrying capacity", who calculated it, who enforces it? What are the long term effects, when do they kick in? What are potential secondary effects or tipping points?

Astronomy is already a casualty as the sky stops being "dark". I guess who cares about fundamental knowledge when there is profit to be had.

Space is alot bigger than you think or make out, the effects on astronomy are short lived while they get into position

I would take the astronomers opinion [1] on how "big" is space over a throwaway HN shill reassuring me that I am idiot worrying too much.

[1] https://www.space.com/astronomers-urged-protect-dark-skies

Do the same astronomers also propose banning lights being on at night?

People like you is why I use a throw away

While you might have a point, "the impact is too small to worry" is now the meme answer to any problem we should probably worry about before it becomes a huge deal with too big to fail players.

The more reassuring answer could be "there's already regulation Y that stops any single company from causing too much damage."

Related thread,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33762492 ("North Korean ICBM launch detected using GPS")

“ The red glow is a sign that the rocket punched a hole in the ionosphere–something SpaceX and others have been doing for years. “

> Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies.

When we fly drones especially BVLOS operations we sometimes encounter some GNSS anomalies, that in some cases we just cancel the mission that day and the next day it’s with no issues. Could it be that’s the reason? Who knows, but it might be an issue later with crewed drones.

If it’s crewed is it still a drone?

Usually when they carry passengers but with no pilot/s, they get called crewed (or manned) ones, but to be honest, there’s no definitive answer or definition as there’s always a mix, sometimes it’s called unmanned/manned aircraft, unmanned/manned drone, uncrewed/crewed drone, and in Canada they even created their own terminology, RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft system), so take the whole thing with a little grain of salt :)

If you have a dual frequency receiver (L1/L2), then the ionospheric error is corrected for. These are very common these days, so probably not the reason.

We had similar anomalies with tri-bands gnss drone before (L1, L2, and L5) with multi constellations support, I even remember before we had similar issues with an RTK enabled system. It is puzzling because the next day we would bring the sane drone and systems, and as of nothing happened, and since the problem solve itself we never bothered to investigate more.

That seems like ground based interference. Today a lot of stuff, including components of the drone itself, can be unintentional L-band radiators.

Getting what is probably the cheapest tier of spectrum analyzer and investigating that behavior seems somewhat prudent.

If it's obvious a spectrum analyzer will help, but GPS signals are very weak and you won't be able to see anything without special equipment. (-125 dBm at the Earth's surface; that's ATTOwatts of power.)

That depends of what exactly is that anomaly. If your GNSS receiver tracks 4 satellites from the same constellation then obviously, this kind of ionosphere anomaly will with some probability lead to some kind of unexpected fix error (but with some high probability still smaller than the specified error of such receiver). I believe that typical somewhat modern multi-constellation GNSS receiver will either consider satellites affected by that as invalid outliers or just average that out.

I wonder if this will a) come to nothing, b) result in engine throttling during a phase of the launch, or c) result in launch windows from just before dawn until ?? pm.

When is the tentative timeline to be building and launching rockets up from the outer atmosphere? While we occasionally launch payloads of raw materials from earth instead of the regularly launches that we have now?

The sooner we achieve a critical mass of lunar industry, the sooner we'd be able to almost entirely do away with any need for terrestrial launches in the first place (the exception being to get people up).

Is this something I can be outraged about?

I don't think there's a limit to things you can be outraged about if you set your mind to it.

Sweet release that 99.99% bacteria cleanse, wipe across countertop, goneski

And how about the dumping of excess fuel in the upper atmosphere?

So now they'll also have to deal with "preserve the ionosphere" activists who have no clue.

I saw an earlier article about this on Newsweek, and that's exactly what happened. In fact one poster thought this meant we were "punching holes" in the atmospheres of other planets.

The term "punching a hole" is absurd, IMO.

It's however very on point with the embarrassing standards journalism has fallen to, especially science journalism.

People are really reaching to smear Elon Musk

Literally making a dent in the universe

laughs nervously

I feel like this isn’t a good thing in the long term

Does anyone else feels it’s a good thing?

> Ham radio operators may notice them when shortwave signals fail to skip over the horizon, shooting through holes instead of bouncing back to Earth. Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

On one hand, Science™ sez it fixes itself every morning. On the other, Elon Bad and Planet Good.

So, I'm torn.

It’s the early blips of an eventual space faring civilization.

The signal might propagate and alert other intelligence that we are attempting something challenging.

Hopefully they send help.

Our radar/radio/TV emissions and nuclear blasts have already provided MUCH bigger “we are here” signs… ;-)

isnt this the layer that protects from the suns cancer causing rays??!?!?!?!?!

No, you're thinking of the ozone layer.

The ozone layer is considerably lower than the ionosphere. But it is probably equally as damaged by launches, and much, much slower to heal afterward.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com