Comment on A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth

• youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Lmao I wish. Satellites and their components have to be “hardened” to survive extreme temperatures and radiation in space. There’s probably nothing on it you could disable with any laser you could buy. Plus there’s the matter of targeting them.

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  • fartographer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Destroying these satellites with lasers poses a similar problem to what happens when you light zombies on fire: the satellites are held in space by their momentum and the reduced atmosphere vs Earth’s gravity. If you break the satellites into pieces via laser, then now you have uncontrolled and unpredictable space junk to deal with. Some of the pieces might return sooner, but what was once a concern is now a problem. Just like a zombie at your door is very concerning, a zombie on fire at your door is an immediate problem.

    Now, what could be interesting would be sending up another satellite that sprays black paint on the sun-facing side of other satellites. The energy absorbed and then exhausted could propel it towards Earth sooner. Maybe? I dunno, I’m just a simple country Fartographer, your honor.

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    • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      No, it would run out of black paint. Give it a robot arm with scissors or something to cut the power lines on the Starlinks.

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      • fartographer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Why would we cut the power before deorbiting them? But if you wanna be more aggressive like that, then how about a magnifying glass to focus sunlight on the satellite like a bully to ants?

        Maybe exchange energy with some sort of maneuver to stay in orbit longer?

        “No officer, I did not ‘run into their car…’ I improved their gas mileage by exchanging energy.”

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  • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Now with lasers you buy perhaps, what about with the lasers you build?

    In the future where Federal Authority is concentrated on robbing and stealing elsewhere, I cannot imagine a high energy beam could not take these motherfuckers out.

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    • 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      If you have the capability to build a laser that can focus enough energy, from the ground through the atmosphere, with enough precision to lock on to an LEO constellation member long enough to disable it, you’d probably already either be captured, or working for DoD.

      Also: great, you exploded it before reentry. Now we have a hundred thousand smaller, lighter fragments skipping off the atmosphere, disbursing randomly, and spinning around like hypersonic chaff bullets for actual worthwhile spacecraft and satellites to fly through, twinkling in infrared like a billion new streaky sparkles on those telescopes. It takes a lot longer for all that bullshit to rain down, and it pollutes just the same. Tell me, who were you fighting for again and why?

      This is like when the humans blacken the sky in the Matrix to defeat the machines. Yeah it wrecked the earth, but is also didn’t defeat them and they just found something else to exploit.

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      • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I mean I was trying to Broach a theoretical, completely academic, discussion about what could or could not take these satellites out.

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  • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    How rare are these materials that are sending to space? Literally sending rare metals out of our planet. Even if they fall back down to earth. Is it even possible or viable money wise to recover them?

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    • youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nope, not viable at all. A lot of it is straight up atomized on reentry especially for the smaller devices. Some of it is rare and some is not. The wet dream of these billionaires is they will be the first to figure out space mining and then manufacture. That’s why Elon musk has spacex and the boring company. Then raw resources like precious metals become infinite over night. Hopefully capitalism dies before that happens so we can all enjoy that.

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  • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Good ole brute force is the best method, though, as you said, targeting is a huge problem. Basically you need a low Earth orbit shotgun.

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    • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Kessler syndrome though.

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      • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Oh yeah. I keep forgetting about that. I suppose I need to study it a little more to make it stick.

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    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Do they have those at Walmart?

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      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        i remember some startup tried to build a slingshot to shoot satellites into orbit with something like a bit catapult. that was 5 years ago, haven’t heard of them since.

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      • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Probably. I imagine you could probably get one at a gun show in Texas

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