Comment on SpaceX vaporizes 260 Starlink satellites in six months using Earth's atmosphere
Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Retrieving the deorbited satellites — which weigh roughly 573 to 650 pounds (260 to 295 kg) for first-generation units and 1,764 to 2,756 pounds (800 to 1,250 kg) for second-generation units — is technically impractical and financially unviable, according to the company. Hence, the incineration technique.
So that’s 148,980 to 325,000 kilograms (or 148.98 to 325 tons) of electronics burned by single corporation in half a year.
Not just incinerated, incinerate red in the upper atmosphere while directly heating it.
They burn up from friction, it’s not just the flames the whole process is heating the planet and who knows how many things it’s fucking up we haven’t noticed before.
But the most important bit is if they don’t know how to get them down, they need to stop sending them up.
There’s no way burning satellites are putting enough energy into the atmosphere to heat it up. They cause other problems like ozone degradation and serious aerosol pollution.
Rockets on the other hand put a lot of greenhouse gasses high up in the atmosphere, including incredibly potent greenhouse gasses like water vapor. These launches account for a meaningful percentage of all emissions.
You’re not crashing the entire rocket, just a tiny bit of it. Also, generating direct energy has never been a climate change issue, it’s the byproducts of that generating that are fucking us up.
That's a lot of electronics waste. Estimates for 2025 e-waste into landfills was around 65 million tons, and it continues to rise each year. It's not an either/or, we can complain about both, but the scale difference makes the first seem a bit less dramatic. We should do something about our throwaway society.
I work in IT and am resposible for e-recycle runs. I take the laptops home, re install windows, and give them away free to any poor person i come across.
I imagine most of that weight isn’t the actual electronics, but the housing.
The housing isn’t great to be burning either.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
They’ve also been shown to have a not insignificant impact on the ozone. We’re so fucked
Fuckswearwords@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Does puncturing through our upper atmosphere during escape have any non insignificant effects? I’ve seen some of those videos of launches at night (when the solar wind lights up everything) and it sure looks like we are burning holes in our ozone layer when we do that. Just asking you cause you seem somewhat knowledgeable.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 20 hours ago
Okay so I’m just into chemistry and astronomy as a hobby because I love learning, no expert. My understanding though.
The launches definitely aren’t great but they’re actually not the biggest issue. The problem is the satellites, when they’re deorbited, generate 50+ lbs of aluminum oxide which just floats on the upper atmosphere for years (like 30 years). Aluminum oxide is an especially potent catalyst for ozone depletion. The mega constellations that Musk wants would require multiple satellites to be deorbited daily, quickly piling up the aluminum oxide. The low orbit internet satellites are relatively short lived. So he wants either Kessler syndrome or enough aluminum oxide to eat the ozone in a year
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
At least we can have the ctharsis of staking them out in the sun and watching them burn like the vampires they are.