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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
2d
Everybody has to coordinate with Starlink because SPACEX CONTROLS ORBIT. That's against the Outer Space Treaty.

Your engineering challenge, SpaceX, is to provide your services with fewer satellites. Not yell at everyone else for having satellites too.

mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117407452552952599
This note is quoting mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117407452552952599
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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
2d
SpaceX just got approved for 15,000 more direct-to-cell satellites: www.fcc.gov/document/spacex-approved-ngso-mss-system-direct-device-services

Giant, bright, radio-loud. Fuck. I just saw SO MANY SATELLITES in my sky. Guess there will be more. And then lots of debris.
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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
2d
But DON'T WORRY EVERYONE, the FCC will almost certainly approve SpaceX's one million satellite filing soon, so this will seem like nothing!
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stuart yeates @stuartyeates@cloudisland.nz
2d
@sundogplanets

Don't worry, a single EMP in low earth orbit should take them all out, right?
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Enemy of the Empire @phasorburn@phasorburn.com
2d
@stuartyeates @sundogplanets Multiple EMP would be needed since they encompass the earth in a shell. Then the satellites would not be able to be controlled for collision avoidance. Hello Kessler Syndrome.

Better to just ask Grok to take control and deorbit them all into the ocean at Point Nemo.
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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
2d
@phasorburn @stuartyeates A colleague told me about a talk she saw at a UN conference on nuclear war (!!) where they did a bunch of simulations and (this is my second-hand understanding) that a lot of the radiation from a nuclear explosion in orbit ends up getting trapped in Earth's magnetic field lines, so many (possibly all) satellites fly through and get fried, no matter where the explosion was.

Nuclear explosions in orbit (or anywhere!) are very very bad.
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Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
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@phasorburn @stuartyeates The author of that study was very unhappy to hear about our study showing that if all satellites in orbit lose control at once, the expectation time to a collision is just over 2 days outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/. They thought it would take longer.
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stuart yeates @stuartyeates@cloudisland.nz
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@sundogplanets @phasorburn

Human guesswork is very bad at statistics.

This has always been the case.
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