this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Depressing actually. Future generations will look up and see shitty satellites.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i remember when i was a kid, i was hiking with my parents and we spent a night on about 2500m and looking up i obviously had a great view of the cosmos BUT i also could see some satelites moving and even the then MIR space station. i was impressed that "we" are actually up there for everyone down here to see. i guess the current generation want's a pristine night sky AND 24/7 internet, gps and tv.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A. Why is this a generational thing? I guess you’re a boomer or xer? B. 1 or two satellites or space stations are neat. Your story was from a time when not every company in the world could get something up there with little regulation. C. Yeah, nature is always more beautiful than our creations. Imagine many years from now when there may be so many visible satellites in the sky it’s not a novelty like it was to you as a child. D. This kind of apathy is how we got into the climate crisis today.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

C. Yeah, nature is always more beautiful than our creations.

I think that's obviously debatable. Natural things are not innately superior to designed things.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why not both? Like we've had for....decades.

The current generation, AND the previous generation (that being millennials, many of whom are now in their 40s) both would rather the natural beauty of our entire planet not be destroyed just so the likes of Elon Musk can sell a product.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That seems more than a tad hyperbolic. My wife and I enjoy sitting in our backyard next to the fire and stargazing every now and again. We'll catch maybe a dozen satellites on a good night, during the couple hours post-sunset when you can actually catch the sunlight glinting off them. By about 2 hours after sunset, the number of objects that are both high enough to still reflect sunlight and large enough to see is pretty tiny.

I see vastly more planes with blinking lights and bright landing lights than I do satellites, and this has been the case for decades, but somehow that's not a threat to our enjoyment of the night sky?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Every light adds to light pollution though and makes it more difficult for earth-based astronomy. And that's excluding events where satilites pass through observations.

Extremely annoying, but inevitable I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hopefully they will have de-orbited by then and we would have found a better solution. But then we may not have too many generations left anyway.