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Comment by throitallaway

3 days 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.

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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

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    • > 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.

  • > 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?