While I pine for a dark sky, it makes sense that these operations should move in the same way century old optical telescopes in cities are no longer used for cutting edge science.
The far side of the moon seems like an increasingly viable option.
The far side of the moon seems like an increasingly viable option.
Starlink satellites are emitting unintended and useless EMR that serves no function. It is not necessary for the function of these satellites.
This is a money issue. The question you should ask is whether it will cost more for SpaceX to fix their satellites than it will to build radio telescopes (which are not small devices) in space. Personally, I suspect launching radio telescopes into space will not be the cheaper solution.
Street lights with (full) cutoff will still provide light for people:
* https://www.blancocountynightsky.org/guidelines.php
* https://highways.dot.gov/safety/other/visibility/fhwa-lighti...
* https://www.zgsm-china.com/blog/light-distribution-of-outdoo...
In fact it will improve the situations as all the light will be directed down, and so you'll need fewer lumens/lux/candela since half won't be waste going up (saving electricity), less glare on the roads after rain, and folks won't have street light blasting through their windows.
That sounds like a nice attitude from you.
And no i don't think so. Radio astronomies research results are fundamental for all of us, our understanding and for modern technology.
This makes it nescsaary that you have to send something away out of earth. Is Spacex sponsoring this type of research? No. So who has the researcher go to? To someone with money.
Maybe even start paying for the toxic waste he is landing when his junk continuously fails to stay up and re-enters the atmosphere.
There are currently at least 8 satellites orbiting the Moon. We can expect that number to increase. Also to add to the excitement, when a satellite deorbits there, it will never slow down, burn, fall into water, or disintegrate. Just one big hunk of equipment impacting at full speed. Enjoy your craters.
There are more peculiarities, like most orbits being long term unstable, abrasive dust, etc.
But nothing that can't be habdled with good engineering.
The whole thing is incredibly expensive though, while it may be doable with current technology, the amount of money they'd have to set aside may be a hard sell for the miniscule potential of this research - at least from the lens of 2026... So the original position of the article makes sense, it may become functionally impossible, even if technically possible