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[TheSteppeWolf]

I mostly agree with KT. Especially since I hardly see the Moon's nature as beautiful. And yes, I would think a populated Moon would be cool. Also Mars. We have no real evidence of any advanced extraterrestrial species, therefore I believe space is all ours to exploit and colonize until proven otherwise.

insert the Colossus Of Rhodes but it's the Milky Way instead of Africa here

[Madman198237]

I don't think it's good. It's a bad idea to open space up to unilateral plunder. That will cause a huge arms race.

Also, sending up corporations into space to plunder as they see fit is pretty much the dystopian future we don't want. Say hello to a future of corporate feudalism if we allow that.

An arms race? An arms race of what, ever-more-efficient rocket engines and space infrastructure? Dozens of nations already have far superior destructive potential, and what corporations are going to somehow take over by doing things in space?

It's not that easy to collect space resources and get them down to earth. The reason you use space resources is to do more things in space. Stating that people should be allowed to access resources in space is not perfect, but it IS a functional way to continue to encourage people to work on solutions to starting up infrastructure in space. Some amount of regulation would be nice, but mostly in terms of practical matters like "get NASA's approval before you start messing with things, help the world's space agencies do science on bodies you want to mess with but that haven't been studied yet, don't go hauling asteroids closer to Earth without approval."

Basically: Asteroids will not help earth-focused corporations become more powerful, but making use of the resources available in space would be EXTREMELY helpful.

I have a great sadness of thinking of looking up at the moon someday and seeing city lights*.  I think they should pass a law that human activity on the moon should be limited to the far side.

*Yes I know you'd only be able to see them when not illuminated by the sun.  But I don't want to look up at a new moon and see human settlements. I like the dark disk, unsullied by human touch.

The likelihood that we'd be able to meaningfully illuminate any part of the Moon is....fairly minimal. The likelihood that we'd WANT to do so, even smaller. There's not really much future in seriously inhabiting the Moon, it's even less hospitable than Mars in many respects. Also, it'd take a LOT of work to actually illuminate the Moon enough to be noticed.

[Jopax]

Gosh imagine looking up at the night sky to find a glimpse of the Milky Way and seeing nothing but ads for shitty sugar-water because some twit thought ads weren't prevalent or intrusive enough. Makes you want to step right back inside and start work on anti-satellite weaponry because fuck that and everyone who thought it'd be ok.

Tho I really doubt it'll be happening anytime soon, partly because of cost and impracticality (light pollution says hi) and partly because of how fucking impossible it'd be to regulate since it's bloody orbital and that means global, so how to you tax that shit or regulate what gets show to who when it's something that's inherently available to everyone.

[MrRoboto75]

Just hack the sats to project a giant dick in the sky.  Would solve something quickly I imagine.

[Madman198237]

Gosh imagine looking up at the night sky to find a glimpse of the Milky Way and seeing nothing but ads for shitty sugar-water because some twit thought ads weren't prevalent or intrusive enough. Makes you want to step right back inside and start work on anti-satellite weaponry because fuck that and everyone who thought it'd be ok.

1. Finally, a good reason to put something similar to the Space Shuttle back to work, because there are few other ways to get somebody's satellite out of orbit without risking Kessler Syndrome.
2. As an astronomer I feel safe in informing you that the first person to attempt a giant glowing advertisement in the sky is going to rouse the wrath of NASA and every single observatory on the planet faster than you can say "bad idea".

[Naturegirl1999]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

[Starver]

I have a great sadness of thinking of looking up at the moon someday and seeing city lights*.  I think they should pass a law that human activity on the moon should be limited to the far side.

My long-time thoughts on this issue have been:

• A zone centred upon the antigeo point on the Moon (Longitude ±180°, Longitude ±0° perhaps 60 radial degrees in extent, should be reserved for radio telescopes and barred from any other use. With similar regulations to earthly radio-quiet zones but starting from scratch. Lay fibe-optic data-lines only into/within the zone etc.
• Near-side, require that no development (settlement or mining operation) exceeds some level of alteration to the Earthly view. Some standard that can be freely tested by any nation Earth that, subject to an agreed resolution applied to the image of the Moon (or two, one for daylit surface, on for shadow surface, to apply in the respective parts of the Lunar month) no pixel shall deviate in hue or brightness by more than a certain amount from the historic reference value.
• By extension, as this might encourage settlement on the 'rim' (±90° Longitude, up/down and across the poles), have similar rules against making changes large enough to significantly change the horizon line, through the whole extent of normal libration.

The visual rules should be easy to police (anyone on Earth can look up at the right time, grab an image and submit a report, to be checked against what any other crowdsourced monitor reports) and would mean no accidental loss of "Man/Rabbit/whatever in the Moon" and penalties applicable against deliberate Pepsi/Coke-style advertising wars.

It would not stop (vital?) strip-mining, anywhere but the Lunar Radio-Quiet Area, as long as the company commits to not over-extending work area beyond a significant proportion of a given pixel, then 'painting' the revealed surface with a careful blend of stored regolith to repicate the original albedo/etc before moving over to an adjacent strip. Or possibly applying a sub-pixel 'dither', lightening or darkening, as their own Earth-sited monitors report how close they are getting to the applicable limits.

For nightside compliance, areas such as spaceport landing pad(-complexe?)s and even biodome parklands, if they're safe to design in the open rather than underground with PV-panels feeding batteries that then supply 24h cycles of 'daylight' via LED, are probably not going to big and bright enough to influence a whole night-side pixel. But a special exception may be granted to places such as "Armstrong City" national monument, encircling 0°42′50″N 23°42′28″E (a hopefully protected area, in itself, though hard to entirely prevent natural or forced impacts from spoiling the place, this side of forcefield dome development) by a ring of floodlighting or similar.


Anyway, good luck mining the Moon. Watch out for the Space Nazis, though!

[MrRoboto75]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.

[Naturegirl1999]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.

thank you
I’ve heard there are pieces of old satellites still in orbit, are there missions planned to capture those pieces and bring them back to Earth to scrap them to be used for new constructions?

[Starver]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not strctly astronomy.

But if you've seen Gravity, it's what (first) goes wrong there.

If you haven't, imagine two satellites (or other bits of debris, already) orbitting the Earth in different orbits (angle, mean distance, eccentricity, all can be vastly different) that at some point intersect. Deliberately or by chance. Smash! At orbital speeds (could be head on, so twice the instantaneous orbital speed, which is fast).

Now you've probably got a lot of fragments flying through space. Some may immediately de-orbit/escape orbit, without hitting anything, but many bits have a chance of intersecting with other orbitting items. Smash! Smash, smash, smash! SmashSmashSmashSmashSmash!!! Creating even more fragments, creating more more fragments. Until the chances of anything else up there (or later being put up there) not being hit is pretty remote.

Eventually this cloud of debris will deplete (rationalise into mostly ordered Saturn-like rings, maybe, what doesn't get shoved towards re-entry or become a comet-tail spewing out from Earth into inter-planetary space). But if the thing ever starts to go all Syndromy it's likely to put a brake on future launches for a while. Thus there's a lot of interest in de-orbitting or graveyard-orbitting EoLed satellites, where possibly, and developing methods for dealing with items where it wasn't possible.

HTH.

[Madman198237]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.

Pretty much. The idea of Kessler Syndrome is that you lose one satellite, and it sprays debris across a huge range of space, and that debris hits more satellites, and so on, until low Earth orbit is basically a continuous hail of shrapnel and broken bits of satellites for potentially years as debris slowly deorbits.

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossibly risky. It's perhaps not LIKELY, but it's certainly a possibility and a massive danger. Hence why we get unhappy when idiots decide to test antisatellite weaponry and the like.

thank you
I’ve heard there are pieces of old satellites still in orbit, are there missions planned to capture those pieces and bring them back to Earth to scrap them to be used for new constructions?

As a general rule recovering satellites is incredibly expensive and not worthwhile for anything but historical purposes. You're right that there are hundreds of dead satellites and thousands of fragments of satellites large enough to be tracked...and many thousands more too small to see but large enough to damage or destroy critical systems aboard satellites or, worse, the ISS and other manned spacecraft.

[Naturegirl1999]

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossible.

Pretty much. The idea of Kessler Syndrome is that you lose one satellite, and it sprays debris across a huge range of space, and that debris hits more satellites, and so on, until low Earth orbit is basically a continuous hail of shrapnel and broken bits of satellites for potentially years as debris slowly deorbits.

As an astronomer, can you explain Kessler Synfrome?

Not an astronomer, but Kessler Syndrome is basically when you hit critical mass in the amount of satellites you could have in low earth orbit.  Too many and you risk them hitting each other in a chain reaction and littering a massive cloud of space debris around earth.  Such a junk cloud could make further launches into space impossibly risky. It's perhaps not LIKELY, but it's certainly a possibility and a massive danger. Hence why we get unhappy when idiots decide to test antisatellite weaponry and the like.

thank you
I’ve heard there are pieces of old satellites still in orbit, are there missions planned to capture those pieces and bring them back to Earth to scrap them to be used for new constructions?

As a general rule recovering satellites is incredibly expensive and not worthwhile for anything but historical purposes. You're right that there are hundreds of dead satellites and thousands of fragments of satellites large enough to be tracked...and many thousands more too small to see but large enough to damage or destroy critical systems aboard satellites or, worse, the ISS and other manned spacecraft.

Yes, the idea is if they are brought out of low Earth orbit, they could be broken apart so the pieces can be used for newer constructs, and you’d be freeing up space as well while using the metal for more things instead of waiting for them to damage things that are still working

[bloop_bleep]

But, you see, sending a rocket up there to manually collect many pieces is very expensive.

I believe I've heard of plans to build ground-based laser(s) to push individual pieces of space debris that are high-risk out of stable orbit with radiation pressure. Not sure where the development of that is at the moment.

[Naturegirl1999]

But, you see, sending a rocket up there to manually collect many pieces is very expensive.

I believe I've heard of plans to build ground-based laser(s) to push individual pieces of space debris that are high-risk out of stable orbit with radiation pressure. Not sure where the development of that is at the moment.

fair point, what about magnets? Or are the materials not magnetic?

[Madman198237]

Well the pieces you'd get would be worthless to you, the metal and other materials you'd be recovering have miniscule value compared to the incredible costs of returning material to the Earth's surface from LEO.

But, you see, sending a rocket up there to manually collect many pieces is very expensive.

I believe I've heard of plans to build ground-based laser(s) to push individual pieces of space debris that are high-risk out of stable orbit with radiation pressure. Not sure where the development of that is at the moment.

This one's really cool, they actually are trying to burn off parts of debris, using the ablation of the material as a little rocket engine of sorts.

fair point, what about magnets? Or are the materials not magnetic?

They're not necessarily magnetic, though there ARE ideas that use magnetic "nets" of sorts to capture and force down materials in LEO, but those ideas are not ready for deployment any more than the laser options.