Comment

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

brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Theoretically, even if we assume SpaceX is overshooting, that’s an interesting thought:

visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/

In practice though? I’m more concerned about interest in funding astronomy in the first place.

That, and big fat telescopes are fundamentally expensive. And (at least for the optical variety) “swarming” them with a bunch of cheaper units isn’t as effective as building a big one.

source

Sort:hotnew top

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Oh, I wasn’t thinking swarms the same way these million sats will be, I was thinking just using the whole payload diameter of around 9m for the lens/mirror (minus any housing) but they could potentially just buy the whole starship.

James Webb cost billions because of it’s complexity and launch costs, none of which is needed when there’s 9meters to work with without any complexity at all.

If you wanted, you could make a super crazy expensive satellite that worked just like James Webb and have a massive mirror as well, but that’s a bit different than my large quantity of cheaper telecopes in space.

source
- brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  I wonder how big you could get the mirror if you did it James Webb style in starship.
  
  Presumably 7x ~8m hexagons folded up?
  
  That is a good point though. And if one were to design a “budget” 9m space telescope, they could amortize the R&D dramatically by launching the same design many times, perhaps with different sensors for different purposes?
  
  source
  - NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Ya, that would get costs down further if they were able to amortize it over a larger quantity.
    
    We could also get them pretty far out with starship refuelling, but refuelling a starship back to full capacity to then go somewhere would raise the cost a lot. But imagine a 7x 8m hexagon one sent out into deep space. That would be super expensive though, we wouldn’t get a lot of those haha.
    
    This is all a massive big IF though. Starship being fully reusable like they think is still very far from a given, so none of this might come true in our lifetimes.
    
    source
    brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah. I prefer the idea of a bunch of 9-meters unless they can really perfect a cheap folding mirror to mass produce.
    
    A small upper stage, an ion drive or something could get it to deep space.
    
    source