
'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky - gooseus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/26/space-graffiti-astronomers-angry-over-launch-of-fake-star-into-sky
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danielvf
This is utterly, utterly overblown.

The Space Station is thousands of times bigger and throws back a hundred times
more light than this will.

Every evening, for most of the populated world, dozens of brighter satellites
than this go overhead. I just checked the orbits for my evening here - 57
brighter satellites.

But what about the flashing? Well, we've got those already too. The old,
awesome Iridium satellites have giant antennas that act like mirrors. When one
beams the sun onto you at night for a few seconds, it's hundreds of times
brighter than the Humanity Star. The Hitomi, a failed Japanese weather
satellite, flashes every second or so as it spins - again, much brighter than
this will ever be.

And worries about Kessler syndrome for this object in a very low earth orbit?
Even if every satellite in similar orbit magically exploded tomorrow, the
debris would be gone in less than year. In the meantime we could still launch
to other orbits. Kessler syndrome is overhyped in general, and a complete non-
issue this low.

~~~
chimmy_chonga
Those served an actual purpose though. They weren't just shoved into space
just to say, "hey look at what we did". That's the point they're making. Don't
pollute space just because you can.

EDIT: typos

~~~
anotheryou
One could argue: this one gets press, which gets funding, which is quite
important for science.

~~~
chimmy_chonga
that's a good point

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strictnein
> director of astrobiology at Columbia University Caleb Scharf wrote in
> Scientific American, the star represented "another invasion of my personal
> universe"

There's hyperbole, and then there's comments like that. His "personal
universe"?

~~~
danaliv
I read that comment as making an analogy to intrusive advertising.

~~~
vog
That's how I read it, too. And I can somehow relate to it. In many places, you
can't walk down the street without being annoyed by ads. You'd have to go
through parks and nearby woods. And now it doesn't even help to go camping far
away in a natural reservate without being annoyed by ads (at night).

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Androider
Great, NIMBYs now want to stop space development. And it's just for 9 months,
take a chill pill.

Personally I think it's awesome, I'm going to try to track it and show it to
my daughter. I hope one day we'll have structures on the moon that are visible
to the naked eye! Can you imagine how motivating and achievable that would
make space exploration seem to a new generation.

~~~
GuB-42
Why don't you track the ISS instead. It is orders of magnitude more
interesting than a disco ball.

Imagine explaining this to your daughter :

\- Here is the ISS, people live there.

\- This is the Hubble space telescope, it makes plenty of nice pictures.

\- This is a communication satellite, it for making phone calls from anywhere
in the world.

\- This... is a giant disco ball, it is made so you can see it.

Putting up what is essentially a space billboard is the kind of space
development we can do without. And this is what astronomers are complaining
about. It is not for the object itself, it is for the precedent it sets.

~~~
badwolf
It was also a test payload for a new rocket that achieved orbit for the first
time.

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nkrisc
Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations.

Once low Earth orbit is easily accessible to anyone, what can be done? There
are all kinds of intentional and unintentional misuses of such a capability.

~~~
dogma1138
There is a metric ton of regulation you can’t launch anything into space
without going thorough a mile of red tape.

Apparently no one consulted astronomers with this case most likely as no one
expected a use case where someone launches a freaking disco ball into low
earth orbit.

~~~
nkrisc
That's sort of my point though. Every edge case that gets exposed gets another
regulation.

~~~
dogma1138
Well Elon Musk is about to launch a Tesla into Martian orbit perhaps its time
to put orbits other than sol orbits under the regulatory red tape.

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upofadown
Oh come now. There are a lots of orbiting objects that cause bright flashes.
The flashes this particular object causes are not even that bright. I suspect
that anyone who pointed this out were not quoted... Particularly the
astronomers who thought the whole thing was awesome... Astronomers are
bothered by _any_ sunlight illuminated satellite. This will make no difference
at all to their lives.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare)

~~~
jvandonsel
Sure, but the point of those satellites is not to make a flash in the sky. The
whole point of the disco ball is to dazzle.

~~~
dingaling
Actually the older Iridium satellites _were_ intended to make a flash in the
sky. The three aluminium antennas were highly-polished for no other reason
than visibility; free publicity. There were some thermal benefits but not
significant.

The later blocks of satellites have a different antenna design and do not
reflect as much.

A more sigificant astronomical impact of Iridium as a tangent, is that their
transmissions on 1612 MHz interefere with radio astronomy observations of
hydroxyl. In contrast a single 'disco ball' zipping around LEO for a few
months is trivial.

~~~
ceejayoz
Do you have a cite on it being intentionally polished to create flares? The
new generation has a smaller, redesigned antenna, but I can't find anything on
the original being a conscious design choice instead of just a side-effect of
"we want to reflect EM as well as possible".

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cordite
My astronomer friend says this isn’t really different from any other satellite
with reflective shielding.

~~~
nkrisc
But presumably those other satellites are at least serving a useful purpose.

~~~
badwolf
Being a test payload for a new rocket is useful.

~~~
cordite
Indeed, a verifiable payload is useful.

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089723645897236
Graffiti artist here. Space junk is a general problem I understand so theres
nothing special about this device other than that it doesn't serve as anything
but a marketing gimmick/artistic gesture.

Street art / graffiti is done by people who want others to read their names
and see their art. It's the ultimate act of hubris to say that others should
experience your art unfiltered and without a choice in the matter. You invade
public space, upset people's comfort zone, and get them to think. Even if it's
just "wow look at all the colors and lines". Just wait till they start
projecting ads on the moon then yall will be really pissed off.

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Waterluvian
This has me thinking about how absurd privacy/protection of vision can be. If
I stand in my apartment and face my photon receptors towards the apartment
across the street, place some carefully constructed glass lenses in front of
them, and receive photons from the sun bouncing off the surface of a pretty
specimen, that is pretty universally abhorred behaviour. Of course this is
absurdly reductionist. But interesting, nonetheless.

If you don't like the giant "PEPSI PRESENTS: MARS" billboard we placed in
space, close your curtains at night!

~~~
sp332
Privacy is a social construct. Its definition mainly depends on how people
feel about it. That doesn't make it not useful, I mean that maybe we should
try to protect our experience of the night sky even if the reasons aren't too
rigorous.

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chillingeffect
Some comments have intoned "it's not that bright," but from the article "It is
expected to become the brightest object in the night sky for nine months"

Can anyone shed some information on this?

I know if someone made it difficult for me t oget my planned work done for the
next nine months, my boss and I would be pretty ticked off.

~~~
danielvf
There's no possible way this is the brightest thing in the night sky - it's
simply not that big, and most of the light that hits it will not be going
towards you because of the facets.

The only number I've seen puts it at 4.0 magnitude when flashing. That's hard
to see with the naked eye from a US city, and there are about 500 stars
brighter than that.

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intrasight
I am more concerned about the precedent that this sets. But then again, I am
way more concerned about many other things.

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rbanffy
And I once did the math on how heavy a mylar spherical balloon would need to
be to have the apparent size of the Moon from 150 km of altitude and concluded
that it could be launched from an Ariane 5 (at about 14000 kg or so).

I'd be a very unpopular person if someone decided to pay for the project.

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chasd00
man if there's one thing gets astronomers worked up it's light from any other
source than what they're interested in.

~~~
mynewtb
And rightfully so.

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hanoz
I see you can track its current position here:
[http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker](http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker)
but a flyby predictor is notable by its absence, I wonder why that should be?

~~~
ter0
Click 'Find My Location' in the top left of the map view.

~~~
hanoz
Aha! Thanks.

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rwmj
On the other hand, it's now easier for astronomers to launch small telescopes
out of the atmosphere ...

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gjem97
Is there a tracker?

~~~
sq_
The main page of the Humanity Star site has one if you scroll down a bit.

[http://www.thehumanitystar.com](http://www.thehumanitystar.com)

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gaius
The Rutherford engine alone and its manufacturing process is a far greater
accomplishment than any one of these “scientists” has ever managed. Maybe they
ought to come and join the real world?

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spoovy
This isn't 'space' though is it; its low earth orbit. I wouldn't care if
they'd fired it into intergalactic space but they didn't, they just added to
our halo of orbiting garbage purely to grab some cheap publicity.

~~~
badwolf
They put it in low earth orbit. It's orbit will decay in about 9 months and it
will burn up in the atmosphere.

It wasn't just for cheap publicity. It was a test payload of a new rocket.

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JoeAltmaier
Hm. "The heavens" is a protected area, like a wilderness or polar bear? What
hubris - tiny humans feeling possessive about the entirety of the universe.
Something very off here. And these are exactly the people who should
appreciate our insignificance in the cosmos.

Maybe they just expressed themselves badly. Its our 'sphere of observation' or
some such, that they feel is being badly treated?

~~~
titzer
I'd argue the hubris is going the other way: launching shiny stuff into space
that everyone has to look at. It's launching trash into space, IMHO, and I
reacted quite negatively at first as well.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Nobody has to look at it. Any more than the rest of the stuff going by on a
dark night. Which folks in the city can't see anyway.

No this issue is overheated silliness.

~~~
gatmne
Just wait when coca-cola and friends fill the skies with their own logo
constellations when (not if) space technology gets cheap enough. After all, it
only needs to be cheaper than conventional ad campaigns to be viable.

Imagine going camping or into sea and having a canvas of logos everywhere you
look at during the night.

Nobody has to look at it right?

Dismissing this issue as "overheated silliness" is extremely naive and short-
sighted.

