Worst part of updating my talk: looking up how fucking many more Starlink satellites there were than last time I gave a version of this talk. 200 more than a month ago. Fuck.
There are now 6,209 Starlinks in orbit, fully 62% of the 10,009 active satellites in orbit.
All of these "fully demisable" Starlinks are planned to burn up and deposit their metal in Earth's atmosphere. I just saw multiple 100-pound pieces of another SpaceX "fully demisable" rocket, so I'm sure it'll be just fine.
In case it's not clear, both of these options are bad.
"Fully demisable" = 29 tons of aluminum per day in the stratosphere/mesosphere just from reentering Starlink sats, ignoring all the rocket bodies required to resupply the constantly-replaced megaconstellation.
And I hope it's obvious why 100 pound pieces of junk dropping from orbit every hour would probably be bad. So hopefully Starlink engineering is better than Crew Dragon trunk engineering?
This is such an incredibly bad situation...
Just in case we Europeans are hit by some of that junk, who must be called?
@GustavinoBevilacqua @sundogplanets
Not ESA surely, they're in this scam with NASA who in turn depend on SpaceX for launch services.
@angelastella @GustavinoBevilacqua The US government is absolutely liable for any damages caused by SpaceX debris that hits the ground. Thanks, Outer Space Treaty!
@sundogplanets @GustavinoBevilacqua
You're right and all the same they will dodge it as best as they can.
@sundogplanets @angelastella @GustavinoBevilacqua nodds in agreement And I do hope they force #SpaceX if not #Musk himself to cough up the bills!
There's a reason why ony #Billiomaire #TechBros want absurdly huge Megaconstellations like #Starlink or #AmazonKuiper to begin with, because #Iridium already exists way longer and works.
@sundogplanets @angelastella @GustavinoBevilacqua that is good to know. I remember a few years back China knew a satellite would fall out of orbit and come crashing down. This was an incident of a non controlled space debris event where its upcoming debris field was unknown. The other I can remember would be Space Shuttle Columbia that scattered debris all over Texas
@jjokerst @sundogplanets @GustavinoBevilacqua
CNSA has a disturbingly casual attitude about boosters, more than once they have re-entered over populated areas.
And... what's relevant about STS-107 isn't the debris I'd say but feel free to disagree.
@angelastella @sundogplanets @GustavinoBevilacqua I completely agree with you there.
@sundogplanets What's the effect of all this metal vapor in the atmosphere? Does it increase scattering / absorbtion of light or just settle out as metal compounds in rainfall?
@sundogplanets Thank you - that's very grim news.
Humans do seem to be the most invasive species.
LB: 100 lbs is 45 kilos. This is approximately the combined weight of 4 entire car wheels (alloy rim + tyre) - stuff like this dropping out of the sky is clearly never a good thing,...
@vfrmedia @sundogplanets Unless you could actually do with four new car wheels....
...meanwhile in Australia and in polar research starlink (and all the others) cannot be criticised. Well, you can, if you want to choose a different career or no career at all...
Yeeting disposable orbitware spaceward is the new cargo cult. Or something....
@sundogplanets For a guy who built SpaceX on the basis of reusable rockets, burning up satellites seems pretty lame.
@sundogplanets Personally, I think that absurd amoumt of #OzoneLayer - depleting #trash should be illegal and banned as per #MontrealProtocol appendix.
But I doubt this will happen since we don't even get the bans for #CFC11 enforced and #Aluminium as well as other #Debris will deplete #Ozone even harder because they stay in the upper layers of the atmosphere way longer...
@sundogplanets But on the bright side wouldn’t it be hilarious if a piece landed on Elon? I mean tragic, not hilarious, for legal reasons.
@sundogplanets I was wondering your thoughts on the Astroscale plan to deorbit space junk. Reading about it had me wondering where that stuff would end up.
@sundogplanets 
Why did we ban CFC after all?
And now, a single company is allowed to destroy the ozonosphere through alumina?
@RustyBertrand and now we're making chem-trails a reality m(
@sundogplanets Honest question: how many tons of aluminium burn up in the form of natural meteors?
It feels to me that bigger problems are:
- Light pollution caused by the sats (but there is also public outreach value in people seeing satellites)
- CO2 emissions of continually manufacturing and launching the sats and rockets (and Starship doesn't make that a lot better).
Multiply that by other companies also launching their own megaconstellations (SpaceX isn't the only game in town)...
@steve I've talked about this a few times. 50ish tons per day, 1% aluminum.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
@sundogplanets @steve complete layperson here, but what stops some bad actor entity from sending up something designed to take out a huge bunch of sats over a target area most likely to fall into an enemy's territory? Sounds like a nice opening war salvo. Especially if they're prepped for the comms disruptions that follow?
@A2Lintra @sundogplanets
1. The sats are supposed to be "demisable" - i.e. they *should* burn up, not "fall into an enemy's territory".
2. Satellites don't magically deorbit if you "take them out". You just end up with lots of debris in orbits similar to the sat's original orbit. Some of that debris may reenter earlier than it otherwise would, but very unlikely that you could target its reentry with any kind of precision.
@A2Lintra @sundogplanets There are certainly problems with megaconstellations, but the potential for bad actors dropping someone else's sats on an enemy isn't one of them. More likely is bad actors disrupting or intercepting an enemy's communications which are being carried by those sats.
@steve @sundogplanets
Nets? What if we practiced?
Of course, I was just trying to figure out how Greece could send in special forces to take their stuff out of a British Museum without starting a war. Husband says Britain can't allow, they'd have nothing left if they let people get away with this. Which... true...
I'm just a bad idea bear these days.
@sundogplanets wasteful extravagant bunch of unnecessary shit.
️ @sundogplanets Musk ruins absolutely everything. That dude is 100% a net negative on the world.
Isn't humans' tendency to just proceed with new technologies without any caution whatsoever, especially with regard to the consequences, infuriating? We weren't ready for Prometheus' gift of fire