SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

[esquivalience]

Seems like this isn't considered to be a big issue, beyond that it is a very visible thing that instinctively 'feels' like a bad idea.

> Rocket engines spray water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ionosphere, quenching local ionization by as much as 70%. A complicated series of charge exchange reactions between oxygen ions (O+) and molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å–the same color as red auroras.

> Once rare, ionospheric “punch holes” are increasingly common with record numbers of rocket launches led by SpaceX sending Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. Ham radio operators may notice them... These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

Will excess radiation leak through to Earth during re-ionization?

[jakeinspace]

Who measures light wavelengths in angstroms rather than nm?

[samstave]

Totally stupid Q: Can we harvest any of this energy>?

[pseg134]

It may not seem like a big issue but it speaks to the attitude of billionaires. I am no longer free to vent personal amounts of coolant from a refrigerator but Elon Musk can punch all of the holes he wants with his expensive rockets.

[nikolay]

Just try to extrapolate when tons more rockets punch the skies and let harmful radiation do its toll on life on Earth. We already have tons of junk, nobody has the responsibility to "clean after themselves." Wh would've imagined that the plastic bottles that are now in every river, in seas, and oceans will pollute the entire planet with "benign" micro- and nanoplastics.

We humans are stupid. We always underestimate the consequences of small stuff that simply adds up over time. This is a pattern. We polluted the planet with forever chemicals, lead, and tons of other pollutants that our descendants will have to deal with and suffer from!

All this needs to be regulated, a risk-benefits analysis made, and there needs to be a huge excise tax for all such activities!

[ajhurliman]

A technically correct, but insignificant headline which appears dangerous at first glance; yeah that seems par for the course of modern journalism.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

Not being able to tell the difference between a news article and a blog post is par for the course of modern society.

[tootie]

This is blog post by someone who finds it interesting

[eqvinox]

"molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å – the same color as red auroras."

Anyone else have this use of Ångström trigger an exception in their brain? The unit of default for wavelength is nm, not Å… (1nm=10Å)

[dguest]

I don't know if there's a "default" unit, but most people I interact with would use SI units (i.e. km, m, cm, mm, micron, nm, pm). Maybe more to your point, 630 nm is the same number of characters and a slightly more familiar unit. Writing a wavelength as 6300 angstroms is a bit like saying a marathon is 421,950 cm.

Anecdotally I've only really heard angstroms used in material science / condensed matter physics, where most small structures are small integer numbers of angstroms across.

[throwaway4837]

Angstroms are used pretty commonly in molecular/nuclear physics.

[dermesser]

If you look in another field, the default wavelength (wave number) unit is 1/cm. Meaning, there's not really a default wavelength unit.

[samstave]

my trigger is from like the 1980s or 1990s where angstrom was a computer I couldnt afford...

[nbltanx]

Starlink plans to deploy 12,000 - 42,000 satellites. What if two competitors want to do the same? Can the low earth orbit handle 150,000 satellites that turn into space debris at some point?

[panick21_]

The waste, waste majority of sats never turn into space debris. Every single sat that launches today in the West has a deorbit planned. The only sat that turn into space debris will be those that brake unexpectitly and totally unrecoverable.

And the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever.

And in general, yes LEO can handle millions of sats.

We have like 150k cars in a single tiny country on earth right now.

[b33j0r]

LEO is big, but only a few orbits are desirable and all circular orbits at the same altitude cross twice, by definition. It’s like slot cars, but much lower probability of an “intersection event.”

That’s fun! Of course, we do already have something analogous to FAA altitude separations. But that requires everyone everywhere to cooperate in real-time, and mandates some degree of maneuverability. I guess orbital decay is only a concern for aircraft when they aren’t trying to land.

What you have to watch out for is the eventual rise of the Kessler Cult, who (according to me) will seek to block all access to space intentionally ;)

[alden5]

Starlink satellites only last about 5 years before they run out of gas and are decommissioned with an end of life maneuver which sets them on course to burn up in the earth's atmosphere. I doubt many others besides maybe amazon will want to launch satellites at the same height as spacex's, especially considering how insanely expensive and complicated launching something like the starlink network is. Another point to consider is how small they are compared to the area they occupy, they have plenty of room to spread out and they're constantly monitored to calculate the probability that they might collide.

[jdjdjdhhd]

China is already planning something similar: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-to-counter-musks-st...

[Armisael16]

Yes.

[latchkey]

I saw the launch from southern california. My first ever seeing a rocket go up. It was pretty amazing to watch the thing streak across the sky. Sadly, missed the red glow though.

[nologic01]

Commercial space is a tragedy of the commons in the making. What is its "carrying capacity", who calculated it, who enforces it? What are the long term effects, when do they kick in? What are potential secondary effects or tipping points?

Astronomy is already a casualty as the sky stops being "dark". I guess who cares about fundamental knowledge when there is profit to be had.

[throwaway69123]

Space is alot bigger than you think or make out, the effects on astronomy are short lived while they get into position

[perihelions]

Related thread,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33762492 ("North Korean ICBM launch detected using GPS")

[kristianpaul]

“ The red glow is a sign that the rocket punched a hole in the ionosphere–something SpaceX and others have been doing for years. “

[tamimio]

> Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies.

When we fly drones especially BVLOS operations we sometimes encounter some GNSS anomalies, that in some cases we just cancel the mission that day and the next day it’s with no issues. Could it be that’s the reason? Who knows, but it might be an issue later with crewed drones.

[dfox]

That depends of what exactly is that anomaly. If your GNSS receiver tracks 4 satellites from the same constellation then obviously, this kind of ionosphere anomaly will with some probability lead to some kind of unexpected fix error (but with some high probability still smaller than the specified error of such receiver). I believe that typical somewhat modern multi-constellation GNSS receiver will either consider satellites affected by that as invalid outliers or just average that out.

[valine]

If it’s crewed is it still a drone?

[jrockway]

If you have a dual frequency receiver (L1/L2), then the ionospheric error is corrected for. These are very common these days, so probably not the reason.

[hinkley]

I wonder if this will a) come to nothing, b) result in engine throttling during a phase of the launch, or c) result in launch windows from just before dawn until ?? pm.

[Brajeshwar]

When is the tentative timeline to be building and launching rockets up from the outer atmosphere? While we occasionally launch payloads of raw materials from earth instead of the regularly launches that we have now?

[yellowapple]

The sooner we achieve a critical mass of lunar industry, the sooner we'd be able to almost entirely do away with any need for terrestrial launches in the first place (the exception being to get people up).

[TheDudeMan]

Is this something I can be outraged about?

[yellowapple]

I don't think there's a limit to things you can be outraged about if you set your mind to it.

[ge96]

Sweet release that 99.99% bacteria cleanse, wipe across countertop, goneski

[iefbr14]

And how about the dumping of excess fuel in the upper atmosphere?

[zgluck]

So now they'll also have to deal with "preserve the ionosphere" activists who have no clue.

[mcswell]

I saw an earlier article about this on Newsweek, and that's exactly what happened. In fact one poster thought this meant we were "punching holes" in the atmospheres of other planets.

The term "punching a hole" is absurd, IMO.

[water9]

People are really reaching to smear Elon Musk

[thelit]

Literally making a dent in the universe

[notJim]

laughs nervously