FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK NOOOOO
@sundogplanets
Above all, could those fucks please stop using names from Lord of the rings (e.g. Earendil, Palantir, Anduril).
At the moment, I’m reading it to my 7-year-old, and I’d rather not be reminded of all that dystopian tech shit while doing so.
@sundogplanets the stuff of nightmares: “But to expand the technology, Reflect Orbital envisions operating over 50,000 satellites by 2035.”
Americans aren’t the only people inhabiting this beautiful planet and the Earth isn’t flat, surely people and institutions from other countries can pick up a fight and resist this monstrosity - considering it would affect everyone. Right, right?
So, who's the CEO of "Reflect Orbital" and can we place a couple of really big floodlights around his home...?
@sundogplanets how major of a crime would it be to shoot an annoying satellite with a big laser or a rail gun? Asking for a friend, as i don't have either of those :((
@sundogplanets How many shit things are getting Lord of the Rings names?
@sundogplanets fuck, seriously???
@sundogplanets We‘re not trying to grow food in the domes of Ganymede here. What are these people smoking?
@sundogplanets I am afraid we need to plan for an astronomy in the post-Kessler era 😭
@sundogplanets Peak stupid, peak stupid.
There’s no other use for this actually than a rich morherfucker to shine to his overnight party.
@sundogplanets This is going to require a new form of Luddite.
Hope India or Russia shoots it down with a missile...
@sundogplanets this is the smallest issue, but I hate how every company (or in this case, satellite) that’s named after something from Tolkien is just terrible for society. Palantir, Anduril, Erebor, etc. There’s probably upwards of a dozen by now.
Corporatism on a globalism scale.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
@sundogplanets this is literally Karl Pilkington idea
@sundogplanets Oh FFS…what‘s next?
Breaking news: in a surprising twist Reflect Orbital announced their satellites themselves will not be solar but rather nuclear powered. „By using nuclear power we make sure our totally safe satellites keep working just as long as the sun. Check out our lifetime-subscriptions at 20% off for early investors.“
@sundogplanets the mind boggles, what a crock of an idea
@sundogplanets Hey at least they didn’t paint it tacky gold…
@sundogplanets FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK NOOOOO
@sundogplanets for some reason, national governments seem to think that they have authority to cause trouble in orbit. What happens in orbit affects everyone in some way. Surely doing something as ridiculous as putting a giant mirror in space should have broader international scrutiny?!
@sundogplanets Ok, back of the napkin-style math time. According to NASA, the moon's surface area is roughly (rounded up) 40×10^6 km², or 40×10^12m². These sattelites are 18m×18m or roughly (rounded up) 400m^2. The moon only shows us half of it's surface area, which is half-illuminated on average (the actual amount of light we receive from the moon is a bit less than that due to the moon being present for less of the night when nearer to a full moon, but I'll ignore that for now). So we've got 40e12/40e1/2/2 or 2.5e10, unitless. If we assume the moon reflects 20% as well as those mirrors (this is generous towards the mirrors), we end up with 5e9, or five billion. That's approximately the amount of these mirrors we'd need to build to reflect as much light back to the earth as the moon. Due to the very approximate nature of these only the order of magnitude really matters, but it is still a ridiculous amount and not worth it. After all, adding a second moon to power solar panels would probably not give ROI within the lifespan of the sun.
What are they even trying to do???
@sundogplanets I would never endorse someone going full Contact on this thing's launch vehicle once fully stacked. That would be a terrible and illegal thing to do.
@sundogplanets how the fuck is this under the fcc's purview?
@sundogplanets and of course it’s named after something from JRR Tolkien….
@sundogplanets assume they are only licensed to reflect back to USA??
What's wrong with everyone? Jesus.
@sundogplanets wow that sucks total ass
@sundogplanets I hope this thing gets shot down with some ASAT Rocket by the #Chinese or #Russia, if the #EU doesn't have the balls and this thing isn't in a GSO over the #USA!
@sundogplanets We could band together to aim lasers at these....
@sundogplanets
Mmhh, the Name oft the satellite is from Lord oft the rings. Is Peter Thiel involved in this shit?
@sundogplanets Ah, for a quick Greenland defrost?
And the billionaires push the Earth closer and closer to Trantor.
@sundogplanets This was done before. Suggest you watch the documentary "Die Another Day". Some north korean launched it and when the Americans sent missiles to destroy it, he just aimed his mirror at the missiles and fried them.
The mirror was demoed at some ice castle in Iceland when he benevolently lit up just the castle at night to impress the guests, but then focused mirror to try to fry some british spy out to disable mirror.
Curiious which international body could stop this.
@sundogplanets can I just beat the unholy ribbons and bows out of today? I am so tired.
@sundogplanets turns out a great way to get billionaires sold on renewables is to add a novel source of global warming to the proposition
@sundogplanets I saw this in Die Another Day.
@sundogplanets This is really bad, but I also can't wait for some kid to log in to their system with default admin credentials & vaporize the white house or something with the unmatched power of the sun & continue doing so until the mirror satellites are made illegal, globally, forever.
@sundogplanets We really need the model rocket nerds to start getting into modeling anti-satellite missiles.
@sundogplanets what a bullshit cop out... It falls out of our purview. Time to take a little wider scope assholes
