I missed reading Starlink's latest conjunction report when it came out a bit over a month ago.

[amgine@mamot.fr]

@sundogplanets

I have been of the opinion for a while now this is deliberate. The goal is, in fact, to precipitate a Kessler syndrome. It fits with a number of other nihilistic actions M Musk has taken, and his particular attraction to activities in which he gains recompense for doing harms.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

They also have a list of deorbits, I haven't managed to get the pdf from the FCC (because their website fucking sucks, on purpose I'm sure). And scribd wants me to pay to download it.

Anyway, the PC mag article says 260 Starlinks reentered. At some point I'll count up the gen 1 and gen 2 and get a mass estimate. But that's 1 or 2 a day. And a lot of new weird metal in the stratosphere. Thanks, SpaceX.

[goatrodeo@mstdn.social]

@sundogplanets
I’m old enough to remember laying out in the back yard late at night to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station as it made it earthly revolutions roughly every 90 minutes or so. Was just enthralled by the technology. No more, sadly no more. #TooMuchOfAGoodThing

[marrekoo@urbanists.social]

@sundogplanets

Systems requiring so much active corrections to maintain a safe state are inherently bound to fail over time.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

They also list 4 "disposal failures" which are satellites that died before SpaceX purposefully chucked them into the atmosphere. This includes Starlink 34343 which either exploded or got hit by debris a couple months ago. https://keeptrack.space/deep-dive/starlink-34343

4 out of thousands of launched satellites is pretty good. But when you have nearly 11,000 satellites, you have to operate COMPLETELY PERFECTLY every minute of every day, forever.

Please don't fuck up more than you already have, SpaceX.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@Amgine If they wanted Kessler Syndrome they could have very easily done it already.

[davecb@hachyderm.io]

@sundogplanets Are we better off if a (smaller?) cascade happens early, and starlink needs to deorbit as many of its satellites as it can?

[action_jay@thecanadian.social]

@sundogplanets I feel like there's gonna be a day where they just abandon it all for whatever asinine reason and it rains space junk all over, all at once, with no accountability

[quizzicus@mastodon.online]

@sundogplanets So a modern Ted Kaczynski could simply DDoS space-track.org?

[startswithabang@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets Bah, science in its infancy is one of the most promising, and frustrating (for its lack of definitive answers), types all at once!

[rin3d@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets I dont see any reason to freak out about it. They are low orbit sats with natural fallback of 5 years, spacex could go bust and all the sats left and it'd all be gone in a few years.
They all are designed to full burn up before risk to ground and no evidence of them failing to fully burn after hundreds of burns.

The real shit you should worry about is high orbit sats that are 20 years old and actually able to cause Kessler syndrome.

[amgine@mamot.fr]

@sundogplanets

But not with plausible deniability.

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@sundogplanets
I'm actually looking forward to the Kessler Cascade thing. Yeah, it might make GPS a bit hard for a while, but it might shut some of the nonces up,

[jaztrophysicist@social.sciences.re]

@sundogplanets @startswithabang oh yes as if the one single thing the climate still needed in this era was a good trashing of the ozone layer by catalytic metals.

[zhksh@sigmoid.social]

@sundogplanets i have worked for ESA and heard multiple stories about them trying to get *someone" at Starlink on the phone because of imminent collisions and missing agreements on who takes evasive action (settled now). Pretty wild

[zhksh@sigmoid.social]

@LeDiva @sundogplanets lots of efforts at ESA

[swordgeek@mstdn.ca]

@sundogplanets Collisions at all will be terrible, but at what point do we reach critical mass for a runaway chain reaction?

[michael_w_busch@mastodon.online]

@swordgeek

If active avoidance fails, collisions would start happening in low orbit within a few days.

@sundogplanets and company have done the math: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

[brkloeckner@piaille.fr]

@Rin3d @sundogplanets Do you understand that the person you answer is a specialist of the topic, and if I remember correctly has been investigating actual debris from Starlink satellites that fell on the ground (see https://thenarwhal.ca/space-junk-falling-50th-parallel/, even with a photo of her with space debris)?
I cannot be sure you are a man, but your message looks like a strong contender for the worst mansplaining of the year.

[davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social]

@falken @sundogplanets

Starlinks keep falling on my head,
But that doesn't mean that I will soon be turning dead