FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK NOOOOO
ca.pcmag.com/news/16760/fcc-ap…
FCC Approves Reflect Orbital's Giant Mirror Satellite That Astronomers Hate
The FCC says the most controversial aspect of Reflect Orbital's Earendil-1 satellite, the giant mirror, falls out of its purview since the regulator mainly focuses on radio spectrum.PCMag Canada
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cuan_knaggs
Unknown parent • • •Cavyherd
Unknown parent • • •@_elena
& the whole premise is so fucked up. Quoted from one article: "goal of creating a way to power solar farms at night"
Dude, have you never heard of batteries...?
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
Unknown parent • • •@_elena
If I remember correctly, most international law on space came during the height of the Cold War, when neither the USA nor USSR were willing to accept the other having any say on what they launched. This led to the idea that the country containing the launch site is entirely responsible for the things that are launched.
Some of this is sensible. There!s a ceiling on sovereign airspace because it doesn’t make sense that ownership of the moon would change every few minutes as the Earth rotates (for example).
There should be more international regulation, but if the USA doesn’t agree, how do you enforce it? A few countries have anti-satellite weapons, but shooting down US-owned satellites would be politically impossible even where technically feasible (and likely cause more environmental damage than leaving them).
Androcat
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
@_elena
IT would be a shame if the sattelites or the rockets used for their launching needed parts sourced from other places...
Of course, the best way to fight an orbital threat is before it gets launched.
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Want some reminders of how fucking terrible this idea is?
bigthink.com/starts-with-a-ban…
theconversation.com/a-us-start…
darksky.org/news/organizationa…
Journalists: please write about how dangerous this is.
Lawyers (especially if you're based in the US): please help fight this, it will take legal action now
DarkSky International opposes Reflect Orbital’s proposed orbital illumination system | DarkSky International
Drew Reagan (DarkSky International)reshared this
Jens Finkhäuser, El Duvelle and Aral Balkan reshared this.
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •GREAT guess I'm not going to sleep tonight either. Maybe there will be auroras. I need to enjoy the night sky as much as I can now, I guess.
Fuck you, FCC, for approving this. Fuck Reflect Orbital and all the copycats it's going to spawn. Fuck techbros everywhere. Fuck venture capitalists for funding this destructive, useless bullshit.
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Yet another article submitted for The Conversation, with some last minute modifications to express how fucking terrible the FCC's decision on Reflect Orbital is, which fit in perfectly with the overall theme of the article.
(How many articles in The Conversation is too many? I think this is my 5th this year. Every single one about different aspects of how techbros are destroying things in orbit)
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •I just reached out to a bunch of journalists who already wrote about how awful Reflect Orbital is. I hope at least some of them will write more about it.
(Please DM me if you have suggestions for journalists I should reach out to who might be interested in writing about this to a large audience)
Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •RE: beige.party/@adub/116896129245…
Oh fantastic, the FCC approved Reflect Orbital on Matariki. Just to make it more hideously disrespectful to absolutely everything.
Relatedly, I got interviewed months ago as one of 3 experts for this Aotearoa-based podcast that just came out, which talks about Matariki, access to the sky, and how bad the situation is in orbit: linktr.ee/kpcnz
kpcnz Official: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook | Linktree
LinktreeProf. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Prof. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Reflect Orbital is going to launch a giant fucking mirror into orbit.
SpaceX has asked to launch a million gigantic fucking orbital data centers, and they've already got 11,000 sats in orbit.
The UN website that allows everyone to see what new satellites have been launched has not been updated since February. fed.brid.gy/r/bsky.app/profile…
And tomorrow, we're going to run out of satellite catalogue numbers, Y2K in orbit: celestrak.org/
Time to go for a walk in the woods...
CelesTrak
celestrak.orgProf. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •Well, I thought this was getting published next week, but it's out now!
Come read about Weird Space Stuff, sponsored by Reflect Orbital and the FCC (who both suck massively)
theconversation.com/a-giant-mi…
The U.S. just approved a giant space mirror to test ‘sunlight on demand.’ Low Earth orbit is getting weird
The ConversationProf. Sam Lawler
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •I LOVE waking up on a Saturday morning and thinking about nothing but Reflect Orbital and how to fight it. And then sending lots of emails and texts to my many astronomer colleagues who woke up similarly angry this morning.
The one thing that gives me hope is that 99.9% of people who find out about this react by saying some variant of "Wow that's such a stupid, useless, destructive idea." We have to figure out how to leverage that sentiment.
Fuck you, Reflect Orbital. I will keep fighting.
craignicol
in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler • • •@AlisonW
"I've got a fantastic idea. You know how the planet is burning because of greenhouse gases. How about... More sunlight?"