• merdaverse@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    This is how the night sky looks right now:

    It’s crazy to think that all this will be privately owned by ultra rich techno-fascists that are beyond any democratic control.

  • Didntdoit71@feddit.online
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    22 hours ago

    Elon Musk is a plague upon the human condition. Our best hope in the US, right now, is that a Starship launch goes horribly right and hits the White House during a cabinet meeting with Elmo as a a guest. Burn it black…pave over it and start over. Preferably after a mandatory prison-raping of all billionaires, especially those who loved Epstein. Fuck em all…let god sort em out.

  • Gates9@sh.itjust.works
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    17 hours ago

    We’re creating our own “Mini Kuiper Belt”. By the time we’re ready to make interplanetary space travel a practical thing (intriguing but doubtful given present circumstances and trajectory) there will be so much space shit that it’ll be as dangerous as trying to land a plane in the United States today!

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    23 hours ago

    If this actually happens, I will dedicate my life to getting the funding to create a laser weapon that can shoot them out of the sky from Earth.

    Then we’ll play Space Invaders for keeps.

      • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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        19 hours ago

        They’d last as debris for about 5 years before falling. Atmospheric drag among other things causes orbital decay that cause them to eventually fall to earth without adjustments.

        • Betchisan@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          The unfortunate thing about debris falling from space is that it could hit you or me and we could get killed.

          • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz
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            18 hours ago

            They’re too small and fast for that. They burn up in the atmosphere.

            Larger space debris on a different trajectory can, but not LEO communication satellites.

  • ZMoney@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Don’t fall for the clickbait reporting here. Musk has a history of making comically exaggerated claims. There won’t be a million satellites just like there wasn’t a 4000 km/h train, self-driving tunnel network, intercontinental rocket transport or Mars colony.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      Literally nearly ever claim and promise from Elmo has been a lie so far, no idea why anyone believes this conman

      He literally is a billionaire because he lies. Literally.

      He is incompetent as fuck, he’s a drug junkie, yet still there are so many people who look up to this shit stain

    • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      But there will be more satellites, and not just from SpaceX. They are already disturbing astronomers work, and it will only get worse.

      There was no real debate about whether the world population is ok with it. Big corp has money, big corp acts for its interest and nothing else.

      And I’m not denying the benefits of low-orbit satellites and having vast but lowly populated areas at last getting access to a fast Internet. I’m jùst pointing out that this whole thing is happening mostly out of control (or very very few control).

      If you add that now international laws was shot and its body discarded in the toilet, also note that getting too much dependent on these satellites makes you very vulnerable to a military strike. I have no doubt that Russia, China and other countries (Iran?) are actively working on satellites destruction, with or without creating debris and giving us a Kessler syndrom. If you look at climate change, on-going life mass extinction, water scarcity, etc. there is little doubt that world leaders will make the worst possible decisions in the name of pragmatism (or religion, but it doesn’t really matter).

      • ZMoney@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The problem is that we offloaded “world leadership” to a bunch of ultra-rich sociopaths who only care about their own profit maximization. And they then made actual profit obsolete, since the only product they produce now is hype in the service of inflationary speculative assets. From a planetary perspective it looks like the human species is committing suicide.

        • innermachine@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Humanity is a self - resolving virus on this planet. Give it time and we’ll all be dead due to our own stupidity and nature will get back to where it should be.

      • Jason2357@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Of all the permanent and irreparable things big corporations are doing to our world, I struggle to really put this high up. Yeah it sucks, but it provides a useful service and they naturally degrade. If anything Im more worried about all the pollution from them burning up in the atmosphere. If they stop launching them, the sky will be clear within the deccade.

  • pharceface@retrolemmy.com
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    22 hours ago

    Rather than just run some fucking cable like we already have for the grid. It’s determined that we should put a bunch of future space junk into our atmosphere. Even more frustrating is that we can’t recover anything from them, all the resources being wasted on something we can’t even recycle.

  • uenticx@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Their CIDR ranges are also fucking ripe with hacked devices and criminals. 98% of connections from their 153./8 are all fucking bots.

    • kungen@feddit.nu
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      22 hours ago

      What 153./8? You mean the allocated 153.66.0.0/15? But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised, they probably don’t care about abuse reports and it’s more difficult to pinpoint a specific customer due to CGNAT.

      At least they provide a nice list of ranges you could block.

  • andallthat@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Now I’m curious. Can a satellite fly over a country without permission? I know that an aircraft can’t. How far up from the Earth’s surface does sovereignity end?

  • bcgm3@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    List of Starlink and Starshield Launches - Wikipedia

    ~10,000 Satellites currently orbiting right now, and that’s just Starlink.

    Check out the list of launches under “Falcon 9 Launches > Starlink Launches.” It’s every other day now (sometimes consecutive days) that they launch another rocket, and each payload is carrying 20 to 60 satellites.

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      If you assume each one is only starlink and they always send the max and no losses, it would take 90 years to get 1 million.

    • eleitl@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Starlink is 2/3rds of all satellites. They add 5-6 per day, lose one per day.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    I was a space kid, followed every space shot since 1965, was a super fan of Apollo 11, I had a subscription to Nat Geo growing up, just for the Space photos.

    So I can’t believe I’m saying this: Maybe we’ve gone far enough for now, and we should have a moratorium on space for the next 50 years.

    We should concentrate on Earth for awhile, dontcha think?

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I dunno, every engineer not working on space almost certainly ends up optimizing some sort of ad delivery system. The tech industry is almost completely enshittified.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          That’s great, but that comes from funding those things, not shutting down a different industry. It’d be better to shut down non-productive industries like bombing brown kids in the Middle East.

    • Trilogy3452@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      This isn’t really space science related, just commercialization. And about focusing on Earth: we should let scientists work on what they’re passionate about, IMO they’ll be more motivated to research their field of choice

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        we should let scientists work on what they’re passionate about

        *fund them

        Why is it always 100x more on useless destruction and military? And yeah i know the sad answer already.

      • cole@lemdro.id
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        1 day ago

        SpaceX has developed laundry list of new technology to enable Starlink and other endeavors. It’s silly to discount that as worthless.

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            1 day ago

            AND makes life far worse for literally the entire planet.

            Imagine unilaterally deciding that increasing your already obscene fortune is more important than every living creature that will ever exist in the future having a sky to enjoy, ever again. To these people, human joy is not something worth preserving.

            • Zink@programming.dev
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              20 hours ago

              To these people, human joy is an indulgence for the weak.

              You know how over-exaggerated cartoonish villains will talk about how love and caring make you weak? Basically that.

              • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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                19 hours ago

                That’s because he’s an ogre who has to pay women to be artificially inseminated because, they won’t go anywhere near him, and his weener won’t work anyhow, due to botched enlargement surgery.

                Just repellant.

        • bthest@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          lol just so you know a “laundry list” is a list of bad things.

          And no, rockets that can put stuff into orbit where around even before Mama Musk shat out lil Mech-Hitler.

          • cole@lemdro.id
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            1 day ago

            Not like these ones. I’m almost tired of having this discussion y’all are blinded by hatred.

            First full flow staged combustion engine, dramatically lower launch prices than competitors (cheaper for the government and has enabled more interesting things to go to space), dramatically more access (SpaceX flies multiple times a week!), booster recovery & rocket reuse.

            And again I know everyone really is blinded by their seething rage but starship is going to change the whole landscape again.

            You can hate the man as much as you want, I’m not saying I don’t. But you discredit yourself by not knowing what SpaceX is actually doing.

            I mean, we still wouldn’t have US access to space without SpaceX (Boeing fiasco…).

        • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          A lot of the ultra wealthy espouse a nonsense philosophy called “Effective Altruism”, which asserts a kind of utilitarian “most good for the most people” ethic, but in such a way that one can basically justify any action as being, eventually, for the most good ¯_(ツ)_/¯

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Including being good to hypothetical, unlikely trillions that may live someday if we colonize Mars.

    • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’ve been really passionate about space. My bday is on the anniversary of the moon landing, and my one aunt has always reminded me of the fact. My great grandfather worked for NASA and my aunt gave me his stargazing binoculars that his brother gave him when he got hired at NASA. That part of my family instilled a huge love of science in me, esp space stuff. I wanna go to space more than anything, but I don’t have the brains or constitution to be an astronaut. So I just daydream, stargaze, and write poems about the cosmos.

    • betanumerus@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      Right. Elon hires people on the basis they’ll be making Mars travel possible, but that Starship is really for dumping metal all over the night sky.

    • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Believe it or not, you can do two things at once. Some people are interested in space, some in geology. That’s fine.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Elon Musk is such a goddamned literal supervillain that he managed to make the theme of Firefly wrong.

    Apparently, they can take the sky from you.

  • Asafum@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It’s so infuriating… I occasionally do astrophotography and it’s getting to the point where any long exposure just has satellite streaks everywhere… Fuck Musk.

    • yucandu@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I remember just 10 years ago using a special app on my phone to alert me of any potential satellite flares so I could run out and catch them.

      Now I can’t look at the night sky for 2 minutes without seeing one.

      • errer@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        You can actually see some in broad daylight. I was shocked one day looking up and seeing one (white dot in the picture, verified with sat tracking app).

      • Link@rentadrunk.org
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        2 days ago

        For the uneducated, what do these look like and can you see them in areas with light pollution?

        • cecilkorik@piefed.ca
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          2 days ago

          Yes. They are technically reflected sunlight, so they are as bright as the sun, just very small. It makes sense you can see them during sunlight, since they are reflections of sunlight. You will typically only see them on the side of the sky opposite the sun, but the exact angle depends on the location and orientation of the satellite and the surface that is actually doing the reflection.

          Generally speaking, they are dots that fade in somewhat gradually, moving at a consistent pace (typically slower than a shooting star, but faster than an airplane at cruising altitude) in a straight line direction for awhile at full brightness, then fading away.

        • yucandu@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          To me, they look exactly like all the other stars in the sky, except they move, a bit slower than a plane, and they don’t blink.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          If you look towards the horizon with the sun, a little before sunrise or after sunset, you’ll probably be able to see flashes of them as they catch the light.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Billionaires don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves, not even their kids. And, we’ve all agreed to let billionaires run the world, it seems.

    • discocactus@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      We’re just a few millimeters away from revoking that agreement though. There’s not that many of them.

      • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I don’t see the beginning of anything to rein in the power they get from just being overrich assholes.

        Ironically, the only countries on Earth that control tightly (some of) their billionaires are Russia and China. I rememer Vietnam also executed one for tax fraud. Something for which they are barely slapped on their hand in western countries.