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Ready for a bit more #TechBro #Dystopia?
Satellite internet will probably severely damage the ozone layer.
The worst about it?
The damage is not now, but it will take decades before it starts.
But: First things first!
What is the ozone layer?
The ozone layer is located in the lower stratosphere (15-35km above ground), where the concentration of ozone (O₃) is highest. This layer shields us from most of, otherwise deadly, UV radiation from the sun.
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The O₃ molecules are rather unstable and easily broken up.
This instablity is, what makes ozone at ground level (summer smog) dangerous.
We all know that in the 1970s and 80s scientists noticed a depletion of the ozone layer around the poles due to the presence of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used for aerosoles, fridges and air conditions in the atmosphere.
These CFCs, chemically stable substances, acted as catalysts, breaking up the ozone molecules.
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This led to the one and only truly global and successful environmental legislation banning the use and production of CFCs worldwide.
Now, there is new threat: Satellite internet!
What's the problem?
Satellite internet has been around for a long time now, in order to provide remote locations with internet access. It used to be provided by satellites in High Earth Orbit (HEO), at around 35,000km from Earth. Whilst providing good bandwidth and an enormous area of ground coverage, …
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the long distance causes two problems: You need a good transmitter on the ground and longer latency (signals needing time 0.2s to go up and down - unsuitable for multiplayer action games, fine for everything else).
Tech bros didn't like the idea of depending on bulky equipment to access the internet during their skiing trips and having to "suffer" from delays during their real time communication whilst on the go. War and drug lords operating in areas without cable and mobile …
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… phone coverage thought the same, and so they came up with a "genius" idea:
»Let's place 1,000s of small satellites in Low Earth orbit (LEO) at about 500-1,000km to provide us with lower latency internet everywhere, which can be reached with smaller equipment, in the future even with phones, and also turn it into a big business!«
Elon Musk's #Starlink was the first company to launch the service and has currently around 6,000 satellites in LEO, planned are up to 35,000 …
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… and other corporations, namely many people's favourite retailer Amazon, are in the process of putting their own mega constellations of satellites into orbit.
These satellites are already causing big trouble to Earth bound astronomy, but this isn't the worst: Whilst the LEO is "space" in most practical and legal senses, there are still some naughty air molecules scattered around and colliding constantly with these wonderful devices, slowing them down and making them eventually fall back…
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… to our planet.
At an altitude of 50-100km the air gets thicker, and the satellites get hot and burn up in the atmosphere, creating a fine dust of metaloxide particles. This fine dust is also eventually coming down, but it needs decades to reach the ozone layer, where **surprise** it starts to act like a catalyst, splitting up ozone molecules.
So: What do we have?
A totally unnecessary niche product, making it necessary to launch 1,000s of fuel burning rockets into space …
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…in order to fill pockets of incredibly rich billionaires even more, causing a potentially deadly risk for plants, animals and people 30-100 years from now.
Capitalism at its finest
What we *should* do now, is to stop this madness of satellite internet immediately, until the risk is properly assessed and it can be done in a sustainable manner.
Of course: Not gonna happen!
There are huge business interests at stake, and humans are notoriously terrible at reacting to long term risks.
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What we can do, is spread the word and say no to every enterprise controlled by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other tech bros.
Source:
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*John* Bezos ?
@mina You forgot to mention that once star link has reached their goal, there will be one satellite (of the size of a F150 pickup truck) burning in the atmosphere roughly every 2 hours. And they have to be constantly replaced.
@mina
That Spektrum article quotes a figure from the paper of 250kg per normal satellite used to determine the aluminum injection into the mesosphere. The Wikipedia article for Starlink states 1200kg for the now current version 2.
30% of which are Al and kill the ozone. Planned Starlink network size is 40thsd satellites in LEO with a typical lifetime of 5 years, after which they get deorbited, burn up, kill the ozone 30ys later, and are replaced with a new one.
It's utter madness.
The USA culture with their sociopathic de-regulation of everything is obnoxious. This impact on the ozone is but the latest symptom of USA culture.
I don't like the puking emoticon but USA culture certainly deserves it.
And they were imposing this sociopathy on everybody else globally since the 1990s. By all possible means, politically, economically, via movies, and through wars.
It's a real shithole country.bPeriod.
@mina that reentry number looks correct, the comparison to what hits the atmosphere naturally is WAY off, it's more like 5000 tons of space dust.
https://earthsky.org/space/tons-of-extraterrestrial-dust-fall-to-earth-each-year/
@mina this is really worrying. Thanks for sharing!
This would be an absurd irony of history, as the ban on fluorocarbons in the 1980s was one of humanity’s few successful global initiatives that stopped an imminent planetary change – namely, the depletion of the ozone layer. This is being counteracted by the increasing pollution of low Earth orbit.
@mina And Starlink causes even more "tangible" problems: parts of SpaceX rockets are now actually falling back to Earth and pose a serious threat, as described in this very intriguing thread:
https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/112412755270980994
Gosh, I went to bed, and now I wake up and there's one more existential threat!
Is there any reference to show that satellites actually cause a danger? 48 tons of mostly-metal meteorites fall on the earth every day.
In the 50s/60s scientists sent up a rocket (or balloon?) into the ozone with a catalyst just to see what it would do. Apparently it was quite a light show.
I guess you could say the future is bright.
In the article, it says so.
There is also a difference to natural meteorites: they contain very little aluminium, which seems to be the main problem, and they're not sinking slowly into the atmosphere, but coming at good speed.
As I said: Before continuing with these programs, we should investigate, in order to properly assess the risk.
If it turns out, there's none, some people lost a few years of business. I think, that's a risk worth taking, the other way round: no!
@mina We've been down this road before - CFCs from spray cans and leaking from refrigeration devices. Ronald Reagan's response was, "everybody wear a broad-brimmed hat and we'll be fine."