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Most astronomy is done with computers. It should be easy for a computer to ignore or subtract all known satellites. If you only get 900 exposures of some new co

Most astronomy is done with computers. It should be easy for a computer to ignore or subtract all known satellites. If you only get 900 exposures of some new comet instead of 1000, that's still plenty. And we'd need many orders of magnitude more satellites to make 10% of astronomical photos unusable. I hear the astronomy argument all the time, but I just don't believe it. If satellites are ever cheap and plentiful enough to make that kind of difference, the astronomers can launch a thousand Hubble-style space telescopes and timeshare on those.

stareatgoats 7y ago
I believe GP was talking about the ever growing space debris. https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debri...
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  These satellites should be in low enough orbits that any junk from them burns up in the atmosphere as their orbits decay. Maybe there could be an issue from collisions in low orbit pushing objects into higher orbits but those likely would be erratic orbits with low points that still subject it to decay.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    OneWeb's constellation is high enough that it'll take a lot more than 25 years for any satellite that fails to deorbit itself to decay. On the way down, these debris will cross the ISS orbit and the most popular sun-synchronous orbits. Starlink is lower, but still above the ISS and the SSO at 282km.
henrikeh 7y ago
All astronomy can’t be done from space. Space has many issues such as maintainability, heat, reflector sizes and the list goes on. I have friends and former colleagues who do astronomy. I’ll trust the experts who’s profession are actually impacted.
simion314 7y ago
>the astronomers can launch a thousand Hubble-style space telescopes Who pays? The public pays for telescopes and Elon and other billionaires make more money from the internet satellites and now from putting this new telescopes up , I would be fine if SpaceX and the others would have to pay a tax that will fund astronomical telescopes on Earth and space. About the astronomy is done with computers, there are problems that you can't jsut solve by throwing a computer at it and if there is a solution it probably costs.

stareatgoats 7y ago

I believe GP was talking about the ever growing space debris. https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debri...

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
These satellites should be in low enough orbits that any junk from them burns up in the atmosphere as their orbits decay. Maybe there could be an issue from collisions in low orbit pushing objects into higher orbits but those likely would be erratic orbits with low points that still subject it to decay.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- greglindahl 7y ago
  OneWeb's constellation is high enough that it'll take a lot more than 25 years for any satellite that fails to deorbit itself to decay. On the way down, these debris will cross the ISS orbit and the most popular sun-synchronous orbits. Starlink is lower, but still above the ISS and the SSO at 282km.

henrikeh 7y ago

All astronomy can’t be done from space. Space has many issues such as maintainability, heat, reflector sizes and the list goes on. I have friends and former colleagues who do astronomy. I’ll trust the experts who’s profession are actually impacted.

simion314 7y ago

>the astronomers can launch a thousand Hubble-style space telescopes Who pays? The public pays for telescopes and Elon and other billionaires make more money from the internet satellites and now from putting this new telescopes up , I would be fine if SpaceX and the others would have to pay a tax that will fund astronomical telescopes on Earth and space. About the astronomy is done with computers, there are problems that you can't jsut solve by throwing a computer at it and if there is a solution it probably costs.