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The "trashing of the night sky" was already committed by all the light pollution being emitted from cities since decades ago. It's a shame. Cities are no longer
by Scapeghost 7y ago
The "trashing of the night sky" was already committed by all the light pollution being emitted from cities since decades ago. It's a shame. Cities are no longer cool. I plan to tell this to everyone who will listen.
- verytrivial 7y agoCities haven't been cool for astronomy for a very long time, so the telescopes go elsewhere to look up. These new satellites are in the sky where the telescopes are trying to look. It seems strange to need to point this out.
- cnlevy 7y agoThey've been working on mitigating the problem https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/darksat-is-dimmer https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/darksat-is-di...
- toomuchtodo 7y ago> so the telescopes go elsewhere to look up Lift the telescopes to orbit, to the moon, and to Lagrange points. Lift is cheap now. We're trying to get off this rock, not fight over it's shortcomings.
- verytrivial 7y agoI assume you've been keeping track of how much JWST has cost before launch. Launch is not even close to the dominating cost for a serious telescope.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago> I assume you've been keeping track of how much JWST has cost before launch. Yes. > Launch is not even close to the dominating cost for a serious telescope. Even more reason to move observation off planet. Why are we not commoditizing observation platforms? Planet Labs, inexpensively images the entire earth daily, with satellites the size of shoeboxes [1]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2018/05/28/this-maker-of-tiny-satellites-is-disrupting-the-space-industrial-complex/#3af1e90b486c https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2018/05/28/this-make...
- verytrivial 7y agoThe edge of observational science is the sensor and the satellite is built to support that. Radically different sensors have radically different engineering requirements. And to an extent, there is already a bunch of re-use between missions for the bus, power, control etc. But casually comparing a 10x10cm cube sat sensor to something literally over 3,000 the area feeding to a cryogenically cooled sensor to somehow argue in favour of SpaceX's current deployments is ... hard to reason with.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoI am casually stating that it's time for observation science and engineering to evolve. StarLink isn't the only obstacle to earth based observation; siting requirements can constrain where observatories can be built, staff and equipment having to be colocated (sometimes in remote geographic locations), relations with local stakeholders can be fraught with peril [1], all avoided by lifting to space. Will it be challenging to design observatories for space that were previously designed to be built on Earth? Certainly! Should we shy away from the challenge as an advancing civilization? Absolutely not. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope#Approval_process_and_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope#Approva...
- valuearb 7y agoJWST would have been a lot cheaper if they had known they could use heavier and cheaper materials when it was designed.