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[-] borlax@lemmy.borlax.com 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

my favorite part is that humans have created an orbiting pile of garbage.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 23 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but it’s pretty cool that the orbiting pile of garbage can dodge space debris…

[-] towerful@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago

Ah, the new Lemmy switcharoo!

[-] Sharkwellington@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

Hold my garbage, I'm going in!

[-] borlax@lemmy.borlax.com 5 points 1 year ago

A lot of the debris is man made that we put up there is my point.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Now there’s a bunch more of it was my joke.

[-] chahk@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

The only solution? Put more of it up there, of course!

[-] Sharkwellington@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

Does space debris have any known natural predators?

[-] Plus_a_Grain_of_Salt@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago
[-] jcarax@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago
[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Atmosphere. Gravity just helps smash them against it.

[-] jcarax@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Even without an atmosphere, gravity would pull the debris to crash into the planet itself.

[-] alcyoneous@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Not content with trashing the surface of Earth, now we have to trash the space around us too!

[-] RealAccountNameHere@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Have we created orbiting poles of garbage, or are WE in fact orbiting piles of garbage?

[-] Cipher@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

The answer to your question is yes

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 15 points 1 year ago

Maybe we should clean up space?

[-] Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

For the most part, they all are falling towards earth and will burn up. No need to do anything.

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

Great. Another $900 million wasted. We could have laid a lot of fiber with that money.

[-] drwho@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

Nah, there would have been another stock buyback and the existing "shitty DSL meets all of the FCC requirements for broadband Internet access" would have closed out another hearing.

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

I detect no lies.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Running fiber globaly is very expensive. The satellite solution has its cons, but it's available to a lot of people who otherwise might not have access.

It is expensive, but in SOME rural areas it's still affordable. Obviously not in poorer ones, but it might get cheaper over time. Or it might not. Who knows.

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

I recall that the decaying orbit means that they constantly have to put more satellites up. All that energy, all that propellant, and all that space garbage. Billions of dollars wasted. Better spent on fiber. Once installed, baring cuts, it will last for nearly 100 years or more. It has benefits for some, but, IMHO, resources are better spent on fiber.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Universal global fiber is sadly unlikely to happen. I wish it wasn't so, but the fight for me to get fiber in a town has been a decade.

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

I spent five years and gave up on it because Republicans.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Different country here, I'm getting it in autumn.

[-] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

Humans who punch down have no borders.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

True. We've just managed to keep ours mostly in check. It helps that they scored multiple blunders before the last election, otherwise it would've been scary.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Kessler syndrome is one hell of a lot more expensive than fiber.

[-] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

These are in LEO. Once they lose propulsion after 3-5 years, they fall and burn up on re-entry. It isn't possible for these satellites to cause Kessler Syndrome.

[-] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Could a high-speed impact not send debris flying into a higher orbit?

[-] mike901@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

It could send debris into a more elliptical orbit, but it wouldn't be possible for it to raise the entire orbit above LEO. The point of impact will remain in the orbital path and since the entire orbit is currently in LEO, there will be, by extension, some part of the new orbit still in LEO and therefore subject any debris to atmospheric capture.

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I guess we can choose between people in remote areas having no internet access and Kessler syndrome :/

The third way costs not 900 million, but hundreds of billions, maybe trillions. Rich countries can afford it, but many can not.

[-] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Wasted how? Because some satellites moved to dodge debris?

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Fiber is too slow when you want to charge billions for letting High Frequency Trading bots running arbitration across different markets to get a few miliseconds advantage over those running through fiber.

Having a mesh of satellites running on "laser through vacuum" to go around the globe, can get you those billions. Which, let's be clear, is the real business goal of Starlink.

[-] targetx@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Perhap we should focus on cleaning up earth first :-)

[-] supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

Will need one very powerful vacuum to do that.

[-] Morphit@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

Make sure it doesn't go from suck to blow!

[-] drwho@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

After being warned repeatedly since 2014. Whee.

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Is it just Starlink satellites going through this?

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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
67 points (100.0% liked)

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