Elon Musk tweets about factorio

[grimmeld]

Here's the tweet:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1306491844512026624

[TheRangerLOL]

Plot twist: Grimmeld is Elon Musk

[Catari64]

Factorio is Elon musk simulator. you are an immigrant in a foreign place where you build a rocket factory that emits large amounts of pollution but it's ok because you make up for it with solar power. also make trains.

[darkfrei]

Factorio is Elon musk simulator. you are an immigrant in a foreign place where you build a rocket factory that emits large amounts of pollution but it's ok because you make up for it with solar power. also make trains.

Where are all tunnels?

[mmmPI]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

With 42K satellites, 7 years of life expectancy, you need to replace an average of 17 per day.

Speedrunning ? like trashing space before others can ?

I guess in 10 years his new business will be cleaning up the mess ?

Brilliant, much anticipation ! Like pyromaniac fireman !

But that time he didn't realize he needed to paint them black so we can hope to still see stars in the future makes me a bit worry about the consequences of the mistakes humans need to learn from.

[DaveMcW]

I guess in 10 years his new business will be cleaning up the mess ?

SpaceX's plan is to own 90% of satellites in 10 years, they would be the #1 victim of Kessler syndrome. They definitely have a plan to clean it up. That includes dropping satellites into the atmosphere at the end of their life. They are also using low orbits, where air resistance will naturally cause debris to fall down in less than 10 years.

[Theikkru]

[...]They are also using low orbits, where air resistance will naturally cause debris to fall[...]

There's an interesting corollary on top of this. Because air resistance is dependent on the frontal cross-section of an object, (which is a square function of size,) and its momentum is dependent on the mass, (which is a cube function of size,) smaller objects tend to suffer the effects of air resistance a lot more than larger objects. In other words, in the unlikely event that a collision does occur between some of these satellites, the resulting debris would fall out of those low orbits even faster than the intact (uncontrolled) satellite would.

[ptx0]

I guess in 10 years his new business will be cleaning up the mess ?

SpaceX's plan is to own 90% of satellites in 10 years, they would be the #1 victim of Kessler syndrome. They definitely have a plan to clean it up. That includes dropping satellites into the atmosphere at the end of their life. They are also using low orbits, where air resistance will naturally cause debris to fall down in less than 10 years.

nice elon musk propaganda, dave!

but space trash is a huge problem for many reasons. one of those being night visibility, another being the ability to launch rockets without hitting space debris.. live satellites are also space trash.

[Nosferatu]

Space trash is a problem in orbits 600k and above. The bulk of starlinks satellites will operate at 330k and 550k where they will decay in reasonable time in case they malfunction.
Live satellites are easy to track so you never run into them accidently...

So why do you call what Dave wrote propaganda?

[mmmPI]

Observations :

ISS orbit between 330 and 420 km.
None of the actual funders seems to wish or be able to finance it, it may be shut down before 2030.
China wants to send one at 340/350km.
Low orbit is the most worth it for telecommunication due to shorter travel time for signals.

Questions :

What is the distance that is considered safe for 2 satelites ?
What if someone think it's less than that and doesn't change trajectory ?
what if no-one can change trajectory because of loss of control, lack of fuel, non-awareness (stealth & weapons ) ?
If you have a fleet of several thousands satelites what is the problem of losing a few in a collision ?
Companies sometimes goes bankrupt. Who will take care of the mess if that happens ?


Personnal opinion :

Those questions are oriented i'm not asking for what are the potential benefit that would be the domain of economy on which everyone and his cousin has a theory they saw on TV and now like. I think using the money from the masses to fund research is a neutral description of the last 50 years. Wether it is state via taxes or companies via profit is another debate which can interesect sometimes in case of disaster when responsability and/or the need for understanding are at stake. I dislike the consequences of that state of fact.

One could question the increase in internet traffic and its potential expansion in regard of the "space" available in "space" to place satelite that provide the lucrative services to secure the funding over time. And would probably receive the answer he wants to hear depending on how many economists he can hire for the job that's my personnal theory .

This plan to clean things up, i wish there is one for bees to make them come back, and birds too. Even moutains looks happier with a little snow on top.

I wish i could worry less and think debris would fall anyway given some time, i hope we don't end up verifying it at large scale.

To achieve a "speedrun" one has to make a lot of failure. Can we handle it ? Why should we be asked this question ?

[tamanous]

Questions :

You assume that there is a decent tracking of all objects surrounding the planet. Sadly, there isn't. Currently, the tracking is done by every country on its own. Even Europe just starts to collaborate within itself.
Further, the problems of small particles (2 cm and less) is underestimated. Imagine a penny-sized plastic particle hitting your monitor with 3k miles per hour. Not only will your monitor most likely stop working. It is very likely, that there will be small parts ripped out of it, that now are more coin-sized dangers (with individual speeds and vectors). Tracking these tiny objects is very complicated...

50 km distance is likely to be fine.

There is some research going on in autonomous satellites changing their orbits to avoid collision. On 09.28.2020 a sojous deployed 3 net sats, that are used to test autonomous orbit control and approaches to a few meters. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8EcKhRYZJE (sry, most of it in german, some powerpoint slides in english).

The (current) problem of large amounts of satellites is that, depending of their orbit, a satellite reflects sunlight back to earth, when there should be blank sky. The time window for looking into the start becomes smaller, as during dawn times more and more satellites are emitting light. Expensive astronomy uses software filters to cut out those bright spots, but for amateurs they will become a problem sooner than later.

[Koub]

[Koub] This has got totally off topic. I'm locking the thread.