| ▲ | ck2 2 hours ago |
| no, just no make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere * https://satellitemap.space/ * https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042 |
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| ▲ | usui 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| You want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay? EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars? |
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| ▲ | sailingparrot an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay? You are clearly not grasping the magnitude change in how many satellites we used to launch vs how many we are launching nowadays. In 2026, we are putting 10x as many objects in space as we did just 8 years ago, with Starlink being the bulk of it: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-.... Starlink has 12.5k satellites in space and looking to ramp up massively, the biggest "multi-decade incumbent", oneweb, has 5% as many, about 600. | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay? https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... "Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years." (And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.) | |
| ▲ | ck2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | we cannot have private trillionaires milking "privatize the profits and social the costs" no more, it has to end immediately they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate pre-pay costs to society before damaging society | | |
| ▲ | bubblegumcrisis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | also, criminal murder charges for those who enable actions like, "poisoning a water supply," "creating an opiode epidemic," "giving millions of people cancer, knowingly" I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business." |
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| ▲ | ls612 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The amount of matter which enters Earth's atmosphere from non-manmade sources is far higher than any conceivable amount of space junk today. |
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| ▲ | ThrowawayTestr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Do you have any proof that starlink satellites are worse than the tons of space debris that enter the atmosphere every day? |
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| ▲ | tzs 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The satellites aren't worse. It is the rockets that are worse. On the way up they emit various things into the stratosphere, which is about the worst place you can emit stuff when it comes to affecting the atmosphere. It has not been a major problem so far because in its entire history humanity has only launched around 35000 rockets that have reached the stratosphere. Ramp that rate up significantly and it comes something we serious need to worry about. (That's not to say that space debris reentering the atmosphere isn't bad. It also unfortunately deposits various things in the upper atmosphere that we really do not want to put there). |
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| ▲ | redsocksfan45 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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