Ten nine eight, Elon, Musk and SpaceX have already launched thousands of satellites into space two.
One ignition engine, full power liftof Go, SpaceX Ghost Starlink.
Fucking now, I believe you, my Valentine. Now they want to launch more, way, more, up to one million satellites as part of a proposal to power massive data centers in space. They pitch it as a clean, green alternative to regular data centers. But as our Earth's orbit becomes increasingly crowded, what will Elon's Mega constellation due to our night sky? And could a crash between satellites set off
a catastrophic chain reaction. I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven Am today Associate Professor of Astronomy Sam Lawler on the potential for disaster, the need for new space laws, and the time a huge piece of spice junk landed in a hometown. It's Monday, February twenty three, Sam, thanks for joining us. Can you start off by telling us about this mega constallations that Alon Musk, can the spice mites at spicix want to build an orbit? Yeah?
Well, so there already are mega constellations in orbit. Starlink is the first and the biggest. There are almost ten thousand Starlink satellites in orbit today above our heads, and they've launched more than eleven thousand right, so more than a thousand have burned up already in the atmosphere. These satellites are built in large batches, they're launched in large batches. It's a very different way of operating satellites than we've
seen previously. They don't have very long operating lifetimes before they burned them up in the atmosphere. But SpaceX has plans to launch a million satellites right, which is many orders of magnitude more satellites than are currently in orbit.
So Maaski is also talking about putting data centers in space ording the Earth.
I think the case it's a no brainer for building AI SOL powered AI data centers in space because as mentioned, it's also very cold in space.
Spicce X is pitching this is a cost effective and grainer alternative to traditional data centers because you don't need the same amount of power and wanted to cool them out in space.
It's a very efficient cooling system. So net effect is that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space and that'll be true within two years, maybe three.
Three of the latest is that something that's viable, is that something that will actually work.
That is something that is completely untested. Right, No one has shown that a data centered my operation can work in orbit. I'm not an engineer, but it's my understanding that it's actually really really hard to dissipate heat in orbit. In outer space, there's no air to conduct the heat away from your satellite, so it's actually really easy for a satellite to burn up and fry itself.
Right.
This actually did happen with one of the first Starlink satellites that they tried to make darker so it was better for astronomy. They painted it black and it overheated and fried. So this should be a problem that SpaceX is familiar with. But as for greener, well, it's greener if you ignore all of the emissions associated with launching that many satellites into orbit and then disposing of them
at the end of their lives. Right now, everything in lower orbit, the end of life plan is to burn it up in Earth's atmosphere, and that doesn't go away, right, all the computer parts and it's panels and plastic and metal that all gets deposited in Earth's upper atmosphere. And these are these are large satellites right the data center satellites. I'm not exactly sure how big they'll be, but Starlink satellites that they're launching now are a thousand kilograms right there.
They're big satellites. They're they're like a Ford Ranger with thirty meters solar panels. They're they're not small. So yeah, thinking about a million satellites burning those up in the atmosphere, it's catastrophic, right, And if they don't burn up completely, pieces hit the ground and and that's a huge problem too, which I've I've witnessed at my home in Saskatchewan, Canada.
You've got to be dreaming of injecting food avenges in the spice now, Sam so I thanks for that, SOT, I'm sure tell us about what happened me youohimtown.
Yeah, so, so near near where I live, a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk, big pieces of it landed on farmland. So this also happened in Australia in twenty twenty two. The very first Crew Dragon trunk dropped very large pieces onto farmland. It was the same situation, right, farmers found these giant pieces, got in contact with an astronomer.
And so we think this is a fin. This is a part of the fin of the trunk that has now speared itself into the ground, and it's about three meters tall. We think of ways about twenty to thirty kilograms. Obviously we haven't dug it out of the ground, and then.
Had to figure out how do you deal with pieces of foreign countries spacecraft on your farm? Right, this is a weird situation. The rules are vague, and we're written decades ago, and it's a situation that's going to become more and more common as more and more stuff goes into orbit and then falls back down to Earth.
One are the environmental impacts that they said lots launching in the spice in the data centers, and how much fuel does it tight to get one of those things up there?
Oh, that's a really good question, and I don't have those numbers at the top of my head. I know that each rocket launch is you know, it's a lot of pollution, right, but it's more the aggregate effects of many many launches. Right now, we're at about a launch per day on average somewhere in the world. And even water vapor as an exhaust product from rockets when it's deposited in very dry layers of the upper atmosphere, that
can have serious effects on chemistry and temperature. Adding things like black carbon, which is a common emission product that's really bad that changes temperatures dramatically. There's indications that it could cause ozone depletion because chemical reactions proceed differently, but it's really not very well studied. There's not a lot of funding to study this, even though it's happening more
and more commonly. And then, yeah, the end of life pollution I also mentioned, right, so all of that needs to be taken into account. And then there's also a pollution in orbit too, right, Like, there's there's great risks for collisions with active satellites. If you want to count that as pollution, I think I think it should count as pollution. So yeah, so there's.
Going to be a lot of these things in orbit. It seems that to power these data sent as this spaking go off, unite up to a million satellites. It seems like quite a bit, well, yeah, quite a bit. What would be the impact of that, especially considering half credit. It's already getting up there, like you said.
Yeah, so okay, So I originally started worrying about satellites in orbit because I could see them in my sky, right And I'm sure many of your listeners, probably all of your listeners have seen satellites in the sky now, right, Like, it's not an uncommon thing. Anytime you go outside, within a couple hours of sunriser sunset, you can see satellites.
And this was causing more and more problems for my astronomy research, right, So yeah, I started looking at what would a million data centers in orbit look like, right, And it's thousands of naked eye visible satellites would be in your sky, crawling in grids across the sky, right. So, just thinking about how much that would change the night sky worldwide is pretty horrifying. But then, yeah, all the environmental effects the collision risks in orbit are also huge.
My collaborators and I have looked at how unsafe orbit is currently right now. Starlink, for example, they do a collision avoidance maneuver once every two minutes in order to not crash into themselves and into other pieces of debris. And other satellites that are up there, right, So what would that look like with a million satellites? How often would they have to maneuver to avoid collisions? With a million satellites, that's quite frequent.
Because you spak, you speak about something called the Kessels seed drive. Is that what you're thinking about?
He yeah, yeah, exactly.
So if we lost the ability to do collision avoidance maneuvers, my collaborators and I calculate that it'll be about three and a half days before we have a collision, right, So that's how much time we have. If everything goes wrong and they stop being able to do these maneuvers, that's not very much time to recover. So if there's a collision, you get a bunch of debris that will cause more collisions and make more debris. Right, So this runaway effect can destroy a lot of satellites very quickly.
And some experts say that we're already in Kessler syndrome. Is just the timescale between collisions is very long right now, and we don't want it to get shorter. Right, the first time we have a collision, there will be more debris, and the timescale gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
Coming up. Why Spice is the wild wist when it comes to rules and regulation, sam one are the rules when it comes to launching these mega satellites. Can anyone launch a set a lot?
Yeah, so you just have to get permission from the government of the country where you're launching from. So for SpaceX, they have to get permission from the US government, and the federal agency that's in charge of this is actually set up to regulate radio broadcasts, right, They're not really set up to look at orbital safety and all of the problems associated with satellites. So they just have to get permission from the US FCC. And there's actually a
comment period open now to the general public. It's it's very complicated to submit a comment, but anyone can do it. And this is the only time that people in the general public anywhere in the world can object to SpaceX launching a million satellites into orbit. There are a couple of dark Sky International has really great instructions for how to submit a comment, but this is the only chance to actually formally protest it.
Have five D on the track. We in a regulatory sense and in a permission sense from Moscow actually being able to launch these satellites, these million satelltes.
So the comment period is open. Once the comment period closes, presumably the FCC reviews these comments and then they can grant permission for them to start launching.
Right.
That's that's all it takes. So it could be weeks, maybe even less before the comment period closes on March. It's either March sixth or March ninth, I don't remember which date, but it's very soon. And the FCC in the US has been going faster and faster with these
approvals lately, so it could be very very quick. They don't have like nobody's ever built a data center satellite before, so like I don't I don't know how quickly they would actually start launching, but it makes me really really sad how quickly this can all happen with very little input from anybody and no environmental oversight at all none.
So what conum regulation would you love to say? And how would that work?
I'd like to see us look at the total effects of this, right, because like there are good effects, right, like starlink. Internet is incredibly useful, lots of people use it. I live in a rural place. I know lots of people who use starlink because rural internet is terrible. Right, I'm sure a lot of people in Australia also use it, right, So yeah, I would like to see a balancing of the good and the bad, right, Like, yes, it's really nice to have this good, fast internet, but what are
the costs? How could we make this less costly in terms of environmental effects and astronomy effects and collision risks and casualty risks on the ground, right, And one way we could do that very easily is if SpaceX and other companies focused on how to deliver their services with fewer satellites. That would help with all of the problems that I've talked about. And that's an engineering challenge, right, Like, that is an engineering challenge I'm presenting right now to SpaceX, Right,
how do you deliver your services with fewer satellites? Because yeah, that is the big challenge to everything.
Right now, what's the worst Cauist scenario if we don't create some rules around what happens to spice? What do you worry about the most, Sam.
I worry a lot about the atmospheric pollution. I really don't think we can have a million satellites in orbit without serious crashes, right, I think that we would be in Kessler syndrome long before we could get to a million satellites. So I don't think we can actually do this, right, I don't think that our safety rules around collision avoidance maneuvers, and we don't know where all the debris is, right, we can't see all of it. So I really don't
think that we can actually get to a million. But I don't want us to go into Kessler syndrome just trying to do that for no good reason.
If Kessler seen drive did happen in Sam, would effect Papal's ability to listen to seven I.
Am, Yeah, possibly people who rely on satellite internet. Yeah, yeah, you would not be able to use that anymore. One of the densest part of orbit is Starlank's orbit, so that is where it's most likely to have a major collision.
Well, this is worse than I even thought. Sam. Sorry, thank you, thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us.
Yeah, thanks thanks for having me. And like, do you do get out and enjoy your night skies?
Right?
Like there is a time of night when you can see no sunlit satellites and the skies are still beautiful up there.
Thank you so much. Also in the news, Australian businesses could be owed more than one point four billion dollars in refunds after Donald Trump's terriffs was struck down by the US Supreme Court. But the US President isn't taking the ruling lying down. He slept a temporary terror for fifteen percent on US imports from all countries. There's a five percent increase from the current right Australian paying of ten percent. And Australia has capped off our most successful
Winter Olympics campaign to date with six medals. Mogles champion Cooper Woods and aerial skiing silver medal winner Daniel Scott were chosen as flag bearers to lead the Aussies at the closing ceremony in Verona this morning. You've been listening to seven am. We'll be back tomorrow.