It's a Good Cloud Day.
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Now imagine having a million data centers in orbit, from musk alone. Before long, every few seconds a satellite will come down – with all its payload burning into the atmosphere
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets as I understand it, it’s even worse
These alloys don’t vanish, their chemical components mix with the air, they keep floating high up and they cause changes
/cc @keithdpatch
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@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Now imagine having a million data centers in orbit, from musk alone. Before long, every few seconds a satellite will come down – with all its payload burning into the atmosphere
@hansbot @mastodonmigration It's every 3 minutes for a million satellites with 5 year lifetimes
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@hansbot @mastodonmigration It's every 3 minutes for a million satellites with 5 year lifetimes
@sundogplanets @mastodonmigration Yes. And it will likely not become a monopoly. Two competitors in the US, one in the EU, one in China, one in India, and it’s down to 2/min. To replace these, they would need a dozen or so launches per day, adding to the looming environmental disaster
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets
Being an old man, when you say v1 and v2 my first mental images are these.
Whilst the effect of these are decidedly different in detail, their destructive nature is not.
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August 5, 2026 isn't that far away ...
"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury
https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf@albertcardona @sundogplanets Story downloaded. Calendar marked.
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets any simple numbers yet to indicate whether Elon > Thomas Midgley Jr (leaded gas, cfcs) in terms of environmental impact? Or are we unwilling part of the experiment that will find out?
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August 5, 2026 isn't that far away ...
"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury
https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdfOoh, this must be from the original edition of "The Martian Chronicles", published in 1950.
This past spring, we read & analyzed this story for a college writing course. Our version is set in the year 2057.
Wikipedia shows that the dates in the book, including this story, "advanced" by 31 years during the 1997 edition.
I first read this story on my own during high school (last decade of the Cold War).
It registered strongly then and still does so today!8- )
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@lin11c @sundogplanets, well, given that they'll be burnt up on re-entry (entirely? If not, I can think of a few places where I'd like them to land), I don't think that they'll be in suitable condition to be sent back up…
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@albertcardona I think about this short story quite frequently, but haven't read it in years! I didn't realize there's an exact date in it! Wow.
@sundogplanets @albertcardona and I read it for the first time today, thanks for sharing
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets how are they even insurable? Who pays for KIS & property damage? Assuming they don’t have a mechanism to land safely…
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets Move fast and break things. We'll fix the atmosphere in the next iteration. In fact, if we screw the atmosphere hard enough, they will pay us to fix it.
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A scary quick calculation: there are 10,375 Starlink satellites in orbit https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html, all coming down within 5 years.
That's an *average* of 5 or 6 a day for the next 5 years. And the v2's are bigger than the v1's. v2's are (conservatively) 1000kg and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 2.5-3 tonnes of aluminum per day. 8 times the natural infall rate of aluminum (and there's lots of other scary things like lithium). What will that do to our atmosphere?
SpaceX is awful.
@sundogplanets Big Kessler.
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