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Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

I have to update the Starlink numbers in my talk. But this time, I last gave my talk TWO DAYS AGO. This is stupid.

There are 27 more Starlinks in orbit today than there were on Monday: there are now 9,526 Starlink satellites orbiting above our heads.

1,458 have already been burned up in the atmosphere (and at least 1 of those made it to the ground in the easiest place in the world to find space debris...) adding many hundreds of tons of weird metals to the stratosphere. #ProfSamLectureTour

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Jacen
Jacen
@thejacenallen@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets sorry for the intrusion but I imagine you update these numbers before your speech. What if you did it during your speech to show just how crazy it is. You could say you last updated it on so and so but lets update the number right now and then possibly people would be shocked at just how many more there are. Anyways disregard if this is silly nonsense.

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Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@thejacenallen HA!! I love this idea! Doing math in front of a lot of people is a recipe for disaster, but I love this

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Jacen
Jacen
@thejacenallen@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets oh yeah the math. No way. I would never attempt this myself.

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...a pleasant rascal
...a pleasant rascal
@Nead@social.vivaldi.net replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets Keep fighting the good fight, Professor. We need someone to give us accurate information we can rely on.

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John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧡✊🏻✊🏿
John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧡✊🏻✊🏿
@FaithfullJohn@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets 🤬☹️

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Daniel AJ Sokolov
Daniel AJ Sokolov
@newstik@social.heise.de replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets Blue Origin announced TeraWave today.

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grrl_aex
grrl_aex
@kitkat_blue@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets

is anyone quantifying/studying the possible effects/persistance/deposition specifics of the injection of vaporized metals etc in the atmosphere from de-orbiting starlink satellites (and others) ?

Is this ~15% attrition rate on these starlink satellites expected to be a sustained rate over the life of the program? If so... cumulatively, this could become quite significant over time. I do hope it's being looked at.

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Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@kitkat_blue Here's one paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

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grrl_aex
grrl_aex
@kitkat_blue@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 9 hours ago

@sundogplanets

So, "yearly excess of more than 640% above natural (meteorite contribution) levels" plus "a noticeable delay (~30 years) between the beginning of the injection process when orbiting bodies are decommissioned and the eventual ozone-depletion consequences in the stratosphere." seems to add up to a potential ticking time bomb for the ozone layer. 😰

Other than saying "significant" they don't attempt to quantify the impact...i'd be curious as to what that might be.

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grrl_aex
grrl_aex
@kitkat_blue@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 10 hours ago

@sundogplanets

Tyvm!

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Pelican Dock Music
Pelican Dock Music
@dockwalk@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets
is there a map?

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greem
greem
@greem@cyberplace.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets and then there's TeraWave, which is Jeff's high bandwidth space based 5k+ LEO, 18 MEO constellation which starts launching next year.

They just keep on banging 'em up there 🙁

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Sara
Sara
@sarae@ecoevo.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets I saw a really bright red shooting star trailing sparks two nights ago when I went out to look for auroras, and wondered if it were a dissolving satellite

it was traveling south to north in the sky east of my house in coastal Oregon

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bocops
bocops
@bocops@fosstodon.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets I've just read that they are aiming for at least 12K (potentially 34K) satellites, with an average lifetime of 5-7 years.

Sorry if this question has been answered elsewhere already, but... is there any information about what 2,000 downed satellites each year will do to our atmosphere, exactly?

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GhostOnTheHalfShell
GhostOnTheHalfShell
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets

Here is thought experiment, which might make you incredibly depressed if being any more depressed in this day and age as possible: these satellites have a definite lifetime, and there is some expectation that some of them will become damaged and fall from orbit.

Injection of satellites means a consequential and maybe exponential death rates. That’s just basic demographics.

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DMTom
DMTom
@DMTomas@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09643 kind of saying that we have at most 11 years (another solar maximum cycle) to basically have 100% probability of a Kessler syndrome more or less locking us from accessing LEO (at least with humans aboard) … and screwing up astronoy for years AND dumping bunch of interesting stuff into the upper layers of atmosphere? If yes - Why The F”&£ we are still allowing any mega-constellations and not downing the ones in orbit?

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Warm Signull
Warm Signull
@warmsignull@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets So what are your proposed solutions and alternatives? Are you lucky enough to live in an area without light pollution? (regardless of satellites)

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bigmac (molly)
bigmac (molly)
@bigmac7464@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets cape canaveral hit their record for launches last year. i believe it was 109. i used to work down there, and starlinks were going up every week or so.

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Gabriel N
Gabriel N
@wtrmt@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets “This Starlink satellite crashed in the easiest place in the world to find space debris. Is that near your house?”

#MastoClickBait #Space #spacejunk

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Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@wtrmt https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/2nd-piece-of-space-junk-landed-on-saskatchewan-farmland-in-2024-1.7502192

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Prof. Sam Lawler
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

Oh fuck, there are 9 more Xingwang megaconstellation satellites in orbit compared to Monday as well. Time to go outside (and not see any stars. I am really tired of cities).

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Bojan Landekić
Bojan Landekić
@bojanlandekic@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp yesterday

@sundogplanets scene in a netflix scifi movie: why are the stars following me? Those arent stars those are drones and satepites...run!!!

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Eye
Eye
@grb090423@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets

I can only manage a day in a city... and I used to live in London! (I loved it.) Now, give me nature and the countryside, any day 👍👍👍

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Scotty
Scotty
@scozmos@mastodon.scot replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

Of all the things that could be achieved with that money @sundogplanets 😔

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Chris Armstrong
Chris Armstrong
@Rhodium103@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@sundogplanets
So, Starlink must have at least 100 million customers to justify this, right?

Right?

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