Feeling overwhelmed by all the things I need to fight this morning before a 6 hour drive across the north island of NZ for my next talk in New Plymouth. Luckily, there are a lot of really awesome astronomers who are also fighting!
...But not nearly enough, and we don't have any actual power. So, back to writing, because that's my only weapon in this fight.
And just to make myself feel better: sending a big "fuck you" to SpaceX and Reflect Orbital in particular for their sky-destroying plans
@sundogplanets So would a retired person with no knowledge of satellite systems, space regulation, or astronomy BUT who has free time willing to contribute to a cause like writing to agencies, politicians, etc. be of any help to you?
@leslore Yes! I will post information on how to write the FCC soon, and it would be lovely if you can follow it and express your opinions to them
@sundogplanets OMG, I hope you get to see the top of Taranaki! Also, Pukekura Park is gorgeous and well worth a visit.
Speaking of awesome people I work with, there will be instructions available soon for how to submit your own comments to the FCC on both Reflect Orbital and SpaceX's million AI satellite filing!
Will writing comments to the FCC actually make a difference? Probably not. But when someone in gov't in the future says "Hey, we opened a comment period, why didn't you submit a complaint then?" we can say "We did." That's about all we get in this particular fight. This sucks.
ALSO speaking of awesome people I work with, my collaborators redid the CRASH Clock calculation for several years in the past, so you can see how it has dropped to shorter and shorter values: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
The CRASH Clock is the likely time to first collision if all collision avoidance maneuvers in orbit suddenly stopped, and is a measure of how much stress we're placing on orbit and how reliant we are on 100% perfect operations in orbit to keep using our satellites
@sundogplanets Is CRASH intended to represent a realistic scenario (i.e. all satellites disabled by solar activity), or is it primarily a way to put a number on the stress?
It might be interesting to have a sort of satellite equivalent of LD50, i.e. a measure of how many satellites would need to become uncontrollable before a collision within some specified time period (say 1 year, or 1 month) becomes inevitable. Obviously a related metric, but maybe easier to interpret in terms of likelihood?
@angusm Sounds good, you should write that paper :)
@sundogplanets If I understand you, does this mean that at the moment satellite operators are constantly making orbit correction adjustments and if they stopped today the in 3.8 days time there would likely be a collision? That is very scary.
@sundogplanets - ...and the idiot self-publicist Musk in his unquenchable hubris thinks that we can put a million of those things "up there". And all of those metals and other stuff in the atmosphere (and the debris on the ground). I strongly suspect that it will all end in tears...
3.8 days currently...
@sundogplanets I suppose the next question to consider is what are the statistical chances that any two satellites on a collision course suffer maneuvering /avoidance failure at the same time - remembering that some of these objects have no maneuvering capacity to begin with as they're space junk.
@sundogplanets Did you do any post CRASH estimations? By this I mean, did you look at how fast subsequent crashes might occur after the first one?
Yes, that seems like a highly imprecise, even guess-like, calculation. But my imagination suggests that there could well be a rapid, and increasingly rapid cascade of secondary, tertiary... etc collisions with fragments.
@karlauerbach The point was to look at the time to first crash. The analysis you suggest is a great idea but is a totally separate type of calculation
@sundogplanets I applaud your efforts. It's frustrating to fight against corporate behemoths backed by the plutocracy, but it must be done and you are both highly qualified, so good at it, and greatly appreciated because your efforts show the rest of us the way.
Thanks, Prof, keep up the good work.
