Petition calls for halt of megaconstellation launches for environmental review

[Admin]

A U.S. nonprofit organization has called on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to pause satellite megaconstellation launches until their environmental impact can be assessed.

Petition calls for halt of megaconstellation launches for environmental review : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The FAA cannot stop megaconstellations being launched by other countries, so just stopping the ones launched from the U.S would seem to be the worst off all strategies - no technological benefits and no protection from damage anyway.

So, it seems that the only rational course of action for those who are worried about it would be to develop enough of a scientific basis for a world-wide ban that is credible enough that China and others would abide by it.

That means they need to develop data that shows the impacts are such and such, not just arguments that they might be such and such.

And, why isn't there any aluminum in natural space material like asteroids and dust? Aluminum is one of the more common elements.

 

[Classical Motion]

We will have to wait for a chain reaction event. The sure collisions in the future won’t do it. But when we get a chain, and lose lot’s of money and services, the people will cry. The number of collisions will be greater then re-entry and burn up. Giving us a much greater debris field. Without adding a thing.

And then we’ll set a committee to study and analyze, then committees for funding and enforcement.

Then world wide protest and litigation. By that time we could be freezing. Without an internet.

Generational war.

 

[adamh31]

This somewhat reminds me of a previous king in my country who once (no doubt apocraphally) tried to tell the tide it couldn't come in.

As others have said. This is a pointless exercise because grounding US launches of constellations would do nothing to stop anyone else. Unless you can mandate a global ban you'll get nowhere and this won't happen as commercial and political interests of other nation states will trump any reasons that can be produced until Kessler's predictions are borne out.

I imagine that once Space X has it's Starship working and other players can start getting bigger payloads into space for sensible prices, we'll see a lot of 'serious' astronomy moving off-Earth to sites on the far-side of the Moon and to the Lagrange points. The amateur/ backyard astronomers will just have to do their best to catch sight of the moon between all the super internet satellites flying overhead.

(Living in the UK where I only dream of seeing satellites blocking my view as most of the time there's cloud cover anyway)