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SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds

Abstract from the paper in the article:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

Large constellations of small satellites will significantly increase the number of objects orbiting the Earth. Satellites burn up at the end of service life during reentry, generating aluminum oxides as the main byproduct. These are known catalysts for chlorine activation that depletes ozone in the stratosphere. We present the first atomic-scale molecular dynamics simulation study to resolve the oxidation process of the satellite's aluminum structure during mesospheric reentry, and investigate the ozone depletion potential from aluminum oxides. We find that the demise of a typical 250-kg satellite can generate around 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles, which may endure for decades in the atmosphere. Aluminum oxide compounds generated by the entire population of satellites reentering the atmosphere in 2022 are estimated at around 17 metric tons. Reentry scenarios involving mega-constellations point to over 360 metric tons of aluminum oxide compounds per year, which can lead to significant ozone depletion.

PS: wooden satellites can help mitigate this https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01456-z

tyler ,

The roughly 10-centimetre-long cube is made of magnolia-wood panels and has an aluminium frame, solar panels, circuit boards and sensors. The panels incorporate Japanese wood-joinery methods that do not rely on glue or metal fittings.

When LignoSat plunges back to Earth, after six months to a year of service, the magnolia will incinerate completely and release only water vapour and carbon dioxide

Huh? I’m confused.

Gsus4 OP ,
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

heh, yea, the satellites are not just wood for sure, they goofed. But it's less metals, which helps.

bstix ,

The article linked at he bottom has a picture and more info on the wooden satellites.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/japanese-scientists-wooden-satellite

tyler ,

uh. that article has less information? Unless you're seeing something I don't. My comment literally has more information about the satellite than the futurism article.

bstix ,

Your quote is not from the OP article, or maybe it's been changed.

tyler ,

I have two quotes. One from the OP article and the second from the article you linked.

Hadriscus ,

damn, starlink is my only way to access the internet. I wish there were an alternative that's usable. Traditional access providers don't work and cell data is extremely slow and there's no coverage where I live. I pay for Starlink with a bitter taste

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

Might I enquire as to where this remote location might be?

Like on a general basis, no need for addresses.

As a Finn I'm forever spoiled in terms of wireless coverage. We got tons of solitary forests. But you can get an internet connection in literally all of them.

97% of the country gets 4g. And not of the people. The country.

Dkarma ,

I love it when ppl from small countries don't get why there isn't wifi / cell coverage literally everywhere...

kevindqc ,

I think they're aware, given they said they're spoiled?

Senshi ,

Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.

Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².

USA have 35 inhabitants per km².

ILikeBoobies ,

That’s not a good measurement as populations are not spread evenly. You could have 10 000 people per km^2 in the US then have 0.001 people per km^2 in another

RunawayFixer , (edited )

The Finn already addressed this in their first post: 97% of the country has 4g. That is country, not people in the country. So yes, a reindeer in Lapland has a better potential internet connection than many rural north americans.

Edit: I found some recent numbers: this carrier claims to provide 4g to 99% of the population, 5g to 96%. https://www.dna.fi/wholesale/about-us/networks That 2nd statistic must be pretty damn rare, the country of Nokia indeed.

ILikeBoobies ,

My point was more that there is a lot more nothing land in the US

RunawayFixer , (edited )

And why are you unwilling to accept that there is a lot of nothing land in Finland? Most of Finland is a lot of nothing land, plagued by mosquitoes in the summer and darkness in the winter.

Your country is neither unique, nor exceptional in this regard.

ILikeBoobies ,

Because I understand how distance works

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah since most people don't live in the parts of the country no-one lives in, when looking at how many people are covered, it gets pretty good. And we didn't take long to get 5g to a lot of people.

Here's a coverage map from Elisa. https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/

RunawayFixer ,

Tbh, that 4g coverage up north looks pretty damn good for how few people live there. To me it just makes no economic sense to provide that good a service there. So I'm curious and as a Finn you might know: does it make economic sense or was this investment done for other reasons?

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

I wish I had a good answer, but I don't, really.

Probably a combination of just providing a service and having good technology to do so and companies which want to sell said technology, I guess?

Everyone enjoys the internet. I might be assuming, but the sort of "if you want services, move to a city" sort of rhetoric that might exist somewhere in the US doesn't really exist for us Finns. We understand wanting to live in the middle of the woods while still having access to basic services.

The Northern part is very sparsely populated, yeah (well not compared to some other places in the middle of huge states in the US but) something like two people per square kilometer, but rural living is pretty common throughout the country, so the whole country understands the need for them, perhaps?

Also, I think a lot of the towers are older towers for just 2g, going back from GSM to NMT, those towers always just being updated with newer technology, again perhaps? (I'm too lazy to research this now.) And the need to have just cellular networks to be able to call emergency services if you're lost deep in the woods has always been a pretty high priority, I think?

The only places you maybe can't get cell reception in Finland are some places in the middle of a few national parks in Lapland.

RunawayFixer ,

Hey, thanks for taking the time to answer.

Afaik, high internet speed requires higher frequencies and high frequencies reach less far + have less penetration through/around obstacles. That's what makes providing "4g" virtually everywhere easy (good enough for phone calls at least), but if they want to provide actual high speeds everywhere, then it suddenly becomes not so easy (nor cheap).

That the USA and Canada don't provide proper high speed internet access/choice to many of their rural citizens is caused by the rent-seeking mentality of their network companies + the governments that enable this. Most of those rural citizens live in places where there are more than enough people for it to make economic sense to invest, but investing would lower short term profits, so they don't. Instead those customers are stuck with the choice between a single provider who is offering bad service, or no service at all. And as we've seen with the Boobies American, they've got enough of their dumb citizens convinced that they are oh so exceptional that this is the best that they could ever expect.

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

Afaik, high internet speed requires higher frequencies and high frequencies reach less far + have less penetration through/around obstacles. That's what makes providing "4g" virtually everywhere easy (good enough for phone calls at least), but if they want to provide actual high speeds everywhere, then it suddenly becomes not so easy (nor cheap).

Why are you putting "4g" in quotes? It is 4g. Basic cellular networks cover the entire country, and using 4g speeds has been common for a long time. Hell, back when I was in the army, I had a laptop with a mobile connection. It was 3g back then, but it worked, even from the deepest of woods we were in.

The terrain of Finland probably makes this easier for us, as this is a rather flat country. We have literally no mountains. A few fells (=large hill, essentially) , but no mountains.

RunawayFixer ,

The quotes are there because it's a common misconception that as soon you have any kind of 4g signal, you have access to a fast connection, which is not the case. So in many countries at some point they proclaim that "xx%" of the population now has access to "4g", which will be technically true, but the actual % that has access to fast 4g will be substantially lower.

Senshi ,

You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²).
The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².

Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.

ILikeBoobies ,

Compare the diameter of the two countries

If you only look at one line between LA and NYC, that is a lot more cable being laid. Now add something remote like the middle of Alaska vs the middle of Finland. We can assume for this example that they both service 100 people but the cost to do so for the US is a lot higher

That’s why using density makes no sense

Senshi ,

Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.

And sure, Alaska definitely it's expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities.
And still, the extremely low pop density means it's only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it's pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

Huh. TIL.

But these are sort of not that good indicators, because the US has huge population centers on the coasts, and nothing in the vast center.

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

estona has cell coverage on it's intire rail network with 5g wifi? i read the Wikipedia page for Elron

Bitflip ,

At least one hour outside any Midwest city.

nyctre ,

Rural US most likely. Place is too big, too few people to be worth for comoanies to invest. So many places only have 1-2 providers at best, afaik.

enbyecho ,

I live in rural California. We only just this year are able to pick up a faint LTE signal. I think it might get us a very unstable 1-2 Mbps if we hold the phone just right. We have no cable, DSL or other land-based options and because of the topography can't pick up the local wireless provider, which is very expensive anyway - like $175/month for 50/5

So without Starlink our only options are crappy regular satellite providers like Hughesnet which impose very low quotas - 10 GB monthly for day time usage - and have insane latency.

It bugs the shit out of me I have to give money to that fuckwit but without it we live in the dark ages.

TheGalacticVoid ,

What about the remaining 3%?

Also, to (hopefully) answer your question:

Ignore Finland/Europe for a second and look at North America. The US has many population centers along the coasts and very few in the west inland. People still live there, so they need internet access, but oftentimes there aren't enough people to justify expanding coverage across such a huge area without subsidizing said coverage with government funds or other customers, so there are bound to be coverage gaps if you don't have unlimited money to throw at the problem. If you take a look at Canada, you can see how much worse the problem is as they have even more area to cover, and it reflects in the fact that they have some of the highest wireless prices in the world.

Also remember that these are wealthy countries. Plenty of other regions have the same problems with population density and physical size, and they can't throw money at the problem like we can.

The TL;DR is that these deadzones exist in a ton of places because a lot of low-population areas are physically huge.

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

I remind you that it's the remaining 3% of the country, physically. It's not 3% of the population. It's just some places in Lapland which don't have the greatest coverage. And the 97% figure is 4g, 3g has better coverage.

The Northern part of Finland is very sparsely populated and people like internet and cables are very labour-intensive compared to setting up mobile network towers.

But yeah, compared to the US, we're not really that sizable. We're like the size of Montana or so, and they've around a fifth of our population.

tldr Yeah, it is about the size, but also, with Nokia and so on, we've sort of quite a lot of good know-how on building wireless networks. We're the most sparsely populated country in the EU, but I think there's quite a lot of Spain where there's much worse coverage.

ILikeBoobies ,

Majority of Canada is like that

Hadriscus ,

We're in Mayotte. Two undersea cables connect us to nearby continents (cf submarinecablemap.com) but they're down most of the time. We haven't had a connection in the last six months so we finally subbed to Starlink. Well, strictly speaking there was a connection but it would take anywhere between 5mn to 15mn to load the text of a static webpage, no images or anything else... forget about sending data, using forums... I had to get out and walk uphill for a minute or two to use my phone's cell data

Hadriscus ,

lol that's fantastic. Out in the forest with internet. How come, cell towers are closely packed ?

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

~75% of the country is forest, so it's kinda hard to not be in a forest.

Idk if they're closely packed.

https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/

Coverage map.

jj4211 ,

My family has Starlink, they live in mountainous rural. Cell towers aren't too far away, but mountains get in the way of decent signal. No one is running any cables their way, despite a local telco taking money explicitly for providing internet service.

Dasus ,
@Dasus@lemmy.world avatar

We Finns don't have any of those pesky mountains.

rab ,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

We are in the mountains in rural Alberta

Lutra ,

One thing to note - The science is still calculating. Yet. SpaceX (and presumably others) are allowed to continue and increase what they're doing. This is the bass ackwards way to protect future us.

Its the same mentality as driving in a random direction for 20 minutes while someone looks in the car for the map on the off chance that when you get the map open you'll be where you wanted to be anyway.

It has the potential (and at this point, just the potential) for planet level changes, and is being done by one group. Should I, a random dude, be able to do something that might possibly affect the entire planet, and the planet as a whole just have to wait and see how it turns out?

The hopeful thought that its probably nothing, before anyone can prove that it's probably nothing, makes a bet where the short term wins are mine, but any long term losses are everyone else's.

JohnDClay , (edited )

SpaceX has been receptive to design changes to starlink in the past to minimize impact, like decreasing reflectivity and reflection angles for astronomers. They might be receptive to moving to different alloy for the body construction.

Magnesium comes to mind that would be light but expensive. Steel alloys might be cheap and heavy options for later when starship is operational. Would those have similar effects on ozone, or is it only the aluminum oxides?

Gsus4 OP , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

Magnesium oxides can also serve as a catalyst for lots of reactions, but I'm not sure if it will have the same effect in this specific context, I'd guess it would.

That's why I added the link to the wooden satallites, that also reduces the metal debris somewhat and reduces other effects like radio interference.

JohnDClay ,

Wood is interesting, but the article doesn't address off gassing at all, which is a huge problem for communication satellites. Is there a way to keep the wood from off gassing? For 3d prints in vacuum, they metal coat them to keep the gas inside. Or maybe you could resin soak them? With hopefully an extremely UV stable resin. But I didn't know what the weight trade looks like then, resin is heavy.

But if you're looking composites anyway, carbon fiber would be another great option. Lightweight but with a few manufacturing constraints. But should burn up to carbon dioxide on reentry.

TopRamenBinLaden , (edited )

I just read an interesting research article from NASA that shows that carbon fiber survives reentry better than our previous scientific consensus claimed.

Some carbon fiber will burn up into carbon dioxide, but a good chunk of it will surprisingly survive reentry conditions. I think you are very right that it should be a better material to use for starlink.

FiniteBanjo ,

I feel like it shouldn't even have to be said out loud that gravity and weight correlate, but their orbit would be heavily impacted by replacing aluminium with five times as much steel for the same durability. You might be able to get away with slightly less if you consider the steel has more heat resistance, but idk.

JohnDClay ,

Yeah you'd need to put up fewer sats per launch. But they might still have enough lift capacity on starship to do that.

intensely_human ,

When there’s drag involved it’s different, but in vacuum there’s no relationship between weight and orbit.

Are you referring to the effects of upper atmospheric drag on the orbital maintenance requirements?

Malfeasant ,

Weight does not affect orbit. It affects the amount of fuel needed to reach orbit, and therefore cost, but not the orbit itself.

FiniteBanjo ,

Exactly, it needs a higher angular momentum at the same altitude.

CosmoNova ,

You would think space engineers would‘ve run those numbers before sending tens of thousands of them in orbit. It‘s really annoying that we can only hope for the best at this point.

Gsus4 OP ,
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

I was just worried about Kessler syndrome and just felt relaxed that their orbits were low enough to naturally decay and never become a permanent problem. What this research seems to show is that the aluminum oxide dust does not settle in days/weeks, but it is fine enough to stay there for decades :/

Cocodapuf ,

Why would you think that?

When I fire up the grill, I don't do calculations on how much weight in CO2 I'm putting into the air and then extrapolate that to find the total mass of CO2 that grills generate globally. I usually just make burgers.

That space engineer made sure that they were on the right side of the rocket equation and they made it to orbit (which is hard on its own).

I agree that thorough environmental studies really ought to be happening, but I'm not surprised that aspects got missed.

Peppycito ,
@Peppycito@sh.itjust.works avatar

I fully expect they did. I think this is partly why Elon went from "there's no planet B" to a Saudi simp. Way to much money to be made to waste time on the concerns of scientists and the welfare of the planet.

treadful ,
@treadful@lemmy.zip avatar

They do, and did. Perhaps this reaction with the ozone layer just hasn't been considered until now.

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

it's not just musk, Bezos too.

ugjka ,
@ugjka@lemmy.world avatar

I hate Elon, but he ain't the only one trashing the LEO

PraiseTheSoup ,

Okay, but he's trashing it the fastest and for the dumbest reasons.

dev_null ,

If I have to compare, giving people in underserved areas access to the Internet is a better reason than spy sats or satellite TV.

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

Tv is still kinda important, like backup of streaming Tv (freely&freesat)

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

Give calyx some airwaves.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Quite possible. Let's fix our ISPs so that all of humanity has access to bandwidth priced to a value that they can afford for their area. A huge project that means lots of union jobs and an economic payoff for decades. If we pull this off Starlink won't have any customers except very marginal cases.

Fix the problem directly instead of fixing the solution unintended side effects

postmateDumbass ,

Gee, where are the boatload of billions that the US congress passed for nationwide broadband?

Fucking ripoff telecon companies.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I thought that program was ended in 2018?

Corkyskog ,

They should just pay people to lay the cable directly instead of awarding it programmatically to companies.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

That's what my city is basically doing. They're contracting with a local installer to lay cable, then selling service on that network. No money is being awarded, in fact the contract states that they get paid with part of the subscription fee, so they are motivated to get people connected quickly so they can start collecting. The city owns the network and ISPs compete over customers on that network. They claim it'll take 2 years for everyone to be connected, which is pretty quick (but the proof is in the pudding).

Seems like a decent system to me. We're being promised 10gbps available, but pricing details aren't finalized yet (and my router only handles 1gbps anyway, and I'm too lazy and cheap to upgrade everything).

AFAIK, this plan was in the works before the infrastructure bill was passed, so I don't think we're taking money from that, but I could be wrong.

slackassassin ,

I got fiber in the middle of nowhere from it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

KnightontheSun ,

Whereas we are smack dab in the middle of cities, but just far enough out of reach to be stuck with 20Mb DSL that will never improve.

oatscoop ,
@oatscoop@midwest.social avatar

I'm a 7 minute drive from downtown and my options are satellite, cellular, or fixed wireless. Everyone around me has gigabit ethernet, but due to costs involved in running fiber and the fact my little community is mostly old folks (and thus likely not going to buy in) ISPs don't want to "invest" in us.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I don't know how much has changed, I did an internship with a major ISP while I was a student, at the time I was told that the stronger the local government the less fiber there was. And it came because of the tax code.

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

apparently fiber.ee is yt hd verified, never heard of it before, im using telia at the moment.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Why not both? I kinda want Starlink for road trips and camping. As in, pull into a national park, set up camp, do normal Internet things, then go hike the park the next day or whatever. I could even work from a national park if I really wanted to, which would be really cool.

rbesfe , (edited )

So they take 17 tons of emissions (from all satellites, not just starlink), which are basically nothing on an atmospheric scale, then extrapolate that to 360 and start freaking out. Peak quality journalism.

OhmasMom ,

its not a jurnalist coming up with this its from a paper. And as far as i understand they took information on satelite mass increasefrom another paper which had a "a comprehensive body of data"(https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020AGUFMGC0420004H)

timmymac ,

That's just dumb virtue signalling crap.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

Before anyone jumps on the Anti-Musk train, read the article, please. They admit that they don't understand the complications that could arise and that they don't have any hard figures for the damage being caused. I'll be the first to jump in and say that it's probably a bad thing to just let metals burn in in atmo, but let's make sure we discuss the facts, and not just the politics of the potential polluter.

nevemsenki ,

Ah yes, the usual method of waiting until the issue becomes confirmed and also way too severe to fix instead of acting on precaution and harming profits of private companies. What could go wrong?

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, this is a different method. It's the one where we get all of the facts before we take action. Maybe you aren't up on it, but knee-jerk is so 1700s.

OsrsNeedsF2P ,

We don't have to wait until it's "fully confirmed" to start being concerned about it. Remember climate change denial? We were in the "we don't know if humans are causing it" phase for a while.

I also agree, let's not jump on the anti-Musk team for this, but satellites burning up has always been a rather obvious source of pollution, and it's good to see more discussion on it

GoodEye8 ,

We were in the "we don't know if we're causing it" phase for a long time because big oil knew about global warming and deliberately ran disinformation campaigns so they could keep profiteering. Had Exxon done the right thing in the 70s we wouldn't have this looming crisis.

Peppycito ,
@Peppycito@sh.itjust.works avatar

And now we're in the "is burning up thousands of satellites bad?" phase of space exploration. I'll be waiting for spacex to do the right thing.

GoodEye8 ,

Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending corporations here. I'm simply stating the fact that climate change denial wasn't the case of waiting until it's "fully confirmed", it was pretty much confirmed back in the 70s. They even had predictions for the next century on how things will go bad if nothing is done and the last time I checked we were pretty on course with their predictions. When it came to the scientific consensus, it was pretty much "fully confirmed". It was simply the public opinion where it wasn't "fully confirmed" because corporations deliberately ran disinformation to make it seem like scientists didn't know what they were talking about.

But this paper isn't really confirming anything. The paper itself says that the model does not account for all the factors and to literally quote the paper:

As reentry rates increase, it is crucial to further explore the concerns highlighted in this study.

This paper is not presenting a final conclusion, it's presenting concerns that need further studies. let's wait for further studies and if there's scientific consensus about it being an issue I'm all for bringing out the pitchforks. In the mean let's keep calm and dread over the doom and gloom that is climate change.

hglman ,

It's highlighting a potential significant risk. Major ozone loss is much worse than lack of internet. The high uncertainty of the paper is easily offset by the harm that would be caused if the paper is correct.

intensely_human ,

Well, maybe it’s offset. It’s hard to say whether A > B or B < A when you don’t know the value of either one.

GoodEye8 ,

So what are we supposed to do, halt all space flights until we figure this out?

Without further research going into how much damage it's doing there's no way to say what our next steps should be. Maybe everything we're doing is still within acceptable limits? Maybe we need tighter regulation on materials going into space. Maybe some materials need to be outright banned.

The only reasonable thing we can do is study it further. Expecting instant result based on one study that only outlines a potential risk is quite frankly just doomerist behavior.

intensely_human ,

So you’re saying that in the 70s they had predictions about how things will go bad for the next century?

Where are these predictions? It’s been 50 years so at least some of these predictions should be checkable now.

I would feel so much better if I could see some examples of climate science predictions being proven accurate.

GoodEye8 ,

It's pretty public knowledge by now. If you search "ExxonMobil climate prediction" I'm sure you can find a starting point. I recommend finding all the Exxon papers because they're quite eye opening.

intensely_human ,

Yeah, and now despite what the scientists say, everyone believes climate change is going to render Earth uninhabitable, and we are taking massive steps to avoid the problem as if it were an existential threat, which the science again does not support.

We’re treating climate change as if it were as serious as a planet killer asteroid, and we’re massively violating people’s rights as if it were.

OsrsNeedsF2P ,

Can't tell if this is sarcasm, orr

gaael , (edited )

Like maybe wait a few years and finance some science to check that your mega constellation of satellites (built to fail after only a few years to make sure your rocket company never goes out of work) won't be a fucking nuisance on so many levels before you actually launch them ?
This "get all the facts before taking action" ?

Edit: I think I knee-jerked

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, you mean a study on the Satellite Internet Constellations that have been in orbit since the 1990s, a full 30 years before Starlink launched? As with nearly everything else, Musk isn't the first to do whatever he does, he's just the loudest. If Starlink hadn't launched we would still be facing the same problems. Thankfully, he's a big enough ass that he makes a easy target for these kinds of things.

gaael ,

Maybe I didn't get my facts straight, but iirc there are around 7.5k satellites up there, with starlink current count about 5.5k. And I think I read they got the greenlight for the 7.5k gen 2 sats launches.
That looks like a scale change to me. Associated with the short lifespan (which contrasts with the situation 30 years ago, where launches were more expensive), it's kind of a new situation and should have warranted a more careful approach.

So musk isn't the first one to launch satellites, I agree. But the way it's done is kinda new, and mostly on the worse side. And I'm not saying the old way was good, and not absolving previous actors from responsability in the pollution.

nevemsenki ,

Sure, PFAS were also considered a nonsignificant issue until they weren't, only it's too late to unfuck it now. Well, no harm in generating more potential ticking time bombs I guess.

intensely_human ,

“All the facts” is counterfactual, superstitious thinking. There is no such thing as “all the facts”, except in game theory examples like tic-tac-toe.

In all realms other than small mathematical models, there’s no circumstance under which one has all the facts.

puchaczyk ,

Yeah, PFAS comes to mind. It took decades to confirm it's harmful to humans but at this point it is everywhere and hard to get rid of. Worst part is they try to use other chemicals to replace PFAS, but again how harmful they are we don't know and we will learn that decades later too because companies don't want to make long term research before releasing the product. Enviroment shouldn't be a billionaire's testing ground.

intensely_human ,

So if moving from PFAS to alternate chemicals means moving foolishly into untested chemicals, why didn’t they wait to test them? Were they forced to make the change?

gian ,

Ah yes, the usual method of waiting until the issue becomes confirmed and also way too severe to fix instead of acting on precaution and harming profits of private companies.

No, but as even them don't understand what the complications are and how much the damages could be, maybe to wait to have at least some hard number looks like a good idea.

What could go wrong?

And what could go wrong if we start to fight a problem that we don't understand how big it is, maybe using the wrong solution on a wrong scale ?

Peppycito ,
@Peppycito@sh.itjust.works avatar

maybe to wait to have at least some hard number looks like a good idea.

Good plan. So they're holding off on starlink launches to let the science catch up, right?

dustyData ,

Perfect is the enemy of good.

If it is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if we aren't 100% certain or ready on a lot of things. Doctors don't wait for the worst before starting treatment. Specially if corrections carry none or way less risks than what is currently being done.

gian ,

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I agree on this.

If it is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if we aren’t 100% certain or ready on a lot of things.

From the article it seems we are not even 10% certain. In summary, we don't understand (yet) the problem, we have no clue on how complex is, we have no hard number to tell us how big it is.
I agree, something need to be done. But for now the "something" is just to try to understand better the problem, or at least how big it is.

Doctors don’t wait for the worst before starting treatment.

True, but they start treatment when they know what they need to cure or at least they have solid evidence that indicate something, not before.

Specially if corrections carry none or way less risks than what is currently being done.

Hard to decide that corrections carry lower risks of something we don't understand.

hglman ,

Doing scientific experiments to understand the risks is worth doing.

intensely_human ,

One of the big risks of not having a global communications satellite network is that people can get cut off from the internet by land-based ISPs loyal to whatever local government they’re trying to be free of.

So there’s a danger of just saying “no satellite clusters”.

We’re always balancing dangers against other dangers. There’s danger in not acting, not growing too.

Cocodapuf ,

As opposed to acting before you understand the effects of your actions? Neither seem like good choices.

Probably the best option would be to research harder. Make the polluter fund a much larger scale research program to understand the problem and viable solutions as quickly as possible.

nialv7 ,

There is a line somewhere I think. Like people weren't 100% sure the atomic bomb won't ignite the atmosphere (it's only very unlikely), but they still tested it. Similarly the probability of creating micro blackholes at LHC is not zero either, yet they still ran it.

If we have to make sure everything is 100% safe before we can do anything, we will be stuck with the status quo.

intensely_human ,

We will die of starvation because nothing is 100% safe, so waiting until we find that level of safety means we just won’t do anything.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I don't know how that is usual in your mind. Since from my perspective I see it constantly.

Gsus4 OP , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

I was actually reviewing the O3 depletion process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_monoxide and Cl only stops reacting with O3 when it ends up as ClO2, but that is rare, because ClO usually is too short-lived to react with another Cl into Cl2O, so it may be possible that a catalyst like Al2O3 could actually clean up Cl interfering with the ozone layer along with the effect of speeding up the nefarious reaction with O3 :D

FiniteBanjo ,

The irony of a wikipedia expert agreeing with a tabloid skeptic.

Gsus4 OP , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

Why did you write that? What do you gain or anyone reading from that comment? Who are you performing for? Where is the audience? Are you bored and I'm your little punching bag? If you know, contribute and tell us if and why I am wrong and I will welcome it, if you don't or it is not worth the effort, just stfu, nobody needs your shit snark.

FiniteBanjo ,

I wanted to reinforce good behavior, punish bad behavior.

Gsus4 OP , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

Nah man, that's just toxic hurtful criticism. Let people brainstorm and just let go of the gavel.

FiniteBanjo ,

Sure I admit that your mistakes were purely imaginary and we can all pretend you never made them to hide your shame.

Gsus4 OP ,
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

o7

intensely_human ,

You didn’t mention any mistakes though

dustyData ,

Guys, let's not jump into conclusions. I'd say that it is not a real issue until at least a billion people have died from it.

FiniteBanjo , (edited )

If they don't have grounds to accuse SpaceX then SpaceX can sue them for defamation. SpaceX doesn't need YOU to defend them.

OP listed the referenced study in the description, it has "hard numbers" from simulations and citations to many other studies as well.

JohnDClay ,

About 48 tons of meteorites enter the atmosphere every day. I couldn't find the elemental distribution, but I'd guess there is some aluminum in there. How much of an increase is 14 tons aluminum per year over the many tons of aluminum entering the atmosphere already? That might be good to get a rough estimate of how impactful this is.

Soma91 ,

Even assuming the meteorites are 100% aluminum it's a 30% increase which is quite significant.

From a short google search apparently only ~8% of asteroids in our solar system are metal rich which is mostly iron nickel. Rarer metals can be as rare as 100 grams per ton.

Which means of the 48 tons only 4.8 kilos could be aluminum. Compared to that the 14 tons would be a whopping ~3000% increase.

gressen ,

The asteroid weights are given per day while the sats per year.

far_university1990 ,

Still only 1752 kg per year

todd_bonzalez ,

Where are you getting a 30% increase?

Adding 14 tons a year to the 17,520 (48 x 365) tons of meteorites per year is a 0.07% increase (assuming that every meteorite is 100% aluminum and burns up entirely, which is definitely not reality)

JohnDClay ,

4.8kg per day gives 1.75 tons per year, giving an 800% increase. That's still really big, thanks for tracking down the numbers.

ZMoney ,

Al is a major element in the solar system. Most rocks have Al2O3 on the order of 3-10 wt.%. That includes chondrites (the major class of meteorite) which have plenty of feldspar, a mineral that's like 20 wt.% Al2O3, and calcium-aluminium inclusions (CAIs), which are as their name suggests, Al-rich.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Isn't it 48 tons of meteorites per day vs 14 tones of satellites per year?

HubertManne ,

I would put money down the meteorites are below 30% aluminum so I can't see it being less than doubling.

JohnDClay ,

48 tons per day, so it'd need to be less than 0.08% aluminum to double it.

HubertManne ,

ah. missed the per day vs per year thing.

AngryCommieKender ,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements

That article discusses how to determine the average distribution of the elements. Considering that only 2% is not Hydrogen or Helium, I would guess that the amount of aluminum in those meteorites is either not burned up in the atmosphere, or is negligible enough to not make a difference.

Rivalarrival ,

Considering that only 2% is not Hydrogen or Helium

I assume that claim comes from:

The abundance of chemical elements in the universe is dominated by the large amounts of hydrogen and helium which were produced during the Big Bang. Remaining elements, making up only about 2% of the universe

I kind of doubt that hydrogen or helium comprise 98% of the mass of the 48 tons of meteors per day. I kinda suspect that the 48 tons of meteors are comprised almost entirely of "other" elements.

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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    •
    deltapi ,

    If the Russians had not been rude to Musk, and hurt his little ego, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

    I guess we blame the Russians for this too then.

    ammonium ,

    Why?

    IEatAsbestos ,

    Idk, i think SpaceX is catching a lot of heat just because they have musk "at the helm". He doesnt even do anything there, he isnt an aerospace engineer. They just let him sit in mission control so he can feel special. The actual work spacex is doing is revolutionary. Reuseable rockets are a seriously groundbreaking development. Almost everything you do these days relies on a sattelite connection, so doing that cheaper, more reliably, and less wastefully is massive.

    Starlink is a different matter tho, its just another ISP but with a fancy connection method.

    eyeon ,

    I think starlink is more than that as even more things rely on a (good) Internet connection ingeneral than rely on satellites, and traditional connectivity methods leave many people underserved even in countries like America let alone the world.

    It definitely has its problems, if nothing else that it's privately owned and anyone who wanted to compete would then massively amplify those problems.

    MenacingPerson ,

    Almost everything you do these days relies on a sattelite connection

    Except GPS and satellite TV, say what now?

    My internet doesn't rely on satellite, neither does basically anything else

    afraid_of_zombies ,

    Can you imagine the world without GPS at this point?

    In any case since you asked the biggest things besides those are weather predictions, spying, part of the large region emergency response systems, research, and land management.

    MenacingPerson ,

    Fair enough.

    AngryCommieKender ,

    Starlink shouldn't have existed. SpaceX should have been a division of NASA

    sunbeam60 ,

    Yes it went so well with innovation from NASA’s existing practice.

    volodya_ilich ,

    At least they're not blowing their budget exploding rockets...

    CookieOfFortune ,

    And the lesson is that they probably should’ve blown up more rockets on purpose rather than lose them on accident.

    The Falcon 9 has the largest number of successful launches of any rocket ever by a large margin.

    volodya_ilich ,

    on purpose

    lol

    sunbeam60 ,

    I mean you can giggle at the turn of phrase, but clearly what is meant is to be more willing to tolerate risk. Very clearly that’s been a much shorter path to success than the one NASA took.

    intensely_human ,

    You can be more direct with it. Going out and doing something you know will fail is failing on purpose. SpaceX fails on purpose sometimes. They don’t just tolerate the risk of it; they set up cameras and other sensors and push their systems to failure on purpose.

    intensely_human ,

    Another example of failing on purpose is when you do push-ups until the point of collapse.

    sunbeam60 ,

    No they’re somehow managing to blow it neither launching nor exploding rockets.

    intensely_human ,

    They’re blowing it on extra helium to make up for all the blowing helium

    afraid_of_zombies ,

    I am pretty sure they are making lots of money. You know based on the little bit of financial information leaking out.

    Lots of people are experts on this topic it seems. They should form their own launch provider and show how it is done. Because results generally speak for themselves. They went from nothing to controlling over half the launches of the human race as a whole in about a decade. Did they get government money? Oh you betcha. Did they get as much as their rivals did? Not even close.

    Reusability makes sense, this technique of rapid trial and error also makes sense.

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    sunbeam60 ,

    That might be true. But every organisation has to achieve its goals in the context that it exists. And to be fair to NASA they’ve realised it’s better to outsource development because it’s less prone to porn barrel politics.

    dank ,

    "Porn barrel politics" I'm intrigued.

    sunbeam60 , (edited )

    Wow 🤣 I am not sure what happened there. Should have been PORK barrel politics.

    I’m also intrigued. Clearly things are more exciting at NASA than I thought.

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    Argonne ,

    That's never going to happen. Both Democrats and Republicans abuse NASA and take money from it. Because the public doesn't care or understand the importance of space travel. Your comments are a prime example of misinformation about space capabilities that NASA has. Without SpaceX, we would still be sucking Russia off to launch on the ISS. Spacex doesn't give a fuck about politicians and just does what they want. That might be bad one day, but today it's fucking great, and anyone saying otherwise is either misinformed or intentionally misleading

    AngryCommieKender ,

    NASA has blown up their fair share of rockets in their day. A couple of shuttles as well. I'm saying that all the people working at SpaceX would have been better employed as NASA employees so their research isn't payealled.

    card797 ,

    SpaceX and the reusable Falcon 9 is incredibly incredible. It has already eliminated lots of waste in the field of space travel.

    afraid_of_zombies ,

    Be nice if you could go into a bit more detail about your thoughts on this. Rather than just asserting your conclusions.

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    afraid_of_zombies ,

    Ok congrats on successfully moving the problem backwards. You have made another assertion without evidence to backup your previous assertion without evidence.

    I understand your opinion but it is just an opinion

    yogurt ,

    burned wood in the upper atmosphere also catalyzes ozone depletion That's why it was bad putting CFCs up there in the first place, almost everything catalyzes these reactions

    Gsus4 OP ,
    @Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

    Oh, so no Chlorine ever truly gets locked away from the ozone cycle...smoke particles will just keep reactivating it 😞

    JasonDJ ,

    I thought that the idea was to stop crashing old satellites into earth and instead require they maintain enough propellent to move themselves off into a graveyard orbit.

    SpaceCowboy ,
    @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

    That works for satellites in a Geostationary orbit, but Starlink satellites are in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO). While LEO is in space there are a tiny amount of atmospheric particles there which creates a tiny amount of drag. Things in LEO will come back down eventually.

    SynAcker ,

    So... Let me get this straight... The satellites burning up are essentially creating aluminum chemtrails that my mother-in-law keeps going on about?

    arin ,

    Aluminum is neurotoxic so yes

    intensely_human ,

    Well yeah ever since you guys forced us to stop doing the airplane chemtrails, we’ve been out of business.

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