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The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems | Earth’s stratosphere has never seen the amounts of emissions and waste from rockets and satellites that a booming space economy will leave behind (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by silence7 to c/climate

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[–] xor@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

i have considered that, and it does serve a very good purpose there...
but still, launching a shitload of satellites wastes a lot of fuel and energy, and deorbiting them is rather wasteful.
im sure the same thing could be done without treating satellites like kleenex...
one of those things where profit and preserving the environment clash.

[–] evranch@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think we're still looking at an early prototype of Starlink, and there's potential to develop it in many ways as our space infrastructure develops. After all, space tech is only now advancing after decades of stagnation, driven by the reusable rocket. It's hard to think the company that invented the reusable rocket is also all in on disposable satellites, so we have to consider why that is.

The big problem is that things in LEO experience atmospheric drag and need to be boosted occasionally. Starlink sats have ion thrusters to do this and effectively reach EOL when their fuel is depleted.

On-orbit refueling is another core SpaceX goal, and there are also other companies launching experimental sats and tech demos to refuel satellites or otherwise boost them. So someday we will probably have a fleet of shepherd sats fueling and maintaining Starlink.

So why not just bigger fuel tanks then? I think they want these to come back down. Starlink is a massive beta test that turned into a full rollout way faster than expected and a large fraction of the satellites are already obsolete. However as people have already come to depend on the service, they have to keep it working as they progressively improve the satellites. And the easiest way to do this is just to let the old ones burn up and free space in the shells for new ones.

They can't even launch the real v2 satellite without Starship as the current sat is known as the "v2 mini" and is shrunk to fit in the F9 fairing. I would guess that these Starship launched versions will have bigger fuel tanks and a longer life.

[–] xor@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the problem you're not acknowledging is that the atmosphere is a limited resource that belongs to all of us. (not to mention fuel/energy issues)

i think it groovy to do some beta testing and all... but they shouldn't just keep launching disposable satellites to bridge the gap and keep service going... all space launches should be extremely well thought out, efficient, and as long lasting as possible...

like a nasa mission

sure, do some research... but don't just burn up the sky....