I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore. It's all so fucking ludicrous.
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@sundogplanets There comes a point at which we're better off crowdfunding the launch of something *designed* to initiate a LEO Kessler cascade, and I think we're close to it.
@sundogplanets
My observations are:
Money and intellect are at best casually related.
Money and ethics have no correlation.
Space, the oceans, some wormhole to Andromeda. Its a time of unhinged speculation, infinite money, destruction of ground truth and any meaningful discourse.
@sundogplanets it seems like all these space ventures live in the same no-man's-land occupied by stuff like Elon Musk's hyperloop or his brain-chip ambitions: it's hard to tell the degree to which they actually hope to achieve anything substantial vs. have some sort of grand tentpole projects always going, pretexts for hoovering up investment dollars
@sundogplanets
No wonder they are not concerned with AI hallucinations given they themselves hallucinate far more strongly.
@sundogplanets The same tech bros ducking up space and astronomy are also ducking up everything in my industry (open source software), with their thieving AI bullshit generators, covering us in generated manure in vast amounts, while also taking no care of software reliability or security.
It's such a shitshow, which will get worser before it might all fall apart.
Your goat and aurora photos, and everybody else creating fabulous photos and art of nature and animals is what's keeping me going.
@sundogplanets as the t-shirt says 'imaginary gardens with real frogs in them.'
Like this shit: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/meta-inks-deal-for-solar-power-at-night-beamed-from-space/
Don't worry guys, the CEO says you can stare right into the infrared beam and it's totally safe! I trust him, don't you?
(How you transmit usable amounts of power with a beam that's so diffuse that you can look at it I have no fucking idea.)
@sundogplanets Somebody was doing coke while reading Gerard O’Neill’s HIGH FRONTIER.
@sundogplanets Genuinely that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. 😂
Someday I hope we see serious studies on how having absurd amounts of wealth and influence literally destroys people’s brains.
It's astonishing the ways corporations continue to find ways to damage the Earth.
@sundogplanets My understanding is that this can be done right (safely) -- but no way do I trust Meta to do anything right.
Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc
I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?
@sundogplanets Orbital factories are at least hypothetically useful. Crystal formation is affected by gravity, which limits manufacturing of a whole class of materials. Microgravity crystal formation allows for more precise process control. Things like silicon nanowafers for computing are basically the most expensive materials by weight of any manufacturable substances on earth, so there is more tolerance for expensive manufacturing processes than any other class of material.
It still doesn't make any sense economically because it's not just building a supremely expensive supply chain for something we already have, it's only worth doing for the development of new materials, which then would have to go through decades of research and product development to design a marketable product that is likely only slightly better than existing products in a few metrics, for orders of magnitude more cost.
@sundogplanets Theoretically, at least, microgravity might allow the production of materials that can’t be made in 1G. I’m pretty sure some small-scale feasibility studies have been done but can’t recall any smashing successes. Your point about the economics is dead-on. The material produced is going to have to be incredibly valuable in its application to be worth it. And yes, it’s a 1970s-80s scifi staple.
@sundogplanets this one only makes sense to me if they think they're selling the output to future space assembly factories. who knows what scifi they've been reading and want to get out ahead of!
These companies remembers me the Panama scndals at the end of 1800:
@sundogplanets I don't know enough about materials science to know if this is true. To me it sounds like hype to draw in investor money.
Or this shit: https://spacedaily.com/sd-n-nasa-backs-interlunes-2028-bid-to-mine-helium-3-from-the-moon/
The Moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it'll be easy to accidentally launch rocks into Moon-escape orbits, making the Earth-Moon trip even more hazardous than it is already. Fun!
@sundogplanets As an environmentalist and hobbyist astronomer, I’m truly baffled by the attitude those companies seem to harbor toward space pollution. It’s just not a concern for them *at all*.
@sundogplanets Well, at least they got through an article about lunar He3 without going off on some fusion energy tangent.
Checking; that grant is for a system to measure volatile gases in lunar regolith in situ.
Nothing about mining the Moon for helium-3.
The media coverage remains appalling.
Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/
Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.
@sundogplanets
I guess they used AI to generate the feasibility study.
@sundogplanets They're just gonna put up a space laser or some bullshit like that when they can't get it to work.
@sundogplanets The same energy there as the 'glyphosate is as safe as salt' myth that was perpetuated by Monsanto during the rollout of RoundUp
@sundogplanets I think your post should be your opening paragraph!
