5 ms·

Starlink could be an ecological disaster

58 points by GordonS 4y ago

tuatoru 4y ago
Guy does not know that whereof he speaks. Starship's engines use methane. Very little black carbon produced. 25kt of aluminum in the atmosphere per year is less than we get from meteor dust by at least an order of magnitude. Etc.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  Yeah, it smells of highly reactionary and ripe with erroneous assumptions combined with the arrogance that they are the first to think of the risks and no one could’ve possibly done the analysis even if their jobs depended on a success.
- t_mann 4y ago
  > Starship's engines use methane. Very little black carbon produced. What's your point? Methane has about 25x the global warming potential of CO2: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Carbon_dioxide_equivalent https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    They don’t just fart the methane out like a cow into space. They burn it. Which converts to water and co2.
    - jbverschoor 4y ago
      The adventures of Spacecow and Starpig
noodlesUK 4y ago
I don’t think starlink is likely to be a huge ecological disaster but I do weep for what it’s doing to our night sky. The beauty of the cosmos is now very obviously polluted when viewed even with just the naked eye. You can see the starlink sats go by constantly if you go to a dark sky location. With a telescope or binoculars or worse yet, astrophotography, it’s inescapable.
- mikem170 4y ago
  I've dabbled with astrophotography, I've been out with the camera a couple times so far, and was prompted by your comment to do a bit of reading on the effects of these starlink satellites. The first useful bits I found described how most astrophotography stacking software would filter out a satellite trail, dropping outlier pixels which appear only on a single frame, but that crossing trails might complicate things, and also the less dim outer edges of trails, and trails passing near other objects in the sky, and that worst case would be having to manually paint pure black over the trails, but that might need to be done for 12, or 20, or 50, or 200+ frames being stacked... I wonder if there is a period of time in the middle of the night where these satellites are in the earth's shadow and would not reflect any light?
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    I imagine it would take some work, but wouldn't it be possible to get the orbit information from one of those open source hobby satellite tracker websites and program the camera to close its shutter during those passes (or have the camera hooked up to a computer that monitors the website and tell the camera to close its shutter)?
    - mikem170 4y ago
      I assume something like you suggest would be possible. It's normal to want to be able to take dozens of long-exposure photographs, maybe even a couple/few hundred. Each exposure might be 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 2+ minutes long, depending on your equipment. I usually have my camera take all the photos, but I could do this through a laptop, and could script the timing, assuming I had a good feed of the times that satellites will be interfering, and that there is enough time in between satellites to take the long-exposure photos. I'm not sure about varying the exposure times, like you maybe implied, closing the shutter when a satellite comes by. Usually the exposure time is chosen as the longest that the combination of your lens and star tracking mount can do without causing star trails or being overwhelmed by ambient light pollution, and is the same for every frame. Shorter exposures don't gather as much data/light as longer exposures, all things being equal. My first thought while working around satellite interference would be to stay out longer to get more long exposures. It might be the case where having different exposures in a set of stacked frames introduces noise or other unwanted artefacts, given that you would be combining dissimilar inputs. I'm not sure how often these satellites would be passing by and visible. The subject being photographed might be something large, like the milky way across most of the sky through a fish-eye lens, and you would need many of those 1-2 minute long-exposure windows without satellite interference for this idea to work. For a smaller subject, like a constellation, it might be the case where you need to also account for the position of the satellites, if there are too many to track based on time only.
bhouston 4y ago
How do you compare this with wires everywhere? That requires both significant mining and then local people to dig and vehicles etc. I think these comparisons are context free and unfair in that sense.
mikewarot 4y ago
This assumes that thrusters in development to extend orbits don't work out. I suspect we'll be able to keep things in orbit much longer as time goes by.
radu_floricica 4y ago
He might want to reconsider the "benefit of the few" bit. Starlink is about to offer cell phone connectivity everywhere. Just for starters, this means minimum connectivity available in disaster areas. Meanwhile, 10 miles from where I live there is industrial open air burning of wires and other waste in order to recover metals. I mean, I'm aware of the "starving kids in Africa" fallacy - we shouldn't focus on just one problem at one time. But this is an apples-to-apples comparison,and there is orders of magnitude more pollution for much less benefit for society.

58 points by GordonS 4y ago

Guy does not know that whereof he speaks. Starship's engines use methane. Very little black carbon produced. 25kt of aluminum in the atmosphere per year is less than we get from meteor dust by at least an order of magnitude. Etc.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Yeah, it smells of highly reactionary and ripe with erroneous assumptions combined with the arrogance that they are the first to think of the risks and no one could’ve possibly done the analysis even if their jobs depended on a success.
t_mann 4y ago
> Starship's engines use methane. Very little black carbon produced. What's your point? Methane has about 25x the global warming potential of CO2: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Carbon_dioxide_equivalent https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  They don’t just fart the methane out like a cow into space. They burn it. Which converts to water and co2.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    The adventures of Spacecow and Starpig

noodlesUK 4y ago

I don’t think starlink is likely to be a huge ecological disaster but I do weep for what it’s doing to our night sky. The beauty of the cosmos is now very obviously polluted when viewed even with just the naked eye. You can see the starlink sats go by constantly if you go to a dark sky location. With a telescope or binoculars or worse yet, astrophotography, it’s inescapable.

mikem170 4y ago
I've dabbled with astrophotography, I've been out with the camera a couple times so far, and was prompted by your comment to do a bit of reading on the effects of these starlink satellites. The first useful bits I found described how most astrophotography stacking software would filter out a satellite trail, dropping outlier pixels which appear only on a single frame, but that crossing trails might complicate things, and also the less dim outer edges of trails, and trails passing near other objects in the sky, and that worst case would be having to manually paint pure black over the trails, but that might need to be done for 12, or 20, or 50, or 200+ frames being stacked... I wonder if there is a period of time in the middle of the night where these satellites are in the earth's shadow and would not reflect any light?
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  I imagine it would take some work, but wouldn't it be possible to get the orbit information from one of those open source hobby satellite tracker websites and program the camera to close its shutter during those passes (or have the camera hooked up to a computer that monitors the website and tell the camera to close its shutter)?
  - mikem170 4y ago
    I assume something like you suggest would be possible. It's normal to want to be able to take dozens of long-exposure photographs, maybe even a couple/few hundred. Each exposure might be 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or 2+ minutes long, depending on your equipment. I usually have my camera take all the photos, but I could do this through a laptop, and could script the timing, assuming I had a good feed of the times that satellites will be interfering, and that there is enough time in between satellites to take the long-exposure photos. I'm not sure about varying the exposure times, like you maybe implied, closing the shutter when a satellite comes by. Usually the exposure time is chosen as the longest that the combination of your lens and star tracking mount can do without causing star trails or being overwhelmed by ambient light pollution, and is the same for every frame. Shorter exposures don't gather as much data/light as longer exposures, all things being equal. My first thought while working around satellite interference would be to stay out longer to get more long exposures. It might be the case where having different exposures in a set of stacked frames introduces noise or other unwanted artefacts, given that you would be combining dissimilar inputs. I'm not sure how often these satellites would be passing by and visible. The subject being photographed might be something large, like the milky way across most of the sky through a fish-eye lens, and you would need many of those 1-2 minute long-exposure windows without satellite interference for this idea to work. For a smaller subject, like a constellation, it might be the case where you need to also account for the position of the satellites, if there are too many to track based on time only.

bhouston 4y ago

How do you compare this with wires everywhere? That requires both significant mining and then local people to dig and vehicles etc. I think these comparisons are context free and unfair in that sense.

mikewarot 4y ago

This assumes that thrusters in development to extend orbits don't work out. I suspect we'll be able to keep things in orbit much longer as time goes by.

radu_floricica 4y ago

He might want to reconsider the "benefit of the few" bit. Starlink is about to offer cell phone connectivity everywhere. Just for starters, this means minimum connectivity available in disaster areas. Meanwhile, 10 miles from where I live there is industrial open air burning of wires and other waste in order to recover metals. I mean, I'm aware of the "starving kids in Africa" fallacy - we shouldn't focus on just one problem at one time. But this is an apples-to-apples comparison,and there is orders of magnitude more pollution for much less benefit for society.