They're bright, they move quickly, and there are loads of them. It's like having one of the last peaceful things you can do plastered with the equivalent of full-motion banner ads for Earth bullshit.
I didn't know 3 years olds were on HN :)
Seriously though, there is a difference between a satellite or an asteroid showing up every 15 minutes and a sky with a few satellites at all times.
It’s not great that there are satellites visible for an hour or so after sunset, but it’s not like you’ll never see the night sky again.
The later it gets, the higher the satellite would have to be to still be in the sun. The vast, vast majority of them are low enough that this is not significantly long after sunset. The rest are so high up that you won’t really see them anyway (and don’t move significantly fast across the sky, because orbit is slower the higher you go.)
You essentially don’t see satellites at all in the middle of the night.
It’s going to be much sadder once we start seeing McDonald’s ads wherever and whenever we look up.
It will be what pushes me over the edge to create a rogue space program just to bring that atrocity down.
But even if true this doesn't really count as dual use military technology that "everyone knows" about. Everyone knows about the communications part.
https://interpret.csis.org/translations/starlink-militarizat...
Maybe I should submit it as an article.
SilverElfin•5mo ago
dottjt•5mo ago
wkat4242•5mo ago
karunamurti•5mo ago
motorest•5mo ago
Malfunctioning is a risk, but if they are the backbone of a rival military power then this means they are also a high-value target. If the world enters a major conflict, there will be a huge volume of space debris for sure.