this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Starlink v2 satelites will ruin science. (feddit.org)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Honestly astronomy from earth is notoriously difficult, for various reasons.

  • there's already a lot of light pollution, due to atmospheric light dispersion, so finding a good spot for telescopes is already difficult.
  • there's the issue that images become blurred, again because atmosphere.
  • We already have telescopes in space, why no re-use them with an additional camera?

Spaceflight is unstoppable at this point. I look at the colonization of Mars like a distillation process: we remove all of the restless assholes and billionaires from Earth, and they leave us and leave us the fuck alone. That's a good thing; We should support it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Honestly astronomy from space is notoriously difficult, for various reasons.

  • It takes a lot of energy and infrastructure to propel a telescope into space.
  • Radiation can cause issues with electronics, so they all need to be hardened.
  • Typically satellites use older proven technology to make sure that they don't run into new issues, which means they're not able to be bleeding edge.
  • New technology is next to impossible to add to a space telescope, meaning upgrades rarely happen, if ever. Ground telescopes can continuously upgrade with relative ease.

There's a lot of pros and cons. Neither solution is better than the other. They're only better at certain things. We need both.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The seemingly straightforward solution is that SpaceX needs to be legally required to get into the radio astronomy business. As part of being allowed to launch such noisy satellites. If they are going to wreck radio astronomy on Earth's surface, they should have to launch orbital radio telescopes of such quality and quantity that SpaceX is actually a vast net boon on radio astronomy. This should simply be a legally required cost of doing business if they want to launch so many noisy satellites. Yes, these orbital telescopes would have a finite lifespan and need to be regularly replaced to be updated, but thankfully the greatest rocket company on Earth will be legally required to launch them regularly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That could potentially help, but only to nations/groups that they give the data to. Other groups would still be getting fucked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's scientific data, and considering the context, the rightful property of all mankind. Give it universally to any an all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Easier said than done.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The problem is radio wavelengths are much longer than visible light thus the huge size of radio telescopes on earth, which would also make a space-based one a challenge

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

ooh i see