One of the arguments Hank makes in the video is that SpaceX is (via starlink) rapidly occupying large portions of useful LEO shells, which crowds out future competitors or users of that orbit (i.e. you can't put more satellites into the orbit without risking collisions, especially satellites that aren't part of the existing constellation), and that the natural consequence of not regulating orbital space in some way would be to lock in the first movers in an orbital shell as the only organizations that have access to that orbit.
I 100% agree but Starlink is the only profitable space division of SpaceX.
The truth is diverting money to space exploration is not that popular.
We only got the moon because we were in a battle with the Soviet Union about capitalism vs. communism. It was never about space or science. The instant the Soviet Union collapsed, we reduced NASA’s projects and budgets.
So while I’m not a fan of the circumstances, I need some way for money to go to space exploration and I’m riding this like people rode the Cold War as an excuse to build a moon rocket.
Yes, and you're 100% right, but context is needed here for others even if you know this next bit.
The original shuttle designs were much, much better. I remember reading tech specs and looking at schematics in Discover and Popular Science years before the final design. Maybe Omni too.
Then it ended up in committee, politicians got involved, and funding was cut in parallel (even before the wall came down, it was clear the Soviets were done). The design was a shadow of what it could have been.
I remeber being sad as a kid.
Also, my drive down nastologia avenue made me realise, I really miss science magazines. The publishing date of the three I mentioned seemed to be staggered a bit. So I always had a bit of science news, and I really miss the format.
Phones aren't the same, tiny, tablets are unwieldy and smaller than a magazine, they were distraction free, and I really liked it just being all in one package.
I even liked the ads! Typically for some computer peripheral, or a new calculator, or some scientific apparatus. The ad just sat there too, it didn't bounce around or scream at you or cover an article's text.
Or the worst modern scourge, popups while you're reading, I mean !'?"#+#-#/ off I'm reading here!
Odyssey was published by the same person who operated Astronomy magazine, and in my tweens and early teens I gobbled up the stories about the space shuttle and the images coming back from various missions such as Voyager.
I don’t remember if I saw it in the school library and asked my parents to subscribe or they subscribed for me, but it really helped to maintain a lifelong interest in space flight and astronomy (along with whatever science fiction I could get my hands on).
Nobody is arguing that space isn't big. The argument is space is big but dynamic, and launching enough stuff up there means that over a sufficiently long time horizon, you will have a collision between uncontrolled objects. This is not a theoretical concern, it has already happened [1].
Collision risk is significantly reduced by having maneuverable spacecraft with good conjunction prediction systems in place. But fundamentally, nothing is perfect and accidents can and do happen - you set a maneuver threshold based on an expected collision probability, but it's an engineering tradeoff: "spend the fuel to maneuver out of the way of everything, no matter how remote, or accept a small collision risk?"
And of course, when you are launching thousands of satellites, you will have a few failures that will become unmaneuverable hazards. Just the way it goes, you can't realistically engineer your way to perfect reliability.
So sorry, I have to reject your claims that it's "utter bullshit." Space debris risk is a well studied field, so much so that satellite insurance companies are starting to fold those calculations into insurance premiums. So yeah, it's real, and it deserves more than a pithy dismissal.
Whatever happens to Starlink, the debris in their new lower orbit would decay within months at the worst. It’s not one of those “thousand years imprisoned on the planet by a cloud of deadly debris” that we’ve heard about.
Not saying it couldn’t be bad if there were such a collision as obvi a really bad collision could in the short term damage Starlink and anyone else who decides to use that orbit, but this isn’t existential risk territory anymore.
VLEO addresses the risk, sure, but the new Starcloud space datacenter hype machine isn't going VLEO, it's going 600-850 km. Those altitudes are in the years to decades range for deorbit, and SpaceX has filed for 88,000 of them.
Risk is theoretical, that is; a) never demostrated, b) most probably overblown c) any methods of mitigation were never even given a chance to develop.
All in all you people take the precautionary principle so far as to cripple your own progress in fundamental stuff like spaceflight but at the same time see no reason to apply it in social stuff like that survelliance camera affair or the net-id. And also fervently believe in modern version of snake oil that is "AI".
This is hypocrisy at the base level and a sign that we have a civilization crisis akin to one that of ~7th century AD.
Okay buddy, that was a Gish gallop if I've ever seen one.
The risk is real. The math isn't complicated, you could stand up a basic debris simulation in a few hours with numpy from first principles. And we also know it's real because it's actually happened multiple times now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision
This is a real thing that satellite operators worry about all the time. Conjunction analysis and risk modeling leading to a go/no-go decision is something that real satellite operations centres do daily.
I don't know if an LVT is the answer, but we do need to figure out some way to make operators consider space sustainability efforts, especially if they are launching systems with such density that they make subsequent operation in those shells significantly riskier.
That attitude is how you start building up more and more tech debt until you trap yourself into extinction. If I thought that Musk's effort could benefit from an infusion of cash I would have organized it. As it happens he's limited by other things, so I sit back and enjoy the view of our civilization slowly climbing the Kardashev scale. You can fly by.
>If I thought that Musk's effort could benefit from an infusion of cash I would have organized it
Uh huh.
>As it happens he's limited by other things
Being some kind of weird multicellular invasive species that looks human enough to get VC funding but isn't quite human enough to have a relationship with his kids. Also, rolling forward his failed/stalled business ventures into whatever is hot enough to be currently valuable. Busy man(thing)
>That attitude is how you start building up more and more tech debt until you trap yourself into extinction
I literally watched a video of Space X engineers demonstrating their space junk tracking tech, and talking about how seriously they take it. This seems like a you problem, the science and the people doing the work are already concerned. I don't see what you get out of being flippant about it.
>so I sit back and enjoy the view of our civilization slowly climbing the Kardashev scale.
Is that what plato's projecting on his cave wall these days?
And then he betrayed all of that when he decided to IPO SpaceX and pivoted to space datacenters. Putting aside all the other things he's done over the past few years to betray his own stated ideals or plans.
That satellite's orbit very clearly did decay, though. The problem in that instance is the descent wasn't controlled, but that's a different kind of failure than the one this thread is worried about (i.e. satellites lingering for many years without active collision avoidance).
