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Comment by pb060 | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the constellation of satellites, is anyone else concerned about Starlink being allowed by a single nation’s agency to fill the sky, which belongs to no one or to everyone, with their satellites?

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It’s an appalling situation IMHO - watching the lack of regulations for “space litter” and ignorance of one man combined ruining earths orbit for generations to come is a disgrace.

I get the point of providing global connectivity and it might be useful, the implications don’t make up for it though.

Scientific research should be the only reason anyone should be allowed to put human made objects into space.

Musk shooting a damn car into space just for the fun of it should have been a warning for everyone - seeing the majority treating it as a “cool” thing to do just shows how much mire education about space should be done.

Oh well.

Clearly you don't understand Elon's Starlink. If they did nothing from today literally every satellite will re-enter and burn up of it's own accord within 5 years - not generations. They have to actively boost it keep it in orbit and counter the drag for the atmosphere. ( Which is quite different from most other satellites out there)

I know.

What I’m saying is that this is here to stay and once fuel for keeping them in orbit is depleted they’ll be replaced - hence that whole mesh won’t go away.

I agree with you in terms of how it feels. I haven't yet made up my mind about the balance of benefits and drawbacks. When I get cross about them I try to remember that I've never really minded airplanes crossing my path when stargazing and they're a lot brighter and more distracting. And I think I'd like to keep my righteous anger powder dry for when some gigantic asshole tries to show adverts in the night sky.

It requires active investment to maintain the contsellation, so at least the null case is that they'll all burn up within a few years if SpaceX fails. (And that's something that I think even many fervent Elon-haters don't particularly want to see: given the choice between betting the next 50 years of access to space on Starliner or Falcon and Starship, I know which I'd pick.)

"Potential Ozone Depletion From Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations"

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL10...

> Scientific research should be the only reason anyone should be allowed to put human made objects into space

You don't think communications and navigation satellites should exist? What about weather sats?

No. Starlink isn't 'filling the sky' — there's plenty of space left for everyone else, and they're not preventing anyone else from sending up satellites.

Also, the benefits of Starlink's satellites are immense.

Plenty of room for other satellites, maybe - but they are having a real impact on astronomy.

Which they have taken steps to mitigate. But in any case, the long-term benefits to astronomy of having cheap heavy launch capability (which SpaceX is funding through Starlink) will far outweigh the short-term costs of a few satellite streaks on images.

Not when any home/hobby based astronomy is off the cards.

Is it off the cards?

I’m sure even in the fictional worlds of Star Trek and Expanse there’s still someone in their back yard with a telescope, despite the skies being filled with not just satellites, but the constant traffic of space ships and the oppressive presence of megastructures.

Ah ok, so if the benefits are immense looks like the rest doesn't matter then.

Hopefully that benefit/risk was decided democratically and publicly and not based on some assumption by a handful of people online.

If there's "plenty of space left" then I dread to think what the sky is going to be like in the future! I never imagined I'd be part of the last generation to see a night sky that isn't full of satellites.

I'm starting to think more and more these problems with mental health we are seeing in young people are due to them being raised essentially in captivity. There's nowhere to go, no frontier left to conquer. Everything is full: the land is full, the sea is full and now even the sky is full.

As for the benefits, access to information and services is obviously a good thing, but we all know that it's really going to be access to social media and ads. I'm no longer convinced access to the internet is an absolute good.

When you are worrying about this, are you looking at visualisations or are you looking at the real sky?

I'd like to see the ratio of volume used up by satellites vs. volume of the earth's atmosphere between the highest and lowest flying satellite.

I wonder if it's something like the volume an ant would take up in an average American house, where nobody would care about it.

Apparently it's like colliding with one specific ant in a place much bigger than the Empire State Building. Or against one of thousands of pieces of an ant in such a building while being the size of a very tiny fraction of an ant.

The risk isn't the night sky becoming a blob of manmade tech, that probably won't ever happen; the real problem with these satellites (and other things we launch into the atmosphere like telescopes) is that when they get damaged, their debris effectively becomes dangerous, fast moving trash that has to be taken into account for every future space object launch. (Which has a compounding effect since if something goes wrong, you now have new and exciting debris to monitor and be careful with.)

Launch too many and you can essentially create an invisible blanket for the next 15 or so years (depending on re-entry time; without some technical innovations in this field, this used to be upwards of several centuries, but that's gotten better - Starlink's re-entry is 5 years for it's satellites if memory serves me right, but the industrial standard is 15-20 years - this has the extra downside that apparently their satellites don't burn up properly, having damaged properties and people in the past. Their fleet size also apparently risks halting the recovery of the gap in the ozone layer with the mass re-entry) that will prevent any kind of space exploration simply because there's no safe zone in which you can launch anything without crashing into a space object/space debris.

It's indeed like colliding with an ant, but that ant also moves at a speed comparable to a fired bullet. Even something as tiny as a screw that got loose and is now orbiting as debris can absolutely wreck other space objects at the speed those things move in the atmosphere.

The real sky. Go and look out tonight after dusk and you'll see satellite after satellite.

I grew up satellite watching, and I've never seen a sky not filled with satellites. The Iridian constelation has some of the brightest objects in the sky, and the company went bankrupt in 1999.

Many in our generation will never see the Milky Way, let alone Starlink.

> I never imagined I'd be part of the last generation to see a night sky that isn't full of satellites.

Are you also worried about the sky being full of aircraft? There is fewer than 10,000 satellites in orbit, but more than 30,000 civilian aircraft flying, and around 140,000 commercial flights per day. [1]

> There's nowhere to go, no frontier left to conquer.

Which is precisely what SpaceX is trying to fix.

> now even the sky is full

Nowhere near it.

1. https://www.flightradar24.com/data/statistics

> Are you also worried about the sky being full of aircraft?

Very much so. But with aircraft we at least have the ability to regulate where they can and can't fly and when etc. via local governments/democracy. The satellites can affect anyone in the world and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it.

> Which is precisely what SpaceX is trying to fix.

Haha, sure...

The main downside outside of increased risk for space debris is that Starlink is messing with weather prediction/measurement. Apparently the satellite dishes they use register on weather reports as permanent rain spots[0].

[0]: https://nltimes.nl/2023/01/27/dutch-meteorologists-say-musks...

Its not just a matter of having enough room for more crap up there. The enormous and growing number of satellites have an impact on ground based astronomers and astrophotographers

The main concern about reflecting light are from astronomers in remote places.

The main concern for the rest of humanity is that Starlink is for nuclear war: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dgyujd/comment/l8...

Actually I will be more concerned once other nations start to set up their own Starlinks.

Kessler Syndrome is a question of when, not if, by that point.

Nah, I've always loved watching satellites.

I'm concerned about light pollution.

Singling out starlink is unfair. Satellites are so obviously advantageous that it is a sure bet that the sky will be filled with them very soon. Chinese, European, and others.

Tragedy of the commons I guess, but it's not exactly a new idea [0]. As long as they keep control of those satelites, keep them in high decay low altitude orbits and are able to deorbit them if necessary it's not exactly a huge problem, unlike random ASAT weapon tests or collisions that litter tiny untrackable particles that will stay there for centuries and rip through anything like butter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford

That horse left the barn years ago and spends its time snuggling with "We Respect Your Privacy"

Try the opposite take. Stars are extremely boring both with and without a telescope, and planets are entirely uninteresting without it. ISS aside, there's finally something interesting and dynamic to look up and admire with our eyeballs.

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