Satellites

[Jimk]

Must be down to money then? Or is there a darker explanation for all this?....

[Jimk]

and the competition doing similar :-(

[Andy Burns]

Poke your latitude/longitude into this tracker

and find a suitable time (preferably just after twilight) when the "leader" is in view, marvel at Elon pissing 60 satellites a week into the sky for the next seven years ...

[Andy Burns]

sorry, per fortnight

still, that's some money's worth ...

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Yes I can see it now. two aliens arrive in our vicinity wondering how a small rocky planet has a ring of twisted broken satellites. Ahem. Brian

[Cursitor Doom]

In 30 years from now, Greta Thunberg's daughter will be campaining against space garbage.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Do you hoinestly believe that ex of artificial insemination anyone is going to impregnate that thing?

[Bill Wright]

She'll never have a daughter. Someone will shoot her before she has chance.

Bill

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

We have been campaigning against it for years already. It all went pear shaped when China decided to demonstrate its satellite killing missile and annoyed everyone, including their own space agency a few years ago. Since then the various agencies and companies have presented a whole raft of devices to bring down debris without creating more. Soon the main danger of space flight will be debris, not the environment. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Watch it she will sue you, I'm sure.

You can be a bit annoyed with her, but personal insults are not a very good way to argue with her deductions on climate change. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

That is the worry. Its happened over lesser things in the past. I also gather that the worlds radio astronomers are seething over these things that are polluting the frequencies they want to listen at. Brian

[newshound]

They are not deductions, they are assertions.

[Cursitor Doom]

Fair point. But they do say there's someone for everyone.

[Cursitor Doom]

Baseless assertions. There, fixed it for ya.

[Dave Liquorice]

Also ruffling the feathers of astronomers using much higher electromagnetic frequencies, infrad red, visible, ultra violet, etc. It's like trying to examine a tea light a few miles away with a handful of glitter thrown into the air and illumated by a 10 kW discharge lamp right in front of your telescope...

[Andy Burns]

Presumably too late to complain now, given that FCC/ITU/FAA have approved the fleet?

Certainly impressive to see those that have already been launched, and then think there will be at least 100 times as many before they're done, supposedly the second bunch are less shiny, but I didn't notice any difference.

The routing of signals up to a rapidly moving satellite, then by laser between satellites either within the same orbit, or up/down/across to orthogonal orbits and back down to the surface again will lop tenths of a second off existing geostationary satellite lag, or tens of ms off the transatlantic fibre lag.

[Andy Burns]

Yes, finance industry will pay handsomely for faster London/NewYork links, large chunks of the work will pay (lesser amounts) for gigabit speed internet covering a large part of the earth's surface where they can't get a decent connection.

So he's using Falcon launch money to bring in Starlink connection money, and then sounds like he'll use that to fund his Mars missions.

[Graham.]

Certainly. It's a network of charging stations for that car he parked up there.