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'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky

81 points| gooseus | 8 years ago |theguardian.com

74 comments

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[+] danielvf|8 years ago|reply
This is utterly, utterly overblown.

The Space Station is thousands of times bigger and throws back a hundred times more light than this will.

Every evening, for most of the populated world, dozens of brighter satellites than this go overhead. I just checked the orbits for my evening here - 57 brighter satellites.

But what about the flashing? Well, we've got those already too. The old, awesome Iridium satellites have giant antennas that act like mirrors. When one beams the sun onto you at night for a few seconds, it's hundreds of times brighter than the Humanity Star. The Hitomi, a failed Japanese weather satellite, flashes every second or so as it spins - again, much brighter than this will ever be.

And worries about Kessler syndrome for this object in a very low earth orbit? Even if every satellite in similar orbit magically exploded tomorrow, the debris would be gone in less than year. In the meantime we could still launch to other orbits. Kessler syndrome is overhyped in general, and a complete non-issue this low.

[+] yAnonymous|8 years ago|reply
No. It's good to criticize this now, before everyone starts doing it. I really don't want ad banners in the sky twenty years from now.
[+] chimmy_chonga|8 years ago|reply
Those served an actual purpose though. They weren't just shoved into space just to say, "hey look at what we did". That's the point they're making. Don't pollute space just because you can.

EDIT: typos

[+] wodenokoto|8 years ago|reply
> It is expected to become the brightest object in the night sky for nine months until it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

That sounds like a pretty big deal to me.

[+] clarkenheim|8 years ago|reply
How did you "check the orbits for your evening"? just curious, i would like to check my own from time to time and have a look on a clear night. If it is something a layman can do?
[+] api|8 years ago|reply
It's the precedent. We do not want space based ads.
[+] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
> director of astrobiology at Columbia University Caleb Scharf wrote in Scientific American, the star represented "another invasion of my personal universe"

There's hyperbole, and then there's comments like that. His "personal universe"?

[+] thecatspaw|8 years ago|reply
Honestly I dont see a problem with this statement. People have their own sphere, domain, topic that they are engrossed in and love over everything. He just happened to call it his personal universe (which I think is pretty fitting)
[+] wavefunction|8 years ago|reply
I don't read that as any sort of claim of ownership, merely that this ridiculous fake-star stunt has impacted his life, which is probably mostly removed from such inanities as it involves astronomy.
[+] danaliv|8 years ago|reply
I read that comment as making an analogy to intrusive advertising.
[+] Androider|8 years ago|reply
Great, NIMBYs now want to stop space development. And it's just for 9 months, take a chill pill.

Personally I think it's awesome, I'm going to try to track it and show it to my daughter. I hope one day we'll have structures on the moon that are visible to the naked eye! Can you imagine how motivating and achievable that would make space exploration seem to a new generation.

[+] GuB-42|8 years ago|reply
Why don't you track the ISS instead. It is orders of magnitude more interesting than a disco ball.

Imagine explaining this to your daughter :

- Here is the ISS, people live there.

- This is the Hubble space telescope, it makes plenty of nice pictures.

- This is a communication satellite, it for making phone calls from anywhere in the world.

- This... is a giant disco ball, it is made so you can see it.

Putting up what is essentially a space billboard is the kind of space development we can do without. And this is what astronomers are complaining about. It is not for the object itself, it is for the precedent it sets.

[+] nkrisc|8 years ago|reply
Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations.

Once low Earth orbit is easily accessible to anyone, what can be done? There are all kinds of intentional and unintentional misuses of such a capability.

[+] dogma1138|8 years ago|reply
There is a metric ton of regulation you can’t launch anything into space without going thorough a mile of red tape.

Apparently no one consulted astronomers with this case most likely as no one expected a use case where someone launches a freaking disco ball into low earth orbit.

[+] SideburnsOfDoom|8 years ago|reply
> Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations.

A finite resource, great cost necessary to access it, danger of catastrophic failure when things collide. Long-lasting consequences of such failure.

I'd expect regulation in this scenario. It seems inevitable and necessary.

[+] gooseus|8 years ago|reply
Do we not have a global regulating body for what people can put in LEO? Cause I'm gonna have to say yes on this one.

A 9-month occasional bright light in the sky is a brief annoyance for astronomers, but avoiding the Kessler Syndrome should be a global imperative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

[+] upofadown|8 years ago|reply
Oh come now. There are a lots of orbiting objects that cause bright flashes. The flashes this particular object causes are not even that bright. I suspect that anyone who pointed this out were not quoted... Particularly the astronomers who thought the whole thing was awesome... Astronomers are bothered by any sunlight illuminated satellite. This will make no difference at all to their lives.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare

[+] jvandonsel|8 years ago|reply
Sure, but the point of those satellites is not to make a flash in the sky. The whole point of the disco ball is to dazzle.
[+] cordite|8 years ago|reply
My astronomer friend says this isn’t really different from any other satellite with reflective shielding.
[+] nkrisc|8 years ago|reply
But presumably those other satellites are at least serving a useful purpose.
[+] 089723645897236|8 years ago|reply
Graffiti artist here. Space junk is a general problem I understand so theres nothing special about this device other than that it doesn't serve as anything but a marketing gimmick/artistic gesture.

Street art / graffiti is done by people who want others to read their names and see their art. It's the ultimate act of hubris to say that others should experience your art unfiltered and without a choice in the matter. You invade public space, upset people's comfort zone, and get them to think. Even if it's just "wow look at all the colors and lines". Just wait till they start projecting ads on the moon then yall will be really pissed off.

[+] Waterluvian|8 years ago|reply
This has me thinking about how absurd privacy/protection of vision can be. If I stand in my apartment and face my photon receptors towards the apartment across the street, place some carefully constructed glass lenses in front of them, and receive photons from the sun bouncing off the surface of a pretty specimen, that is pretty universally abhorred behaviour. Of course this is absurdly reductionist. But interesting, nonetheless.

If you don't like the giant "PEPSI PRESENTS: MARS" billboard we placed in space, close your curtains at night!

[+] sp332|8 years ago|reply
Privacy is a social construct. Its definition mainly depends on how people feel about it. That doesn't make it not useful, I mean that maybe we should try to protect our experience of the night sky even if the reasons aren't too rigorous.
[+] chillingeffect|8 years ago|reply
Some comments have intoned "it's not that bright," but from the article "It is expected to become the brightest object in the night sky for nine months"

Can anyone shed some information on this?

I know if someone made it difficult for me t oget my planned work done for the next nine months, my boss and I would be pretty ticked off.

[+] danielvf|8 years ago|reply
There's no possible way this is the brightest thing in the night sky - it's simply not that big, and most of the light that hits it will not be going towards you because of the facets.

The only number I've seen puts it at 4.0 magnitude when flashing. That's hard to see with the naked eye from a US city, and there are about 500 stars brighter than that.

[+] intrasight|8 years ago|reply
I am more concerned about the precedent that this sets. But then again, I am way more concerned about many other things.
[+] rbanffy|8 years ago|reply
And I once did the math on how heavy a mylar spherical balloon would need to be to have the apparent size of the Moon from 150 km of altitude and concluded that it could be launched from an Ariane 5 (at about 14000 kg or so).

I'd be a very unpopular person if someone decided to pay for the project.

[+] chasd00|8 years ago|reply
man if there's one thing gets astronomers worked up it's light from any other source than what they're interested in.
[+] hanoz|8 years ago|reply
I see you can track its current position here: http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker but a flyby predictor is notable by its absence, I wonder why that should be?
[+] ter0|8 years ago|reply
Click 'Find My Location' in the top left of the map view.
[+] rwmj|8 years ago|reply
On the other hand, it's now easier for astronomers to launch small telescopes out of the atmosphere ...
[+] gaius|8 years ago|reply
The Rutherford engine alone and its manufacturing process is a far greater accomplishment than any one of these “scientists” has ever managed. Maybe they ought to come and join the real world?
[+] spoovy|8 years ago|reply
This isn't 'space' though is it; its low earth orbit. I wouldn't care if they'd fired it into intergalactic space but they didn't, they just added to our halo of orbiting garbage purely to grab some cheap publicity.
[+] badwolf|8 years ago|reply
They put it in low earth orbit. It's orbit will decay in about 9 months and it will burn up in the atmosphere.

It wasn't just for cheap publicity. It was a test payload of a new rocket.

[+] JoeAltmaier|8 years ago|reply
Hm. "The heavens" is a protected area, like a wilderness or polar bear? What hubris - tiny humans feeling possessive about the entirety of the universe. Something very off here. And these are exactly the people who should appreciate our insignificance in the cosmos.

Maybe they just expressed themselves badly. Its our 'sphere of observation' or some such, that they feel is being badly treated?

[+] titzer|8 years ago|reply
I'd argue the hubris is going the other way: launching shiny stuff into space that everyone has to look at. It's launching trash into space, IMHO, and I reacted quite negatively at first as well.