throitallaway 3 months ago

And with that the total number of rocket flights per year has ramped up due to SpaceX. Same thing applies to Starlink satellites "ruining" the night sky. It was a bit of an issue before, but now that there are thousands of satellites up there from one company, they're making headlines for similar reasons.

  • jclarkcom 3 months ago

    I saw them a couple of nights ago and was able to get them in a photo. You can see about 12 of them in a row.

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u978rksgjrtvusfmpt36k/IMG_896...

    • HeyLaughingBoy 3 months ago

      Saw them for the first time about a week ago (rural Minnesota) as we were going out to do evening chores. Startled me for a second until I realized what I was seeing.

      • dylan604 3 months ago

        If you were in Jersey, you could call them drones and people would believe you.

  • sapphicsnail 3 months ago

    I've talked to people that live in dark areas and they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before. People are definitely after Elon but he really brought that on himself.

    • IncreasePosts 3 months ago

      Starlink satellites are only visible to the naked eye during specific circumstances for a brief period whole they're being boosted to their final orbit.

      I've seen it. It's kind of cool. 8 pale, silent dots in line moving across the sky for like 3 minutes.

      I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.

      • sapphicsnail 3 months ago

        There aren't commercial airplanes out there. This was at Catalina Island which is ~25 miles off the California coast. There is very little light pollution. I think it's more the fear that the sky will be filled with those. I don't know how long after launch this was but it had been a repeat occurrence for multiple nights at that point.

        • IncreasePosts 3 months ago

          I have zero problem finding numerous flights passing directly over Catalina island at night, or very close (within 20 miles @ 10k feet, which would be easily visible from the island).

          globe.adsbexchange.com -> click the replay button, and then scrub to some random time after sunset in CA. Turn on flight tracks and set the speed to 100x to make the flights easier to identify.

          Flights from major airlines coming from Alaska, Asia, and Hawaii seem to frequently fly directly over Catalina at night.

      • darknavi 3 months ago

        > I'm sure they've seen airplanes flying at night with brighter lights, and louder noises than what starlink produces, so I'm not sure how this is really a problem.

        For what its worth planes generally avoid flying through designated dark sky areas.

    • ryan_j_naughton 3 months ago

      > they've never seen anything like the Starlink satellites before

      By that, do you mean they can't see the starlink satellites now with their eyes, despite the number of them? Or do you mean that before they didn't see anything and now it is a problem and they are seeing things with their naked eyes?

      • sapphicsnail 3 months ago

        They've never seen satellites that bright before

        • TeMPOraL 3 months ago

          That's surprising, given that Iridium flares were a regular occurrence until ~5 years ago.

          (They were arguably also one of the most interesting and inspiring phenomena on the sky, too. I miss them.)

echoangle 3 months ago

More like 50%. In 2024, they had 134 launches and globally, there were 259.

hagbard_c 3 months ago

...which result in far less debris making its way down to earth since they commoditised the re-use of launch hardware. Had these launches been performed by ULA or Arianespace or any of the other incumbents there'd be much more debris dropping to the seabed or - in the case of Russian and Chinese launchers - to the desert (Russia) or haphazardly strewn around populated areas (China [1]).

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-house...