• Gigan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I thought Starlink was really cool when I first heard about it. I know people that use it because it’s the best Internet available to them. But I’m not sure if the amount of space waste they are creating is worth it.

    • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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      1 year ago

      This stuff falls back into the atmosphere and burns up quite rapidly since it’s in extremely low orbit.

      • Gigan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Even if 100% of the stuff burns up, it’s a lot of energy and materials that needs to be constantly replaced. Seems like a lot of maintenance to keep the array operating long-term.

        • teft@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          Also vaporizing metals being added to the upper atmosphere isn’t exactly great.

          • Gigan@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Isn’t great how? Like in a going to make global warming-worse way or going to give us cancer way?

            • teft@startrek.website
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              1 year ago

              There are several effects this could have on Earth and the atmosphere. The presence of these particles could affect how water freezes into ice in the stratosphere, and influence the size of stratospheric aerosol particles. They could also induce salt deposition on aerosol particles, and alter the stratospheric refraction of light.

              These may seem like subtle changes, but they could have unintended consequences that we really ought to investigate, the researchers say.

              Link here

            • topinambour_rex@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Few months ago an article was published about how the rockets was warming the upper atmosphere and it was bad for it.

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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          1 year ago

          You make a good point there for sure. The lower the orbit, the faster the return and burn up, but the lower the latency as well. That’s why usual satellite internet sucks so badly. Those satellites are in geostationary orbit and light takes 0.7 seconds to get there and back.

        • dinckel@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is what scares me the most. At a certain point, we’ll just have to go “whoops, our planet has no more resources to leech”, and we’ll be permanently stuck in stone age

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s hard to put a value on access to high speed internet, because it’s such a force multiplier for productivity, art, and culture.