It's time to speak out against unchecked growth of satellite mega constellations(www.scientificamerican.com)
25 pointsby randycupertino5 hours ago6 comments
  • PaulHoule5 hours ago
    Somebody should have spoken for fiber everywhere 15 years ago rather than telling us rural people to drop dead.
    • ProllyInfamous2 hours ago
      I live in one of the few US regions where our electric provider also provides fiber internet to every single customer (EPB, Chattanooga).

      Even ramshackel cabins in the middle of nowhere can get gigabit internet (25+ syncronous, actually). ISP giants have effectively lobbied to prevent this from expanding outside of the electric-provider's supply area, despite ready availability and demand.

      It's a racket.

    • cpburns20094 hours ago
      Exactly this. A family member of mine had no good option before Starlink. Dial-up is obsolete, traditional satellite internet was not available due to some angle of a valley or treeline. A 4G signal booster can only do so much with a poor signal.
    • metalmanan hour ago
      rural here also. ridiculous to suggest that mega sattelite fleets can be recalled now. little know fact about high tension power lines: they have has fibre in the core for mreo than 25 years, but in most cases are left unused, per contracts with the telecoms ie: massive price fixing deals

      more?, look into the truely surreal world of overlapping rights of way for power, phone, roads, water,rail etc that are spread and smeared into blurry mess that EATS MONEY, that then dissapears again. the satellites just fly right over all that.

    • wolvoleo4 hours ago
      Wouldn't mandated fibre for everyone be considered 'communism' in rural US?

      I mean, even public healthcare is vilified.

  • verzali3 hours ago
    A million satellites is implausible any time soon. You need to launch 300 a day for ten years straight without losing any. Just will not happen.
  • SilverElfin2 hours ago
    I am absolutely frightened but the satellite constellation arms race. Especially by the Chinese companies that are launching constellations into very high orbits, where debris will take thousands of years to decay. These satellites are also ruining the night sky for astronomy. The public should not have to suffer for the greed of a few companies.
  • jiggawatts3 hours ago
    The science fiction vision of our future is orbiting factories, massive space stations where you can take a holiday, captured asteroids mined for their precious metals, space elevators, etc...

    Many people think that this is realistic, eventually.

    The eventually is starting now.

    How exactly did people think it would happen? Someone clicks their fingers and we live in a sci-fi universe suddenly? Or that magically the entire space industry will restrict their orbits to a few narrow bands to preserve the oh-so-precious long exposure views of sunsets forever?

    These articles are just futile bleating.

    The future just isn't going to wait for grey-haired astronomers to catch up.

    PS: If we can launch satellite constellations cheaply enough to cause an issue for terrestrial telescopes, then almost by definition we can launch telescopes to space at a low enough cost to solve the problem and get a better vantage point without the pesky atmosphere in the way.

  • CamperBob23 hours ago
    It is truly a time of insanity.

    Why doesn't Musk just put the data centers on container ships, if he wants to avoid red tape?

  • aaron6953 hours ago
    [dead]