This is a tradeoff we have to make with infrastructure and development in general. How do you balance human needs with pristine nature?

Do we put up long-distance power lines and wind farms even though they ruin the views? Do you tear down a forest to put up farmlands and suburbs? Do you build a dam to provide water for irrigation, even though it kills the fish and floods a valley?

Satellites are actually easier than most of those tradeoffs, because nothing lives in space and there's no nature to destroy. It only affects us.

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dgellow an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> How do you balance human needs with pristine nature?

How about we set a limit on how many satellites? That’s exactly how to balance

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croes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They hinder the view on asteroids coming our way.

The purpose of most of these satellites is internet access where we already have less limited possibilities with less maintenance costs like constant replacement

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Legend2440 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No they don't. It's more of an issue for long-exposure galaxies and nebula.

And asteroids are an extremely rare threat in the first place. It's literally a once-in-a-million-years kind of event.

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croes an hour ago | parent [-]

Dinosaur killers? Yes.

City killers? That size hits more often

> Asteroids with a diameter more than 30–50 metres (100–150ft) are large enough to make it through our atmosphere intact, however, and the chance of this happening is estimated to be around once in every 100 years.

> The damage from an impact of this size would be wide-ranging, and could wipe out an entire city if they were to impact a heavily populated area.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/chances-ast...

	▲	Legend2440 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		We lack the technology to detect this size of asteroid with enough time to do anything about it. Luckily, the majority of the earth's surface is unpopulated. Most of these rocks hit the ocean or Siberia and cause few or no casualties. The odds of it hitting a major city are quite low.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They hinder the view on asteroids coming our way

Source?