The useful altitude of satellites is a function of the diameter of the planet and most especially the orbital speed of the planet. The mass of the planet doesn’t play much role because it is presumed to be many orders of magnitude greater than any satellite.
For “geostationary” orbits (geo means earth, but anyway…) the satellites have to be at higher and higher altitudes as the rotation speed of the planet gets slower. In the space station picture posted above by @brainspore above the geoststionary satellites would be much higher than the station shown (or roughly the same, hard to tell). For Venus there are no practical “venerostationary” orbits as it rotates too slow. There are no Jovostationary orbits around Jupiter as it is too large and rotates too quickly.
For low earth orbit satellites they would be too small to be visible in the Star Trek planetary arrival scenes and their reflected light would be washed out by the reclected light from the planet itself.
As for the enormous station above, if it is at Geostationary altitudes (about 30,000km) it would be barely visible from the ground. The ISS orbits 100 times closer and is the size of a football field which is why it looks so bright.
In summary, thats why you rarely see orbital satellites in Star Trek. Thank you for attending my TED talk.
I think it’s such a conspicuous example of privatizing space too. Because not only do we have this one billionaire taking over our night sky without considering anyone else, but others have been planning their own constellations too.
For half a second, I thought you meant star trek was about the privatization of space! And I was like…
And then I realized you meant Star Link… Totally agreed on that point! I’ve always said that there are far too many people who read cyberpunk stories as a kid and came to believe them to be how-to manuals rather than commentary of the 1980s overly corporate present (at the time) or warning about the future of a privatized space program for humanity.
There’s a Twitter bookmark feature. Never used it. I imagine that if a tweet was deleted, the bookmark would disappear too, and those are the ones I’d want to track.
Yep. So Musk is spending critical developer hours twerking a feature that is questionable of how many people use it. (He is now in a position get the stats on usage, but I doubt he has bothered. “Works for me.” aka “Le UX, c’est moi!”)
The other part of it is that likes (bookmarks were introduced years after which) could already be used like bookmarks, only they are public and there’s a limit on displaying older liked tweets. I don’t know if it’s beyond a certain date for the tweet or you get a certain number of displayable likes, but eventually no more will load.
I did make use of the Twitter bookmarks. The case for them is niche on desktop. Maybe people who only use the mobile clients (and the now-forbidden unofficial clients) get more out of them?
Must told the jury that the proposed $420 per share price to take Tesla private was, “not a joke,” and said any connections between it and references to marijuana tropes were purely a coincidence
I’m pretty sure he told the SEC the exact opposite. That he added 20% to Tesla’s price, rounded up to 420, and said he thought Grimes would think it was funny, while admitting that might not be, “the best reason.”
i realized the other day that similar to boring and hyperloop, self-driving was likely musk’s way of keeping policy ( and investment ) focused on cars.
it’s probably part of why the saudi royal family is so willing to back him. cars means gas for the foreseeable future, even if the wealthier nations (partly) shift to electric (eventually)
never mattered that it wasn’t going to work. delay shifting away from cars means profit
Totally agreed on that point! I’ve always said that there are far too many people who read cyberpunk stories as a kid and came to believe them to be how-to manuals rather than commentary of the 1980s overly corporate present (at the time) or warning about the future of a privatized space program for humanity.
