I was accused of being sensationalist or exaggerating when our 2022 research paper predicted one in 15 visible points in the sky would be a moving satellite. I think maybe we were actually too conservative.
I hate this so very very much.
Oct 19, 2026, 1:43 AM@sundogplanets I'm most worried that Musk will manage to damage the ozone layer enough to have Permian style mutations, and everyone will actually starve to death while dying of cancer.
Speaking of... Have you heard that Tesla and Space-X are doing a joint program selling portable ozone spheres? The investors are all very excited.
😢
(The above is intended as satire, for clarity. I don't _think_ it's true. I swear I _just_ made it up.)
Oct 19, 2026, 5:06 AMLooking at the stats for planned and agency-approved constellations makes me dizzy already on paper. Even if I don't believe the datacenters will get built, we still looking at 2 orders of magnitude more sats.
@knud There are more than 2 million planned satellites that have been filed for at the moment....
Oct 19, 2026, 1:10 PMYes, but ~1.3m are datacenters. 1.2m by SpaceX and 88k from Starcloud. Which would bring us from 15k today to about a million, if they the rest gets made. But 1m or 2m doesn't really matter, it will simply litter the sky.
@knud And we'll be in full fast-timescale Kessler way before we get to 2 million. So it's all stupid :(
Oct 19, 2026, 3:26 PMIndeed. Kessler has already started above, what, 500km? But this million will accelerate the creation of debris so much that we'll all have fun with it in 20 not 100 years...
And by fun I mean the end of useful satellites in LEO.
:-/
@sundogplanets do not like!