I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore.
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@sundogplanets They're just gonna put up a space laser or some bullshit like that when they can't get it to work.
Beamed microwave power would be a space laser, using a microwave resonant cavity to make a coherent beam.
But those tubes are infamously unreliable and need a lot of maintenance; and cannot be run in vacuum without melting themselves (on the ground, we run them by boiling lots of water to soak up the heat).
And the inefficiencies mean that Earth-based solar and batteries always win.
Not that the operators of these scams care about physics or practicality.
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Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc
I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?
@sundogplanets I don't know enough about materials science to know if this is true. To me it sounds like hype to draw in investor money.
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Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc
I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?
These companies remembers me the Panama scandals at the end of 1800:
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Or this shit: https://spacedaily.com/sd-n-nasa-backs-interlunes-2028-bid-to-mine-helium-3-from-the-moon/
The Moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it'll be easy to accidentally launch rocks into Moon-escape orbits, making the Earth-Moon trip even more hazardous than it is already. Fun!
Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/
Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.
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Or this shit: https://spacedaily.com/sd-n-nasa-backs-interlunes-2028-bid-to-mine-helium-3-from-the-moon/
The Moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it'll be easy to accidentally launch rocks into Moon-escape orbits, making the Earth-Moon trip even more hazardous than it is already. Fun!
Checking; that grant to Interlune is for a system to measure volatile gases in lunar regolith in situ?
Nothing about mining the Moon for helium-3.
The media coverage remains appalling.
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Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc
I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?
@sundogplanets " He adds that solar energy in space — which will power the factories — is abundant and “free.” " yes as opposed to the earth's surface OFC -
Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/
Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.
@sundogplanets I have come to the conclusion that the best way to predict what the techbros will propose next is to just read Robert Heinlein’s YA science fiction novels and see what hasn’t been proposed yet. (Because a whole lot of the clearly impossible nonsense seems to be pulled from those books with the occasional misunderstanding of some Asimov or Clarke stories)
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Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/
Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.
But of course nothing beats SpaceX's drunk teenager scifi novel of an FCC filing about how we need AI data centres in orbit to ascend into Kardashev civilization land. Which the FCC took totally seriously, opened for public comment in 4 days (record-short time!) https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
and the FCC will probably approve despite a couple thousand comments from the public and at least two petitions to deny opposing it. Fuckers.
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Checking; that grant to Interlune is for a system to measure volatile gases in lunar regolith in situ?
Nothing about mining the Moon for helium-3.
The media coverage remains appalling.
@michael_w_busch Yeah, the bad journalism is not helping me decide what's real and what's not...
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Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/
Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.
@sundogplanets
Every time I see those tech boy hallucinations I want to yell at them that combining coke and booze results in serious brain damage.Saddest part is that they have access to enough money to actually cause real serious harm
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I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore. It's all so fucking ludicrous.
@sundogplanets The same tech bros ducking up space and astronomy are also ducking up everything in my industry (open source software), with their thieving AI bullshit generators, covering us in generated manure in vast amounts, while also taking no care of software reliability or security.
It's such a shitshow, which will get worser before it might all fall apart.
Your goat and aurora photos, and everybody else creating fabulous photos and art of nature and animals is what's keeping me going.
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Or this shit: https://spacedaily.com/sd-n-nasa-backs-interlunes-2028-bid-to-mine-helium-3-from-the-moon/
The Moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it'll be easy to accidentally launch rocks into Moon-escape orbits, making the Earth-Moon trip even more hazardous than it is already. Fun!
@sundogplanets Well, at least they got through an article about lunar He3 without going off on some fusion energy tangent.
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But of course nothing beats SpaceX's drunk teenager scifi novel of an FCC filing about how we need AI data centres in orbit to ascend into Kardashev civilization land. Which the FCC took totally seriously, opened for public comment in 4 days (record-short time!) https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf
and the FCC will probably approve despite a couple thousand comments from the public and at least two petitions to deny opposing it. Fuckers.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/115345346648445621
A million satellites have obvious consequences, but even one can cause huge amounts of damage. Reflect Orbital, possibly simultaneously the most useless and damaging company ever to exist, which I have ranted about many times, and will continue to rant as their FCC filing is also likely to be approved despite a couple thousand comments against it from the general public and at least 2 formal petitions to deny. I really really hate this company a lot.
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@Unsightly3055 I saw that one and decided it's a joke. It's not a joke????
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Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc
I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?
@sundogplanets this one only makes sense to me if they think they're selling the output to future space assembly factories. who knows what scifi they've been reading and want to get out ahead of!
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I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore. It's all so fucking ludicrous.
@sundogplanets
No surprise they are not concerned with AI hallucinations given they themselves hallucinate far more strongly. -
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/115345346648445621
A million satellites have obvious consequences, but even one can cause huge amounts of damage. Reflect Orbital, possibly simultaneously the most useless and damaging company ever to exist, which I have ranted about many times, and will continue to rant as their FCC filing is also likely to be approved despite a couple thousand comments against it from the general public and at least 2 formal petitions to deny. I really really hate this company a lot.
I want to see companies that promise to use a handful of well-tested, ethically built, perfectly functioning satellites with decades-long operating lifetimes to do something that benefits the vast majority of humanity. Why can't we have more proposals like that?
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Like this shit: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/meta-inks-deal-for-solar-power-at-night-beamed-from-space/
Don't worry guys, the CEO says you can stare right into the infrared beam and it's totally safe! I trust him, don't you?
(How you transmit usable amounts of power with a beam that's so diffuse that you can look at it I have no fucking idea.)
It's astonishing the ways corporations continue to find ways to damage the Earth.
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I want to see companies that promise to use a handful of well-tested, ethically built, perfectly functioning satellites with decades-long operating lifetimes to do something that benefits the vast majority of humanity. Why can't we have more proposals like that?
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/115345346648445621
A million satellites have obvious consequences, but even one can cause huge amounts of damage. Reflect Orbital, possibly simultaneously the most useless and damaging company ever to exist, which I have ranted about many times, and will continue to rant as their FCC filing is also likely to be approved despite a couple thousand comments against it from the general public and at least 2 formal petitions to deny. I really really hate this company a lot.
@sundogplanets
What bothers me, is that in matters which effect all of mankind, like the millions of satellites Starlink wants to shoot into orbit or what Reflect Orbital is trying to do, nobody but the FCC seems to have a say in this.Shouldn't such things be regulated by a global organization?
?