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ALSO speaking of awesome people I work with, my collaborators redid the CRASH Clock calculation for several years in the past, so you can see how it has dropped to shorter and shorter values: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
The CRASH Clock is the likely time to first collision if all collision avoidance maneuvers in orbit suddenly stopped, and is a measure of how much stress we're placing on orbit and how reliant we are on 100% perfect operations in orbit to keep using our satellites
Will writing comments to the FCC actually make a difference? Probably not. But when someone in gov't in the future says "Hey, we opened a comment period, why didn't you submit a complaint then?" we can say "We did." That's about all we get in this particular fight. This sucks.
Speaking of awesome people I work with, there will be instructions available soon for how to submit your own comments to the FCC on both Reflect Orbital and SpaceX's million AI satellite filing!
Feeling overwhelmed by all the things I need to fight this morning before a 6 hour drive across the north island of NZ for my next talk in New Plymouth. Luckily, there are a lot of really awesome astronomers who are also fighting!
...But not nearly enough, and we don't have any actual power. So, back to writing, because that's my only weapon in this fight.
And just to make myself feel better: sending a big "fuck you" to SpaceX and Reflect Orbital in particular for their sky-destroying plans
I took a little bit of time today before my lecture (in under an hour) to explore a small part of Napier's truly impressive biking infrastructure! Nice work, Napier! #ProfSamLectureTour
