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Comment by s0rce | Hacker News Reader

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

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Isn't that kinda how we got the plastic pollution problem in the ocean?

At first, the ocean seems immense. So much so that dumping plastic and toxic chemicals makes no difference.

But then we humans are great at scaling things it seems, such that at some point ocean plastic pollution became a real problem.

I know that space is much much bigger than our oceans, but I wouldn't underestimate the ability of mankind to scale launches to the point where debris becomes a problem.

At present, I don't believe there are industry standards / codes mandating minimization of reflectivity. My understanding is that SpaceX has engineered for this from their own internal requirements and "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback). As we anticipate a major scale-up of LEO in the future, it follows that "cost pressures" may (mal)incentivize players to skip this concern.

> "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback)

I hate this cynicism in everything. People didnt work there 10 years ago to be millionaires in a far away IPO, they worked there because they are Team Space.

Nonetheless, the company didn't start the whole non-reflective paint thing until well after the complaints started streaming in, significantly less than 10 years ago (DarkSat launched in 2020)

I think the cynicism is warranted when the CEO was instrumental in the downfall of democracy in the US.

Sure, some of the employees are team space. The money is funding a transition to autocracy though, so. I remain skeptical of their motives.

I'm not quite understanding, sorry if what I said was misconstrued. You don't think the engineering team considered reflectivity from a moral perspective? I am saying there needs to be some standards set out so that future engineers at unscrupulous companies have something to point at as a requirement.

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