For quite a while, Elon Musk was one of the more popular figures in both technology and pop culture. His was a success story that everyone seemed to be able to get behind. The technology he was developing was seen as a bridge to the future and his generosity to those in need was widely admired. He dared to dream of taking people to Mars in our lifetimes. Even the left seemed to love him. He was making electric vehicles “cool” so he must have wanted to save the climate. His Boring Company was expanding underground rail options. (Public transportation!) You no doubt know the story.
Then it all collapsed when he bought Twitter and dared to challenge the idea that the left could unabashedly censor conservative speech whenever they left like it. Musk became Public Enemy Number 1, or at least somewhere well up on the list. Now Time magazine has decided to launch a broadside at the new Twitter CEO, but not over his social media activities or his Teslas. No, they have Canadian technology writer Paris Marx going after Musk and SpaceX because of his Starlink satellite constellations. Those satellites are cluttering up the skies above and Marx boldly declares that “Elon Musk should not be in charge of the night sky!”
Elon Musk is an expert at capturing people’s attention, and these days, the headlines are following Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the ensuing chaos as he tries to reshape the platform in the way he believes it should be run. But in the process, we shouldn’t forget what else he’s up to, especially as one of his endeavors threatens to alter our relationship to the night sky itself: Starlink…
After the first few dozen were sent into orbit, astronomers started to report a problem: Starlink satellites were messing with the images that scientists were taking of space. When the satellites crossed the area being captured by their telescopes, they would leave bright lines across the image, making large parts of it unusable.
As more Starlink satellites are launched, that problem will get far worse, and it won’t just affect astronomers; regular people are already spotting the satellites in the skies above us, especially around dusk and dawn when they’re most likely to capture the glare of the sun. Starlink satellites are launched into low Earth orbit, making them easier to detect, and are released in a line, causing the series of streaks across images of space. Speaking to Vox, astronomer and physicist Tony Tyson said that once there are tens of thousands, “you’ll see the sky crawling.”
To be clear, I can sympathize with Marx’s concerns here to a certain degree. Speaking as an astronomy fan who has been fascinated with NASA’s exploration of the cosmos, I’ve already seen some of the long-duration telescopic photos that have shown long white streaks across them because some Starlink satellites were going by. I’m sure it’s annoying and frustrating to astronomers.
But with that said, Elon Musk is not “in charge of the night sky.” He’s one person who happens to be able to put satellites into orbit, along with NASA, Russia, the European Space Agency, China, and many others. He just puts up quite a few more of them than most outfits. As Marx himself concedes, while Elon has a bit more than 3,000 satellites in orbit, there are an even larger number of active satellites up there that were put up by others. And there are almost twice as many dead ones. Yes, Musk’s tend to be a bit brighter than others because of the way they reflect the sun, but he’s already working on new designs to reduce the glare.
As we’ve discussed here previously, low-earth orbit is a junkyard after more than sixty years of space missions. There are more than 215,000 pieces of space junk larger than one-half inch across that we’re keeping an eye on. And nobody has proposed a workable plan to clean it all up because nobody wants to pay for the work to be done.
But even if you agree that Elon Musk is putting up “too many satellites,” what’s to be done about it? We really don’t have much in the way of “space law” yet. And we should thank our lucky stars (pun intended) that we don’t. Otherwise, nothing would get done in space outside of military work because everything would be tied up in lawsuits. As things stand, anyone who can get a rocket into orbit and deploy payloads may do so. If you tried to stop him from doing it from the United States, he would simply take his business elsewhere. There are plenty of countries that would welcome the money his companies bring to the table.
More than anything else, it looks like there is a liberal dogpile shaping up against Musk because of Twitter. And Time magazine just wanted to get in on the action to buff up their liberal bona fides.
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