I've found an organisation that might interest you which covers NZ: https://australasiandarkskyalliance.org/

Yup, we just need a big space ute with a big tow bar, right?

If they become a problem you just tow it outside the environment, easy fix.

Well, when the aliens come across the carcass of a planet we leave behind, maybe a few of these will still be in orbit and actually functional enough to show them what we did to ourselves. They'll be glad they missed us.

Their presence does affect our environment. See this recent article: https://theconversation.com/too-many-satellites-earths-orbit-is-on-track-for-a-catastrophe-but-we-can-stop-it-275430

Children are wise.

Perhaps you can ask the author if you're interested.

I'm not aware of any, no.

I'm a bit confused about the call to action on the video, because they spend a chunk of the video talking about the important of identifying the satellite and then another chunk talking about making them harder to detect. I'm confused as to what the author wants us to think or do based on the information given.

I agree with you about unmarked vehicles analogy, I thought the same as you.

I thought improving the satellites 'transparency' was so that scientists could more easily see what's happening beyond them. But, yeh, the video could certainly be clearer.

With what you say about satellite launches growing exponentially in the future, we need to be better informed so we can demand from our governments duty of care (am I being naive? probably). Do you know if there is any citizen organisation that looks into this? Please let us know if you do.

Imagine if thousands of unmarked vehicles were driving through your neighbourhood each day, and you had no idea who's driving them, what's in them, or where they were going

Um that's exactly the case for cars, I'm not sure if this analogy really works.

Also, if you're wondering why they don't bang into each other, well the animation really exaggerates the size of them. It's nowhere near that crowded. There is way more space up there in orbit than there is on earth. Imagine if we had 4x the land area and only 11,000 cars, it would be very sparse. The risk isn't the current satellites it's the huge increase in launches that's forecast to rise exponentially.

The video also seems to conclude that it's difficult to detect the satellites, but we need to for national security, but also it interferes in astronomy, and there is research to make them harder to detect. I feel dumb as I don't really understand what the point is the video is making? That we should make them harder to detect or get better at detecting them? Both?

Yeah it is cute. Reminds me of my kids cuddling with the dog when they were young.

HIs head was sticking out. It was his little body that was being squashed. Still, they obviously didn't hurt each other.

But if it means they'll still put up thousands of satellites, even if the light the mirrors reflect is feeble they will still be harming the Earth. Death ray? Perhaps this is exactly what they want. And since when does scamming ever put off the Epstein mob and their lackeys?

Please, just reflect the light away from earth instead of towards it.

Australia is particularly vulnerable to the summer sun, because the earth's perihelion (January) is in Australian summer and American winter. The earth has a slightly lopsided orbit so the earth is about 5% closer to the sun in January than it is in July.

Americans and Europeans get a brighter sun in winter and dimmer in summer. Australians get the opposite.

The idea isn't to replace the sun entirely. It's to generate 100% sunlight for 1% of the area, and change the orientation of the mirrors based on who pays a subscription.

To provide illumination of practical value, the company has proposed deploying thousands of satellites in large mega-constellations.

Holy fuck stop with the “mega-constellations.” You’re embarrassing yourselves.

Poor Buggy when Wally sat on his head.

Don't worry, general physics means that this is just another investment scam.

I'll explain it out so you can get the general idea;

In order to reflect a sun's worth of sunlight, you need a reflective surface in low earth orbit that is somewhat larger than the angular size of the sun from our perspective on the ground. Imagine just using an ordinary mirror at home, you need to see the whole of the sun in it, and that works out to be about a little mirror about the size of your thumb at arm's length. In low earth orbit that mirror ends up being about 2km across.

To get that kind of reflective surface area in orbit you need about a couple of thousand 50 metre wide reflectors on satellites, just to reflect light to a single location with the rough equivalent of sunlight.

And then at the height of low earth orbit the earth eclipses the sun for quite a bit of time, so the sats that can see the sun during the night below on Earth are actually only able to do so for a couple of hours before sunrise or after sunset. So now you need to launch 10x more sats so that the sats that can see the sun can reflect light to where you want it.

So let's just say 20,000 sats to start with.

With some clever engineering, you could probably make them the same size as SpaceX sats, and they launch about 25 at a time for a customer cost of about 70 million USD.

My calculator says that the launch cost for this is 56 billion USD. And then sats in that orbit with huge, high drag panels will get pulled into the Earth's atmosphere after about 5 years, so you just need 56 billion up front plus about 10 billion a year to maintain the constellation, forever, and with all of that stuff flying around up there you can direct 1 suns worth of solar energy to 1 location.

Now you could take that array and split it up and provide, maybe a moonlight effect to a hundred places, and maybe, maybe, a hundred someones might pay the hundred million a year to feebly light their city streets or something. Seems a bit of an ask when there's plenty of ways already to turn night into day locally for a lot cheaper.

BUT - you could also repurpose those 20,000 sats to provide a dozen sun's worth of energy to any point on earth during the day when about half of them can easily see the sun.

This sure sounds like a practical equivalent of a death ray to me, which means all this bullshit will never get anywhere because no country in the world will allow anyone to build it.

So rest easy, this is just another way to scam venture capitalists and won't go much further than these press releases.

I think we're going to need better laws protecting the people on the planet from activities in Space. Also this is why more people and organisations of different sorts need to be able to access these technologies.

Where-ever monopolisation is allowed to occur, those monopolists quickly learn to dictate the terms of that resources use.

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say. The natural environment is very important to me.

And you know what? Once you take the pressure off you'll probably find more environment posts anyway 🙂

Great points you make. The terms are not clear so it would be best if you contact the Total Environment Centre and ask them directly and perhaps suggest they do some more explanation: https://www.tec.org.au/contact

Seconded. It really is.

I've felt much less pressure to maintain some sort of posting life in this community these last couple months knowing u/arbilp3 has posted.

Doesn't mean I shouldn't be posting as well, but that pressure I's putting on myself wasn't the best way to do things. So I am so thankful, probably don't say it enough.

What do "restoration opportunity" and "vulnerable link" mean here? I would guess that "restoration opportunity" might mean that the habitat is not currently suitable, but could potentially be restored to health. And to me "vulnerable link" implies that the area is still currently a suitable habitat, but is at risk of deteriorating if no effort is made. But the red of 'vulnerable link' makes it seem like a lower condition than 'restoration opportunity' - so I figure I might be misunderstanding what this is about.