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I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship. Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the

I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship. Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the material in orbit dramatically. The issues astronomers currently have with Starlink will be the tip of the iceberg. Will we need UNESCO World Heritage Orbits to protect our views of space?

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Some pollution is an inevitable consequence of economic development. It would be great if we could move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars.
- goodoldneon 5y ago
  That’d be inconceivably far in the future. It’d need to be more economical to transport goods through space…
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    Two-way cargo transport through vacuum has zero net energy cost, just like a counterweighted elevator on Earth, only more so -- no vacuum here. With reasonable intelligence and infrastructure we should approach that limit. Design sketch from 1978, with numbers: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/papers/free.txt https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/pap...
    - goodoldneon 5y ago
      There isn’t energy cost between bodies, but there are huge energy costs getting into orbit, leaving orbit, and getting into the destination body’s orbit
      - abecedarius 5y ago
        Factories, refineries, and raw materials don't need to be on planets. There are disadvantages to siting on planets besides the added transport costs. > getting into the destination body's orbit I said round-trip energy costs. The delta-v for arriving cargo to enter orbit equals the delta-v for departing cargo. Over a full cycle of sending equal payloads both ways, the net change of energy and momentum is zero. I linked to an analysis of one way to harness this. When the skyhook in the linked example boosts a payload from Venus-Earth Hohmann to Earth-Mars Hohmann, the skyhook's orbit gets perturbed; but it gets the opposite perturbation on the boost on the opposite traffic. (This is not the only non-rocket approach to free-space transport with potentially low marginal cost.)
        politician 5y ago
        Heavy industry in space is a ludicrous idea for the next few centuries. We will need to significantly rework industrial processes to avoid the heat buildup currently offset by the planet. No one will be operating a foundry in space anytime soon. Niche applications like low-temperature ZBLAN manufacturing might make more sense.
        abecedarius 5y ago
        I disagree about centuries because the rate of progress so far belonged to a regime of launch costs of thousands of dollars per kg or worse. (Though "centuries" is at least more realistic than "inconceivably far". People were conceiving it in the 1970s and earlier.)
        politician 5y ago
        Maybe we'll use mass drivers to cool platforms in a couple hundred years. Maybe we'll reuse the slugs to excavate other bodies.
- wcoenen 5y ago
  > move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars The delta-v required to move objects between planets is measured in thousands of m/s (e.g. just getting to low earth orbit requires about 10000 m/s), and the fuel required goes up exponentially with delta-v. As Elon Musk put it: "If you had crack-cocaine on Mars, in prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here."
jacquesm 5y ago
> Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the material in orbit exponentially. I don't follow how a linear process would lead to an exponential result, can you please explain?
- whatshisface 5y ago
  What about the rate of improvement in launch costs we are observing is linear?
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    There's no starship 2 with 10 times the size of Starship in the plans.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Objects in orbit/day = min(objects per launch * launches per pad per day * number of working pads, number of objects per day anyone is willing to pay for)
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        There are diminishing returns as well. After a certain point there's no added benefit to put more stuff in the sky, hence not exponential.
        whatshisface 5y ago
        It's not clear where the diminishing returns kick in. They say every curve is an S-curve, but without knowing the actual parameters, that's not helpful.
- lifeformed 5y ago
  Debris breaking up could create many smaller objects.
- 5y ago
BurningFrog 5y ago
As civilization spreads to space, it will be visible. I'm glad we built cities over pristine nature. Hope we can do the same in space.
lindseymysse 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome There is a limit to how much we can pollute space. I personally think we're going to lose space for at least a 1000 years, along with every other disaster this century. It will be for some asinine, short sited reason, i.e., power or money.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That might not be a bad thing per-se. We are getting a bit addicted to our future selves bailing out our past selves from various fuckups, it might be nice to have a millenium of contemplation to deal with the fall out of previous messes so that we can learn how to be proper stewards of planet sized eco-systems. Once we manage that we are possibly ready to take off the training wheels.
  - lindseymysse 5y ago
    With the supply chain disruption we might lose digital technology, too. I say good riddance. We'll still have the mathematics we figured out (Graph Theory, Matrix Math, AI). Our food supply is still mostly human powered. Tractors will get better. We'll have to do something other than surveil people and shit-post on the internet to fill our time. Oh well.
    - t-3 5y ago
      We'll just move to shit-talking on radio. Basic electrical knowledge is way too widespread for anything less than total apocalypse to push us more than 50-100 years back in tech-level. Schematics and parts to assemble simple TTL computers are sufficiently widespread that computing would definitely continue. Small-scale electrical infrastructure is very simple and easy to set up, especially with the large number of high-quality manual tools available almost everywhere.
      - lindseymysse 5y ago
        And that's fine by me. I think this computer everywhere stuff is more trouble than it's worth. It's like when we put radium on everything.
mdorazio 5y ago
If you think that Starship will massively increase objects in LEO due to lowered costs then you should also believe that more of those objects than before will be astronomical satellites. I.e the space industry pollutes the view from the ground at the same time it makes alternatives to that view much more viable. Personally, I’d much rather have the benefits of orbital industry.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  The telescopes work better in space anyway. The cost of dropping a telescope in orbit will drop, and they won't want to be near-earth anyway so they'll be in lesser valued orbital real estate.
ekianjo 5y ago
> I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship You should be a little more concerned about the pollution on Earth.
rajup 5y ago
Maybe the same huge payloads will enable astronomers to go to space to do their studies for months at a time? Seems like a win if that does happen.
an9n 5y ago
Starship also offers the best potential for depolluting space...
noahtallen 5y ago
Certainly a concern to think about, but also consider how vast space actually is. The area around earth in space is very significantly larger than the area on earth itself. Think of just how far the moon is away and still orbiting earth. You basically have ($max_orbit_distance - $min orbit_distance) all the way around earth. That is so much larger than the area we can build on earth, which is just a relative handful meters above or below the crust. And we’re not even close to utilizing most of earth’s surface area! Beyond that, the amount of activity in space will definitely be minuscule compared to the activity on earth. Put together, I space pollution will basically be a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, at least for a very, very long time. And beyond that, space is empty, so we aren’t even destroying anything to do stuff

HenryKissinger 5y ago

Some pollution is an inevitable consequence of economic development. It would be great if we could move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars.

goodoldneon 5y ago
That’d be inconceivably far in the future. It’d need to be more economical to transport goods through space…
- abecedarius 5y ago
  Two-way cargo transport through vacuum has zero net energy cost, just like a counterweighted elevator on Earth, only more so -- no vacuum here. With reasonable intelligence and infrastructure we should approach that limit. Design sketch from 1978, with numbers: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/papers/free.txt https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/1976.skyhook/pap...
  - goodoldneon 5y ago
    There isn’t energy cost between bodies, but there are huge energy costs getting into orbit, leaving orbit, and getting into the destination body’s orbit
    - abecedarius 5y ago
      Factories, refineries, and raw materials don't need to be on planets. There are disadvantages to siting on planets besides the added transport costs. > getting into the destination body's orbit I said round-trip energy costs. The delta-v for arriving cargo to enter orbit equals the delta-v for departing cargo. Over a full cycle of sending equal payloads both ways, the net change of energy and momentum is zero. I linked to an analysis of one way to harness this. When the skyhook in the linked example boosts a payload from Venus-Earth Hohmann to Earth-Mars Hohmann, the skyhook's orbit gets perturbed; but it gets the opposite perturbation on the boost on the opposite traffic. (This is not the only non-rocket approach to free-space transport with potentially low marginal cost.)
      - politician 5y ago
        Heavy industry in space is a ludicrous idea for the next few centuries. We will need to significantly rework industrial processes to avoid the heat buildup currently offset by the planet. No one will be operating a foundry in space anytime soon. Niche applications like low-temperature ZBLAN manufacturing might make more sense.
        abecedarius 5y ago
        I disagree about centuries because the rate of progress so far belonged to a regime of launch costs of thousands of dollars per kg or worse. (Though "centuries" is at least more realistic than "inconceivably far". People were conceiving it in the 1970s and earlier.)
        politician 5y ago
        Maybe we'll use mass drivers to cool platforms in a couple hundred years. Maybe we'll reuse the slugs to excavate other bodies.
wcoenen 5y ago
> move our most polluting activities (factories, refineries) to the Moon or Mars The delta-v required to move objects between planets is measured in thousands of m/s (e.g. just getting to low earth orbit requires about 10000 m/s), and the fuel required goes up exponentially with delta-v. As Elon Musk put it: "If you had crack-cocaine on Mars, in prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here."

jacquesm 5y ago

> Continuous launches of huge payloads will increase the material in orbit exponentially. I don't follow how a linear process would lead to an exponential result, can you please explain?

whatshisface 5y ago
What about the rate of improvement in launch costs we are observing is linear?
- ekianjo 5y ago
  There's no starship 2 with 10 times the size of Starship in the plans.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Objects in orbit/day = min(objects per launch * launches per pad per day * number of working pads, number of objects per day anyone is willing to pay for)
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      There are diminishing returns as well. After a certain point there's no added benefit to put more stuff in the sky, hence not exponential.
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        It's not clear where the diminishing returns kick in. They say every curve is an S-curve, but without knowing the actual parameters, that's not helpful.
lifeformed 5y ago
Debris breaking up could create many smaller objects.
5y ago

BurningFrog 5y ago

As civilization spreads to space, it will be visible. I'm glad we built cities over pristine nature. Hope we can do the same in space.

lindseymysse 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome There is a limit to how much we can pollute space. I personally think we're going to lose space for at least a 1000 years, along with every other disaster this century. It will be for some asinine, short sited reason, i.e., power or money.

jacquesm 5y ago
That might not be a bad thing per-se. We are getting a bit addicted to our future selves bailing out our past selves from various fuckups, it might be nice to have a millenium of contemplation to deal with the fall out of previous messes so that we can learn how to be proper stewards of planet sized eco-systems. Once we manage that we are possibly ready to take off the training wheels.
- lindseymysse 5y ago
  With the supply chain disruption we might lose digital technology, too. I say good riddance. We'll still have the mathematics we figured out (Graph Theory, Matrix Math, AI). Our food supply is still mostly human powered. Tractors will get better. We'll have to do something other than surveil people and shit-post on the internet to fill our time. Oh well.
  - t-3 5y ago
    We'll just move to shit-talking on radio. Basic electrical knowledge is way too widespread for anything less than total apocalypse to push us more than 50-100 years back in tech-level. Schematics and parts to assemble simple TTL computers are sufficiently widespread that computing would definitely continue. Small-scale electrical infrastructure is very simple and easy to set up, especially with the large number of high-quality manual tools available almost everywhere.
    - lindseymysse 5y ago
      And that's fine by me. I think this computer everywhere stuff is more trouble than it's worth. It's like when we put radium on everything.

mdorazio 5y ago

If you think that Starship will massively increase objects in LEO due to lowered costs then you should also believe that more of those objects than before will be astronomical satellites. I.e the space industry pollutes the view from the ground at the same time it makes alternatives to that view much more viable. Personally, I’d much rather have the benefits of orbital industry.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
The telescopes work better in space anyway. The cost of dropping a telescope in orbit will drop, and they won't want to be near-earth anyway so they'll be in lesser valued orbital real estate.

ekianjo 5y ago

> I’m becoming concerned about how much we are going to pollute space in the coming decade due to Starship You should be a little more concerned about the pollution on Earth.

rajup 5y ago

Maybe the same huge payloads will enable astronomers to go to space to do their studies for months at a time? Seems like a win if that does happen.

an9n 5y ago

Starship also offers the best potential for depolluting space...

noahtallen 5y ago

Certainly a concern to think about, but also consider how vast space actually is. The area around earth in space is very significantly larger than the area on earth itself. Think of just how far the moon is away and still orbiting earth. You basically have ($max_orbit_distance - $min orbit_distance) all the way around earth. That is so much larger than the area we can build on earth, which is just a relative handful meters above or below the crust. And we’re not even close to utilizing most of earth’s surface area! Beyond that, the amount of activity in space will definitely be minuscule compared to the activity on earth. Put together, I space pollution will basically be a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, at least for a very, very long time. And beyond that, space is empty, so we aren’t even destroying anything to do stuff