Any chance the Starlink satellites could be built to double as a sort of large-array telescope themselves, to compensate for the ground-based interference?
What’s more likely to happen is Starship’s will be launched where the entire ship becomes the telescope, and then we’ll have arrays of these much further away.
Not sure if it’s the same for radio, but for optical that means we can get a 9 meter mirror up there without any expensive folding mechanism, and who knows how big if we fold them as the fairing is not only wider but also longer.
Cost would go from billions to hundreds of millions or less. James Webb cost 10b.
The James Webb folding mirror is 6.5m and was folded into a 4.5m fairing…
From my brief look into the topic, interferometry tech is not quite there yet, but might be in the next few decades. Interferometry is more difficult with shorter wavelengths.
Radiation associated with Starlink satellites was detected at observing frequencies between 110 and 188 MHz, which is well below the 10.7- 12.7 GHz radio frequencies used for the downlink communication signals.
(The original article said 5M radiation, which should be around 60MHz.)
So Starlink is emitting RF in spectrum where they shouldn’t, which is avoidable, but takes effort.
My guess, and I could be wrong, is that this could be related to something other than the radio(s), such as switching power supplies finding opportunistic structures from which to radiate.
Starlink seems like a genuinely interesting and useful technology, in some ways.
But it also seems like it might not be worth having.
I’m thinking they might need to be deorbited, but I’m not confident in that yet. It sounds like it might be fixable in a new generation of Internet constellation satellites.
Idk how long the issue should be tolerated to wait for that, though. And while Starlink has a good amount of customers this kind of Internet is genuinely useful for, it’s still not a lot compared to all the other internet services.
Maybe Starlink deorbiting should come along with an expansion of the traditional communications network. But maybe it would be extremely expensive to reach Starlink’s customers with towers or cables.
Some of Musk’s bootlickers have said to me, offline in person, that the le epic Starlink debris in space fucking with astronomy (as it has for a while now) “will only encourage the exodus off planet” followed by the PR spiel about “humans must become interplanetary species.”
May as well say that the cradle must be burned with the baby in it so the baby is encouraged to compete in Olympic track and field.
All those sci-fi movies about human beings acting as an interplanetary infection only to find retribution at the hands (paws? Claws? Appendages) of an eldritch creature taught us nothing 😔
I immediately wanted a Playdate when I saw it. It’s a little yellow handheld with a crank designed by Teenage Engineering and made by Panic, who’s also published Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game, and a bunch more games recently.
I’ve had it for a year and still use it daily, the screen works great most places I’m waiting in line and I have a book light for the evenings.
One thing I really like about it is that it’s not an emulation device. It comes with 24 games +2 free on the Catalog and the community has made a ton (over 1000 on itch!). They’re mostly bespoke little titles that aren’t available anywhere else. The Lua and C SDKs are easy to use and encourage homebrew, I’ve got a pomodoro timer launching in the on-device storefront next week and am currently working on a little suika-like. Definitely recommend if you’ve got the spare cash!
I do recommend it! The season (delivered over 12 weeks) is sometimes hit or miss, but that’s mostly because there’s something for everyone. And being so dev friendly is a huge bonus if you’re into that
I can see why, unfortunately it’s a little over $100 just to make the device so I can’t see it going down much. We can’t really get economies of scale for such a niche product
Obviously this is a problem for radio astronomers. I keep hoping we’ll build the proposed Lunar Crater Telescope so we can have a truly silent view of the universe.
For multi-mode (full duplex) you would still need a power amp repeater every 500 meters, which requires a lot of power and create noise. You can’t be quiet with noise.
Yes, because there’s no way to transmit power or data anywhere without being loud af in any signal spectrum. It’s physically impossible.
Even with fiber, you need a laser to beam the signal, and a powerful amp on the moon to recieve the signal and boost it with fuck ton of high power repeaters to the other side of the moon which is also loud af
Be that as it may, it’d be minimal compared to the interference that terrestrial radio observatories have to deal with.
I guess I’m just saying that I don’t understand why you’re being so negative about the concept when it’s clearly going to be orders of magnitude better than existing antennae.
I recently got myself an Anbernic, it’s the one which looks like the GBA, see through plastic and all. It’s a surprisingly competent little console. It even comes preloaded with a shed load of retro games. I’ve been enjoying playing games from systems I missed out on growing up.
I got ab RG35XX Plus when it came out. Very nice little Game Boy style handheld. I played a bunch of GBA, GB, and Genesis games on it but it’s capable of a lot more.
I have a bit of an obsession with handheld systems. I’ve always been on the lookout for cool handhelds. Probably started with some leapfrog devices I had when I was a kid.
Some of the more interesting ones include a piboy. A raspberry pi 4 stuffed into a gameboy dmg like shell to emulate games. More recently I’ve been very into my analogue Pocket. I play a ton of stuff on that as it can accurately recreate a ton of older systems. I’m also quite interested in getting a playdate at some point, but have yet to justify it.
I also have some modded GBC and GBA systems. With USB c charging and nicer screens
Fair warning. If you are looking at the piboy by experimental pi, their website has been mostly down for months now. They seem to have abandoned the project :(
Now those are fancy! I really like the joystick support.
Related, do you have any recs for an SP-style emulation handheld? I love the clamshell for tossing in my backpack
Edit: 👀 anbernic.com/products/rg35xxsp
My family had about 5 of these between us by the time we started getting into lites and 3d versions. I had the original chunky boy and a 3ds. We took them on holiday and played the brain training multiplayer games. Great fun, my parents even got into them for a bit and they said off video games a long time beforehand.
I was so worried about this game being bad. Not that I didn’t trust them to make a game as good as the first Frost Punk, but more that some of the expansions for the first game were pretty meh. Still good, but nothing like the original experience of the game. Anything above a 7 is a great sign as it’s not a game for everyone. The fact that it got a decent amount of 8’s and 9’s is even better. I can’t wait to play it!
Oh absolutely. I rarely bust mine out anymore even though it has every game hahaha (modded and R4 for DS games.) Can’t beat a nice round of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! or the second one, though!
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