It is a bit ridiculous these days and it's only going to get worse with basically every major country needing to do a version of this for defence purposes.

Go out tonight and just look at the sky for 5 mins and I'll guarantee you'll see a couple of satellites flying past.

As with a lot of other technologies, the genie is out of the bottle and I don't think we're putting him back there again, this is the future.

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wat10000 3 hours ago | parent [-]

What makes it "ridiculous"? I can go outside and look at the sky for five minutes and see airplanes flying past, does that mean our air traffic is also ridiculous?

Of all the things to be outraged over... satellites provide extremely valuable services and are pretty near harmless. There's the pollution from the launches, some uncertain concern over putting materials into the upper atmosphere when they reenter, and that's about it. The thing people complain about most is that they get in the way of photographs of the starts. Which is annoying, but also seems to be easily worked around, and is pretty small potatoes compared to planet-wide communications. Your neighbor operating a leaf blower with a dirty two-stroke engine is harming you more than these satellites are.

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wolvoleo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The air traffic is a lot more guided. Airplanes don't go anywhere unless approved. Satellites are just circling in different directions and constantly crossing paths.

Luckily most sats in LEO do have maneuvering thrusters. But the fuel is very limited and the more of them are up there the more often they have to do corrections. Eventually something will have to give.

	▲	phyzix5761 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		All satellite orbits must be pre approved before a spacecraft can ever leave the ground. They're more heavily regulated than aircraft.
	▲	wat10000 19 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Every satellite is tracked. Potential collisions are monitored and avoidance maneuvers performed. A significant amount of air traffic is completely uncontrolled and relies on looking out the window to avoid collisions. Satellite paths are a lot more predictable, and there's also way more volume to work with.