What do you think of the Starlink program?
(SpaceX) Starlink is one of the many
Starlink is not the only one
It's just a beginning
My big worry right now
is space is the
new frontier
and almost everybody
can send stuff in space
and that's out of control
we have satellite in orbit
quite a lot
but now there is a threat
to send not a couple of
hundred satellite but having 10,000
20,000 50,000 satellites in Near Earth Orbit
The impact for astronomy means practically
that from the beginning to end of a night
you see these satellites
because they reflect the light from the Sun
The people sending these satellite don't care
They never talk to the astronomers
They never talk to the public
They are obsessed by the idea
to have a kind of a
network of satellites
That provides Wi-Fi to the while world.
I like the idea on the Wi-Fi everywhere.
I think it's a bit it's a brilliant idea
but we should face it
They don't do that freely
they're gonna sell it
it's business stuff
There are people marketing the sky right now
they make money with that
and the consequence is that we're gonna lose
the sky
Because it can keep going
so there would be so many satellite over there
First they will be crushing each other
There's more and more risk of crash
So it means when you add
the crash there is more more material around
but then they don't really care
whether people are willing to trade the sky against the Wi-Fi
I would really like to have a real discussion with these people
at least they should talk to
the astronomers
There is the International Astronomical Union that is
responding for the astronomers and
is trying to understand if they could
 minimize first the impact
there may be ways to do that
Is the society ready
to lose the sky?
Is the sky something that should be free?
or is it a new market?
Then will be filled with satellites in the future.
I would love to see this
debate now starting.
Startlink is just the beginning
Astronomers are very aware
of that because they see it
and we see it every day,
it's easy to see
It's going to affect the science we're doing
and I
would love to have discussion
a global discussion about
Do we want that?
An usually the answer we get when we start talking with some people that are behind this
They use to say: -Oh anyway we don't care because we
have to move away from the earth so
we should give up on the on the earth
and move to Mars
They have no idea what it is moving out of the earth
We are biological entities which are not designed to move into space
and I invite them to spend one year in the South Pole
to get a
little bit of an experience
of what it looks like being in a spacecraft out of the earth
and still that would be an easy experience
because it's only -60°C and it's very easy to go there
but just to try it to get a feeling of what it means
I hope there will be something changing
here because this is a real threat.
you
