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This is a tradeoff we have to make with infrastructure and development in general. How do you balance human needs with pristine nature? Do we put up long-dista
by Legend2440 3mo ago
This is a tradeoff we have to make with infrastructure and development in general. How do you balance human needs with pristine nature?
Do we put up long-distance power lines and wind farms even though they ruin the views? Do you tear down a forest to put up farmlands and suburbs? Do you build a dam to provide water for irrigation, even though it kills the fish and floods a valley?
Satellites are actually easier than most of those tradeoffs, because nothing lives in space and there's no nature to destroy. It only affects us.
- croes 3mo agoThey hinder the view on asteroids coming our way. The purpose of most of these satellites is internet access where we already have less limited possibilities with less maintenance costs like constant replacement
- Legend2440 3mo agoNo they don't. It's more of an issue for long-exposure galaxies and nebula. And asteroids are an extremely rare threat in the first place. It's literally a once-in-a-million-years kind of event.
- croes 3mo agoDinosaur killers? Yes. City killers? That size hits more often > Asteroids with a diameter more than 30–50 metres (100–150ft) are large enough to make it through our atmosphere intact, however, and the chance of this happening is estimated to be around once in every 100 years. > The damage from an impact of this size would be wide-ranging, and could wipe out an entire city if they were to impact a heavily populated area. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/chances-asteroid-hitting-earth https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/chances-ast...
- Legend2440 3mo agoWe lack the technology to detect this size of asteroid with enough time to do anything about it. Luckily, the majority of the earth's surface is unpopulated. Most of these rocks hit the ocean or Siberia and cause few or no casualties. The odds of it hitting a major city are quite low.
- croes 3mo agoThat’s why luck is a big factor and amateur astronomers are a great help in spotting them by chance
- lefra 3mo agoThat "if it hits a populated area" reduces the probability by a factor 100 (because about 1% of the world's surface is urbanized [1]). So the actual frequency of "city wiped" is more like once every 10000 years. Completely negligible compared to other city-wiping events (earthquakes or floods for example). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_land_use_for_food_production,_OWID_statistic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_land_use_for_food_...
- croes 3mo agoBut it’s an additional risk. The more risks the more likely one of them will hit you.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> They hinder the view on asteroids coming our way Source?
- croes 3mo ago> These proposals, combined with others considered in the study, would dramatically brighten the night sky, hindering humankind’s ability to observe faint cosmic targets, including far-away galaxies, some Earth-like planets around other stars, and even asteroids potentially dangerous to Earth. The article
- dgellow 3mo ago> How do you balance human needs with pristine nature? How about we set a limit on how many satellites? That’s exactly how to balance
- m4rtink 3mo agoSetting a limit on a number of satellites seems rather arbitrary and not very effective to actually achieve a specific result.
- ben_w 3mo agoI would argue that setting a limit is the enforcement mechanism, not the balancing mechanism. A scientific justification is the balancing mechanism that produces the number which is then enforced.
- throwthrowuknow 3mo agoLet’s set a limit on the number of houses that can be built while we’re at it.
- PowerElectronix 3mo agoWho sets it, then? The people that can make money out of the satellites or use their services or the people that want clean skies? And how do you enforce it? It's not like you can just go up there an repo the satellites.
- earth-tattoo 3mo agoA limit that India and China are totally going to ignore?
- lambdaone 3mo agoIf only there was some way that countries could make international agreements on things...
- Ray20 3mo agoThey won't ignore it if Americans and Europeans agree to contribute their fair share to the well-being of all the people and stop hoarding all the world's wealth to themselves. A situation where the minimum wage in some regions of the US is over $15, while in parts of India have the median wage is less than 50 cents, is an unjust absurdity.