8 ms·
'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
- hanoz 9y agoI see you can track its current position here: http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker but a flyby predictor is notable by its absence, I wonder why that should be?
- nkrisc 9y agoDo you want regulations? This is how you get regulations. Once low Earth orbit is easily accessible to anyone, what can be done? There are all kinds of intentional and unintentional misuses of such a capability.
- dogma1138 9y agoThere is a metric ton of regulation you can’t launch anything into space without going thorough a mile of red tape. Apparently no one consulted astronomers with this case most likely as no one expected a use case where someone launches a freaking disco ball into low earth orbit.
- nkrisc 9y agoThat's sort of my point though. Every edge case that gets exposed gets another regulation.
- dogma1138 9y agoWell Elon Musk is about to launch a Tesla into Martian orbit perhaps its time to put orbits other than sol orbits under the regulatory red tape.
- Spellchamp 9y agoAnecdotal, I know, but even if astronomers were consulted about this, I know a few astronomers whom this doesn't bother whatsoever, so it might not necessarily have ever been flagged as being a bad use case. Even in the article's headline it seems to suggest that it's been blanket slated by all astronomers everywhere, which I don't think is the case.
- gooseus 9y agoDo we not have a global regulating body for what people can put in LEO? Cause I'm gonna have to say yes on this one. A 9-month occasional bright light in the sky is a brief annoyance for astronomers, but avoiding the Kessler Syndrome should be a global imperative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- 2474 9y agoHaven't you seen The Astronaut Farmer? Billy Bob had a hell of a time getting permission to launch himself into space. Had to finally just do it.
- jerf 9y agoThe forces that make Kesser Syndrome an issue in high orbits work in reverse in low orbits. Two objects in an otherwise fairly stable orbit that collide with each other in LEO will break into pieces, each of which will far more rapidly encounter atmospheric drag (much more surface area / volume on the fragments) and deorbit than the original objects would have. Instead of a chain reaction mess, you get a self-cleaning mess. I have to say "otherwise fairly stable" because technically, there is no stable low Earth orbit because atmospheric drag will drag down any orbiting object within a human timespan.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago> Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations. A finite resource, great cost necessary to access it, danger of catastrophic failure when things collide. Long-lasting consequences of such failure. I'd expect regulation in this scenario. It seems inevitable and necessary.
- donatj 9y agoI’d hardly call space a finite resource.
- ceejayoz 9y agoAccess to space might be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- kl4m 9y agoKessler syndrome is an issue, but not for this particular object. It will stay in orbit for about 9 months before decaying. Residual objects from a collision would decay even faster. > The most commonly used orbits for both manned and unmanned space vehicles are low earth orbits, which cover an altitude range low enough for residual air drag to be sufficient to help keep the zone clear.
- sp332 9y agoThe visible expanse of the night sky is finite. Low-earth orbits are certainly finite.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoWe are talking about Earth orbits useful for satellites, sorry if that wasn't clear.
- strictnein 9y ago> director of astrobiology at Columbia University Caleb Scharf wrote in Scientific American, the star represented "another invasion of my personal universe" There's hyperbole, and then there's comments like that. His "personal universe"?
- thecatspaw 9y agoHonestly I dont see a problem with this statement. People have their own sphere, domain, topic that they are engrossed in and love over everything. He just happened to call it his personal universe (which I think is pretty fitting)
- wavefunction 9y agoI don't read that as any sort of claim of ownership, merely that this ridiculous fake-star stunt has impacted his life, which is probably mostly removed from such inanities as it involves astronomy.
- danaliv 9y agoI read that comment as making an analogy to intrusive advertising.
- vog 9y agoThat's how I read it, too. And I can somehow relate to it. In many places, you can't walk down the street without being annoyed by ads. You'd have to go through parks and nearby woods. And now it doesn't even help to go camping far away in a natural reservate without being annoyed by ads (at night).
- chasd00 9y agoman if there's one thing gets astronomers worked up it's light from any other source than what they're interested in.
- mynewtb 9y agoAnd rightfully so.
- rwmj 9y agoOn the other hand, it's now easier for astronomers to launch small telescopes out of the atmosphere ...
- gimmeayrwlt 9y agoSo does this mean decoded that everytime when people see blinking stars or flying ufos .. its easy to coverup with "mooh, no alien.. its Facebooks space graffiti" ??
- upofadown 9y agoOh come now. There are a lots of orbiting objects that cause bright flashes. The flashes this particular object causes are not even that bright. I suspect that anyone who pointed this out were not quoted... Particularly the astronomers who thought the whole thing was awesome... Astronomers are bothered by any sunlight illuminated satellite. This will make no difference at all to their lives. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare
- jvandonsel 9y agoSure, but the point of those satellites is not to make a flash in the sky. The whole point of the disco ball is to dazzle.
- dingaling 9y agoActually the older Iridium satellites were intended to make a flash in the sky. The three aluminium antennas were highly-polished for no other reason than visibility; free publicity. There were some thermal benefits but not significant. The later blocks of satellites have a different antenna design and do not reflect as much. A more sigificant astronomical impact of Iridium as a tangent, is that their transmissions on 1612 MHz interefere with radio astronomy observations of hydroxyl. In contrast a single 'disco ball' zipping around LEO for a few months is trivial.
- ceejayoz 9y agoDo you have a cite on it being intentionally polished to create flares? The new generation has a smaller, redesigned antenna, but I can't find anything on the original being a conscious design choice instead of just a side-effect of "we want to reflect EM as well as possible".
- gjem97 9y agoIs there a tracker?
- sq_ 9y agoThe main page of the Humanity Star site has one if you scroll down a bit. http://www.thehumanitystar.com http://www.thehumanitystar.com
- cordite 9y agoMy astronomer friend says this isn’t really different from any other satellite with reflective shielding.
- nkrisc 9y agoBut presumably those other satellites are at least serving a useful purpose.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoHm. "The heavens" is a protected area, like a wilderness or polar bear? What hubris - tiny humans feeling possessive about the entirety of the universe. Something very off here. And these are exactly the people who should appreciate our insignificance in the cosmos. Maybe they just expressed themselves badly. Its our 'sphere of observation' or some such, that they feel is being badly treated?
- titzer 9y agoI'd argue the hubris is going the other way: launching shiny stuff into space that everyone has to look at. It's launching trash into space, IMHO, and I reacted quite negatively at first as well.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoNobody has to look at it. Any more than the rest of the stuff going by on a dark night. Which folks in the city can't see anyway. No this issue is overheated silliness.
- gatmne 9y agoJust wait when coca-cola and friends fill the skies with their own logo constellations when (not if) space technology gets cheap enough. After all, it only needs to be cheaper than conventional ad campaigns to be viable. Imagine going camping or into sea and having a canvas of logos everywhere you look at during the night. Nobody has to look at it right? Dismissing this issue as "overheated silliness" is extremely naive and short-sighted.
- danielvf 9y agoThis is utterly, utterly overblown. The Space Station is thousands of times bigger and throws back a hundred times more light than this will. Every evening, for most of the populated world, dozens of brighter satellites than this go overhead. I just checked the orbits for my evening here - 57 brighter satellites. But what about the flashing? Well, we've got those already too. The old, awesome Iridium satellites have giant antennas that act like mirrors. When one beams the sun onto you at night for a few seconds, it's hundreds of times brighter than the Humanity Star. The Hitomi, a failed Japanese weather satellite, flashes every second or so as it spins - again, much brighter than this will ever be. And worries about Kessler syndrome for this object in a very low earth orbit? Even if every satellite in similar orbit magically exploded tomorrow, the debris would be gone in less than year. In the meantime we could still launch to other orbits. Kessler syndrome is overhyped in general, and a complete non-issue this low.
- intrasight 9y agoI am more concerned about the precedent that this sets. But then again, I am way more concerned about many other things.
- chillingeffect 9y agoSome comments have intoned "it's not that bright," but from the article "It is expected to become the brightest object in the night sky for nine months" Can anyone shed some information on this? I know if someone made it difficult for me t oget my planned work done for the next nine months, my boss and I would be pretty ticked off.
- danielvf 9y agoThere's no possible way this is the brightest thing in the night sky - it's simply not that big, and most of the light that hits it will not be going towards you because of the facets. The only number I've seen puts it at 4.0 magnitude when flashing. That's hard to see with the naked eye from a US city, and there are about 500 stars brighter than that.
- gaius 9y agoThe Rutherford engine alone and its manufacturing process is a far greater accomplishment than any one of these “scientists” has ever managed. Maybe they ought to come and join the real world?
- Androider 9y agoGreat, NIMBYs now want to stop space development. And it's just for 9 months, take a chill pill. Personally I think it's awesome, I'm going to try to track it and show it to my daughter. I hope one day we'll have structures on the moon that are visible to the naked eye! Can you imagine how motivating and achievable that would make space exploration seem to a new generation.
- GuB-42 9y agoWhy don't you track the ISS instead. It is orders of magnitude more interesting than a disco ball. Imagine explaining this to your daughter : - Here is the ISS, people live there. - This is the Hubble space telescope, it makes plenty of nice pictures. - This is a communication satellite, it for making phone calls from anywhere in the world. - This... is a giant disco ball, it is made so you can see it. Putting up what is essentially a space billboard is the kind of space development we can do without. And this is what astronomers are complaining about. It is not for the object itself, it is for the precedent it sets.
- badwolf 9y agoIt was also a test payload for a new rocket that achieved orbit for the first time.
- Waterluvian 9y agoThis has me thinking about how absurd privacy/protection of vision can be. If I stand in my apartment and face my photon receptors towards the apartment across the street, place some carefully constructed glass lenses in front of them, and receive photons from the sun bouncing off the surface of a pretty specimen, that is pretty universally abhorred behaviour. Of course this is absurdly reductionist. But interesting, nonetheless. If you don't like the giant "PEPSI PRESENTS: MARS" billboard we placed in space, close your curtains at night!
- sp332 9y agoPrivacy is a social construct. Its definition mainly depends on how people feel about it. That doesn't make it not useful, I mean that maybe we should try to protect our experience of the night sky even if the reasons aren't too rigorous.
- rbanffy 9y agoAnd I once did the math on how heavy a mylar spherical balloon would need to be to have the apparent size of the Moon from 150 km of altitude and concluded that it could be launched from an Ariane 5 (at about 14000 kg or so). I'd be a very unpopular person if someone decided to pay for the project.
- 089723645897236 9y agoGraffiti artist here. Space junk is a general problem I understand so theres nothing special about this device other than that it doesn't serve as anything but a marketing gimmick/artistic gesture. Street art / graffiti is done by people who want others to read their names and see their art. It's the ultimate act of hubris to say that others should experience your art unfiltered and without a choice in the matter. You invade public space, upset people's comfort zone, and get them to think. Even if it's just "wow look at all the colors and lines". Just wait till they start projecting ads on the moon then yall will be really pissed off.
- spoovy 9y agoThis isn't 'space' though is it; its low earth orbit. I wouldn't care if they'd fired it into intergalactic space but they didn't, they just added to our halo of orbiting garbage purely to grab some cheap publicity.
- badwolf 9y agoThey put it in low earth orbit. It's orbit will decay in about 9 months and it will burn up in the atmosphere. It wasn't just for cheap publicity. It was a test payload of a new rocket.