#Starlink is deliberately de-orbiting older satellites to ‘burn up’ in the pristine upper atmosphere.

‘Burn up’ actually means ‘leave a bunch of metal vapour in the upper atmosphere’.

—————
quote

Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only about 40 to 50 satellites re-entered per year. SpaceX just brought down ten years' worth in only six months, adding an estimated 15,000 kilograms of aluminum oxide to the upper atmosphere.
—————

Scientists are only just studying what this may do to the atmosphere (and life on earth). Early indications are not good.

People should be *really* worried about this and keep an eye out for future updates. Especially given the #USA seems to be turning into a lawless joke.

Cc @sundogplanets

#Satellite #Pollution #Musk

spaceweather.com/archive.php?v…

Before prevalent social media, a static webpage and a few mailing lists could shake a brand.

My 1999 #Swatch #Protest archive shows how amateur radio operators used hand-coded HTML, listserv chains, and Usenet newsgroups to stop Swatch’s #satellite from advertising on their radio frequencies.

Relive the early-internet playbook here: vees.net/hobbies/hamradio/swat…

#InternetHistory #DialUpDays #Space #DigitalProtest #ARRL #AMSAT

Swatch Protest of 1999 | Rob Carlson

In early 1999 Swatch set out to publicize its new “Swatch .beat Internet Time” by launching Beatnik, a grapefruit‑size “mini‑Sputnik” satellite from the Mir space station.

^vees.net

The Gemini protocol is a lightweight alternative to HTTP positioned as a spiritual successor to Gopher. One drawback is that without reuse of TCP connections, every navigation takes several seconds on geostationary satellite Internet.

Read what curl maintainer Daniel Stenberg (@bagder) thinks of Gemini
daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/05/28…

#GeminiProtocol #satellite #Gemini #curl

The Gemini protocol seen by this HTTP client person

There is again a pull-request submitted to the curl project to bring support for the Gemini protocol. It seems like a worthwhile effort that I support, even if it is also a lot of work involved and it might take some time before it reaches the state …

^{daniel.haxx.se}