Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.
How about we wait until the science is actually in before kneejerking around? We have had the science equivalent of a shower thought, actual work and analysis needs to be done before jumping to conclusions.
That’s an interesting idea to consider (if I understand you correctly in that you are stating that there should be a central research authority that regulates what companies are allowed to do). Though, I wonder if it’s still better to sue for damages after the fact and create regulations to cover the oversight. There’s also the issue of data — you can’t exactly study an issue before it exists. If you are instead inferring that a company should conduct this sort of safety research themselves, it creates a sort of prisoner’s dilemma: companies wouldn’t be to keen on sharing their research with others, and if they are forced to, a company wouldn’t want to be the one to waste the money on it for others to profit off of.
I’d also like to note that this sort of regulation has no business being the decision of a single country, but, instead, it should be the decision of a global government, as it is an issue that affects the whole planet. How such a global government should be structured, though, I am not yet certain. The UN doesn’t exactly cut it.
NOAA is doing this science and is alarmed, this isn’t just some shower thought
Using an extraordinarily sensitive instrument custom-built at NOAA in Boulder, Colorado, and mounted in the nose of a NASA WB-57 research aircraft**, scientists found aluminum and exotic metals embedded in about 10 percent of sulfuric acid particles, which comprise the large majority of particles in the stratosphere. They were also able to match the ratio of rare elements they measured to special alloys used in rockets and satellites, confirming their source as metal vaporized from spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
There will be a lot of work to understand the implications of these novel metals in the stratosphere,” Murphy said
I don’t see anything in that article about them being “alarmed”.
So far all the scientists appear to be saying “heads up, we need to investigate this further”, not “stop launching, this is bad”. We should listen to the scientists.
if you read the linked pnas article at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120 while remaining scientifically dispassionate I very much get the impression they are trying to warn us about the trajectory we are currently on.
You are correct though, the article doesn’t say that they are alarmed I have inferred that from following the subject in general.
How about we wait until the science is actually in before kneejerking around? We have had the science equivalent of a shower thought, actual work and analysis needs to be done before jumping to conclusions.
How about we wait until the science is actually in before sending hundreds and thousands of satellites into LEO?
That’s an interesting idea to consider (if I understand you correctly in that you are stating that there should be a central research authority that regulates what companies are allowed to do). Though, I wonder if it’s still better to sue for damages after the fact and create regulations to cover the oversight. There’s also the issue of data — you can’t exactly study an issue before it exists. If you are instead inferring that a company should conduct this sort of safety research themselves, it creates a sort of prisoner’s dilemma: companies wouldn’t be to keen on sharing their research with others, and if they are forced to, a company wouldn’t want to be the one to waste the money on it for others to profit off of.
I’d also like to note that this sort of regulation has no business being the decision of a single country, but, instead, it should be the decision of a global government, as it is an issue that affects the whole planet. How such a global government should be structured, though, I am not yet certain. The UN doesn’t exactly cut it.
NOAA is doing this science and is alarmed, this isn’t just some shower thought
source
I don’t see anything in that article about them being “alarmed”.
So far all the scientists appear to be saying “heads up, we need to investigate this further”, not “stop launching, this is bad”. We should listen to the scientists.
if you read the linked pnas article at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120 while remaining scientifically dispassionate I very much get the impression they are trying to warn us about the trajectory we are currently on.
You are correct though, the article doesn’t say that they are alarmed I have inferred that from following the subject in general.
Let’s fire some shit in the atmosphere first and then let scientists figure it out when it’s too late anyway. Absolute boomer shit
Urm i think the rocket needs to wait instead of us