How can you hog space?
Elon Musk has rejected claims that his Starlink satellite internet project is taking up too much room in space.
Jesus.
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams was there already. But these people are serious, it seems. Truly, the world is mad. Hogging space, indeed.
He can have my bit. Cost him, though.
The trouble is that the BBC doesn’t seem to know the difference between “space” and “an orbital altitude of 210 miles”. There’s about 1700 of the buggers whizzing about up there, and they are getting to be a bit of a problem.
But saying they’re “taking up too much room in space” is a bit like saying your collection of DVDs/Airfix kits/milk bottle tops is taking up too much room in Europe. It might be taking up too much room, and it might, technically, be in Europe, but the two facts aren’t really connected.
Isn’t the problem that while space is vast you can only use bits of it for certain purposes… Geostationary orbit for instance is only at 35,000km (ish)…
True, but A circumference length at 35K kilometers radius is a pretty long line!
It’s not like they would be in a line either, or at the same altitude (the space station is at 205miles) I would think the surface of a sphere 70k miles in diameter is quite vast, obviously more vast than the brains of those morons.
Just goes to show how anti-progress (which is ironic since they probably think of themselves as progressives…), obscurantist and frankly not very smart those people usually are.
Actually, it looks like bureaucrats looking to increase their power by creating a non-existent problem and then offering themselves as being the ones that should be tasked with dealing with it.
The modus operandi of bureaucrats since time immemorial.
We really need to cull a lot of those people.
Also, if one of Musk’s satellites was to damage the chinese space station, I would not be very much upset.
LOL! I can’t believe that I thought in terms of a circle rather than a sphere! Shheeesh. Sleep deprived!
Plus of corse there’d be quite workable spheres of significantly different diameters!
So, nope, no crowding at all, at least not in the near future!
Circle was right. A geostationary orbit has to be above the equator. Your mistake was quoting a radius of 35,000 km without adding the 6,400(ish) km for the earth’s radius.
Schoolboy error. Report to the headmaster for six of the best. 🙂
Just to give an idea
Circum = 2 * ? * radius
C = 2 * ? * 41,400
Circumference ? 260,123km
So, even with 1700 geostationary satellites…
153km between satellites.
That’s London to Salisbury sort of distance…
Hardly crowded.
Ok, the first two question marks are pi symbols, the third is an approximately equals sign.
Don’t know if a browser thing and you’re all seeing it ok, or if the comments thing doesn’t support those symbols. Happy new year y’all
I don’t know. It does support HTML.
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
If their stupidity were only one pixel…….
Like the radio frequency spectrum, useable Earth orbits are limited.
That is why Gubments are flogging off frequencies that used to be “free”. Old analogue TV anyone?
Same with orbits.
And macho gubments blowing target satellites into a gazillion particles is not helping, when a frozen piss droplet can cause serious harm to a big satellite or space station.