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Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense by palata on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @06:37AM (#37305661)
> Earth observation satellites are incredibly useful for monitoring sea levels, tracking atmospheric CO2, identifying methane emissions, measuring deforestation, levels of sea ice, etc.

And we already have them, don't we? SpaceX is making a business out of space, never forget that.

Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense by sidlls on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @07:14AM (#37305996)
Humans being what they are, this seems like it was bound to happen anyway. We may as well exploit space for profit! Hopefully regulated well (ha ha).
Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense by palata on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @08:16AM (#37306588)
Actually, that's the case for every species. If ants could work around natural regulatory mechanisms (like predators and diseases), they would probably destroy the Earth as well.

The question now is: are we humans capable of controlling ourselves, or are we just too primitive for that, waiting for nature to solve our problem (by killing most of us)?

Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense by chriswarbo on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @07:20AM (#37306054)
> And we already have them, don't we?

We have some, yes. More are in development, and launching all the time. For example, this schedule shows many going up later this year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_i...

> SpaceX is making a business out of space, never forget that.

Yes. What's your point? If you want some sort of gotcha about the externalities of capitalism, you'd perhaps do better by choosing a company that's not the only one to re-use their rockets.

Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense by palata on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @08:19AM (#37306620)
> We have some, yes. More are in development, and launching all the time.

But do we need them? We know what we need to do for climate change. The thing is that if we can send more satellites, we will. That's the rebound effect.

> you'd perhaps do better by choosing a company that's not the only one to re-use their rockets.

Well, Saturn V was not reusable, but they could not afford sending thousands of them. The very fact that SpaceX can re-use their rockets allows for a huge rebound effect, making many SpaceX launches much worse than a few one-off launches.

Same goes for 5G: if you use it exactly the same way, it's more efficient than 4G. But we can use it more, so we do. So 5G emits more than 4G globally.

We need to count with rebound effects: do not build new technology that you don't depend on today, because you will depend on it later and it will emit more.