[HN Gopher] When Earth Had Rings
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When Earth Had Rings
Author : rbanffy
Score : 99 points
Date : 2024-10-06 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| forgot-im-old wrote:
| May see rings around Earth again.. it's the expected state that
| space debris settles into after Kessler Syndrome.
| chaosmanorism wrote:
| Kessler syndrome is inevitable if Elon & Trump get their way,
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2811927/trump-propos...
| o_1 wrote:
| lol
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There isnt nearly enough mass up there in all the foreseeable
| sat constellations. They need enough collective mass to
| overcome the extreem orbital inclinations/speeds we use for
| sats. For a visible ring to form, we would have to send
| billions of sats into high/slow orbits and then just forget
| about them for millions of years. Even then, they would likely
| form into mini moons first before those moons eventually broke
| up into rings.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I had to laugh thinking that we (or some alien race) might
| come across a ringed planet only to find its rings are made
| of orbital space junk from a long-dead species that once
| flourished on the planet.
| McAtNite wrote:
| This made me consider what sort of orbital archeology would
| take place. I imagine it would be a gold mine for anyone
| trying to study that civilization, and attempting to snatch
| pieces out of orbit would be a huge focus.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| hopefully the sight discourages them from leaving their own
| waste behind
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
| keyle wrote:
| I was about to make a snarky comment about starlink. It's
| getting harder to take a shot of the sky without one of those
| pesky floaties.
| delichon wrote:
| Debris left in orbits below 600 km normally fall back to
| Earth within several years. The Starlink constellation is at
| around 350 km and below.
| hggigg wrote:
| Yeah this. I was 50 miles from civilisation in some mountains
| in central Asia last year trying to do astrophotography and I
| had to edit out the flying space trash after!
| fooker wrote:
| If you needed rescuing from there, or if a nearby village
| was affected by a natural disaster, this flying space trash
| is what's saving lives.
|
| It makes sense for the vast majority of people to prefer
| that against the slight inconvenience in editing out
| satellite tracks faced by a tiny tiny community of ground
| bases astrophotographers.
| samegene321 wrote:
| Low orbit satellites are unnecessary for emergency/comm.
| Fewer, dimmer, satellites at higher orbits are actually
| cheaper, but LEO constellations are now subsidized by the
| military industrial complex (there is other value to be
| low).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Aren't you overlooking constraints on transmit power for
| mobile transmitters being better served my low earth
| orbit than higher orbits?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They're also overlooking the actual prices of GEO
| satellites versus LEO. LEO is much cheaper than GEO,
| there's a reason DOD and others are moving towards it and
| it's not that it's a fad. GEO has a few specific benefits
| but cost is not one of them.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Fewer, dimmer, satellites at higher orbits are actually
| cheaper
|
| GEO satellites are pretty pricey. Each Milstar satellite
| cost $800 million, others in the same category are also
| in the hundreds of millions, WGS-11 was over $600
| million. Starlink V2 cost $800k per satellite.
|
| And if you spent $800 million on a constellation of 1000
| Starlinks, you'd have better coverage and bandwidth than
| the entire 6 satellite Milstar constellation put together
| for 1/6th the price.
|
| Digging around for more recent prices, GEO is around
| $100-300 million. That's still orders of magnitude more
| per satellite than LEO. At the low end this means you
| could get 100-400 Starlink V2s up there for the price of
| one GEO. One GEO that only covers part of the globe,
| versus 100-400 satellites providing global coverage.
| fooker wrote:
| It's crazy how unnecessary things can be trillion dollar
| industries :)
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Satellites have to pass through the Van Allen belts in
| order to get into such higher orbits, which may expose
| them to a not insignificant amount of radiation,
| especially if the final orbit injection is not done in a
| single impulse. Then, once they are comfortably out in
| their higher orbit, they have to endure yet more
| radiation without the aid of the Earth's magnetic field,
| and require more cooling capacity due to spending much
| less time in Earth's shadow than an LEO satellite.
| hggigg wrote:
| No it's really not. Please don't think suburban USA can
| be extrapolated to the middle of bloody nowhere.
|
| I might be able to get a message off, but how the hell do
| you contact the emergency services and who the hell is
| going to rescue me in a country with one rescue
| helicopter that was out of action at the time?
|
| In circumstances like that it's better to actually get
| some mountain safety training, have some procedures and
| other comms equipment in place. And importantly travel in
| a group with the right equipment (including 4 legged
| transport devices).
|
| As for the astrophotography that was opportunistic.
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm subscribed to Garmin SAR that uses Iridium sats. When
| you signal an emergency, they contact the local rescue
| agencies.
|
| And while they might not send a helicopter, a team if
| rescuers on foot can still help in most cases.
| hggigg wrote:
| I have an InReach Mini 2. It is not necessarily useful.
| It depends on where you are. Don't make any assumptions
| about it until you've done research.
|
| You'll find some places have only voluntary services and
| the phone is likely only manned on week days on limited
| hours. If you're lucky there might be a gmail address you
| can hit. No joke.
| cyberax wrote:
| It might not be useful in Afghanistan or Somalia, but it
| has a pretty wide coverage. Even if it's a niche product.
|
| Once satellite communication is truly accessible to
| everyone, I expect other companies to compete in this
| area.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They low orbit satellites are only visible while they're in
| sunlight near sunrise/sunset.
| forgot-im-old wrote:
| Starlink is actually 550 km and Amazon's Kuiper at 620 km.
| But the missile interceptors for the orbital _' American
| Iron Dome'_* would be ~ 350 km.
|
| * 2024 GOP platform #8:
| https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024
| which developed out of Elon Musk and Mike Griffin's
| initiative for their founding of SpaceX:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I read that those things' orbits degrade in like five years
| tops. So at steady state, for a constellation of size N, you
| need to launch N/5 of them each year, with the attendant fuel
| burn. Seems like that kind of pollution is a bigger long term
| worry than the short-lived junk? On the other hand, until it
| does fall down, I suppose it's a risk to anyone who wants to
| launch up through it.
| veunes wrote:
| Sustainable space exploration is needed
| golergka wrote:
| Wouldn't all LEO stuff just de-orbit and burn eventually?
| mkl wrote:
| https://archive.ph/A2ZhJ
| amelius wrote:
| Nice opening image, but what would the view be like from Earth?
| jessriedel wrote:
| Ron Miller is an artist who made some very nice visualizations.
| I can't vouch for the scientific accuracy, but they seem
| plausible enough to me, and consistent with the images I've
| seen of Saturn's rings from nearby probes.
|
| https://www.planetary.org/articles/20130626-earths-skies-sat...
| morsch wrote:
| Wow, now I'm sad I don't live in that reality.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Rings like that would have been a game changer for early
| navigation.
| veunes wrote:
| I don't know, but I get goosebumps from pictures like these
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Off the top of my head, if the rings were a narrow band around
| the Earth, and were aligned with the terrestrial equator, they
| would be less visible from high or low latitudes. If they were
| aligned with the plane of the ecliptic, then they would be
| visible as a band following the 'zodiac constellations', and
| thus visible much further North and South.
|
| At night, in the shadow of the Earth, I'd think that they would
| be dark, perhaps even invisible. Perhaps moonlight would serve
| to illuminate them, depending on the relative position of the
| Sun and Moon.
|
| I'd guess they would look most impressive around and dusk. The
| particle density and albedo would influence whether they would
| be visible during full daylight. The ring density would affect
| whether they had sharp edges or simply faded out away from the
| centre.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Only part of the visible rings would be dark at night. You'd
| see sunlit parts on both sides of the shaded part.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| > Planetary rings may be one of space's many spectacles, but in
| our solar system, they're a dime a dozen. While Saturn's rings
| are the brightest and most extensive, Jupiter and Uranus and
| Neptune have them, too,likely the dwindling remains of shredded
| asteroids or comets.
|
| Reading "The Ring Makers of Saturn", Dr. Bergrun suggests
| something very different.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I find myself, perhaps irrationally, quite irked that the picture
| headlining the article uses a picture of _current_ Earth with
| rings, when Earth 's surface 466 million years ago looked much
| different[1]. The paper itself [2] does have a map, although
| (understandably) not an artist's depiction. Most other sources
| covering the paper appear to have repurposed "ringed terrestrial
| planet" artwork, but I found one has an artist's rendition[3] to
| mollify myself.
|
| 1. https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#450 2.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X2...
| 3. https://www.yahoo.com/news/earth-had-saturn-
| rings-466-182200...
| jtwaleson wrote:
| I live in the Netherlands, which has a province reclaimed from
| the sea in the 20th century. You'd be surprised how many
| documentaries of "Europe during the ice ages" etc show this
| province (Flevoland) on their maps. Always makes me chuckle.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| I was about to write this complaint myself then I found your
| comment. The planet would've looked completely different and
| unrecognizable when we had rings.
|
| I mean technically we have rings now too thanks to Elon Musk
| and the billions of space trash orbiting the planet. But Earth
| with rings legit rings was a whole other experience.
| nprateem wrote:
| The ring of Uranus. One of the wonders of the solar system.
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