View sky pollution by Starlink satellites in stellarium

17 points·mkesper··6 comments

Due to the awesome software https://stellarium-web.org/ everyone can have a detailed look at their sky. It's frightening how much of it is already covered by starlink satellites. Just view all those tiny moving points if you don't see them directly.

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Does it show how much of all that is space junk? I don't think it's fair to single out star link, when there's a lot of other companies over the past 50 years things in the space.

To me the scary thing is the idea of multiple companies deciding to compete directly with Starlink by launching their own satellite constellations of this size, in addition to all the other satellites that are already up there. Sky could fill up (so to speak) pretty quick. At least it's unlikely any of them would ram into each other since space is so big.

The best possible thing would be an open-source satellite constellation which everyone could route data through.

Though, that wouldn't happen due to the US business environment, and the government would have to run the whole thing (and they're not known for being amazing at this kind of stuff)

Would GPS be the obvious example to follow? The US government created, controls, and maintains it, but anyone with a GPS receiver can access it for free.

You should link to the site directly in your post.

I had to zoom in a bit before it showed the satellites but yep, that's a lot of tin cans!

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