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from the It's-a-bird,-it's-a-plane,-it's-an...art-object? dept.
Less than a year after "Humanity's Star" was launched by Rocket Lab and destroyed in Earth's atmosphere, another art project aims to place a highly reflective object in the night sky:
Now, nearly 50 years [after the Apollo 12 mission], artist Trevor Paglen hopes to draw the public's eye back to the sky with "Orbital Reflector," a sculpture made of shiny material much like Mylar that will reflect the Sun's light while orbiting the Earth. The sculpture, contained in a small structure called a CubeSat, is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in mid-November. When it enters orbit about 350 miles away from Earth, the sculpture will detach and inflate to its full shape, a diamond that may shine as bright as a star in the Big Dipper. After about two months, it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate.
By sending an object with no military value into space, Paglen said he hopes to raise a conversation about who is allowed to operate past Earth's atmosphere. As artists and historians praise his effort as boundary-breaking, some people within scientific communities are saying it lacks a practical purpose.
Paglen, a 2017 MacArthur fellow, has long been preoccupied with the less-visible, or deliberately hidden, infrastructures that make up the world. For years, he tracked the movements of more than 180 classified U.S. military spy satellites, measuring and photographing their locations for his project "The Other Night Sky."
[...] The project has drawn some criticism and confusion from scientists who question the value of adding what they see as impractical items to Earth's orbit. "It's the space equivalent of someone putting a neon advertising billboard right outside your bedroom window," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Gizmodo. [...] Paglen responded to criticisms in August in a Medium post titled "Let's Get Pissed Off About Orbital Reflector...," saying he hoped to provoke productive conversations.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:04AM (11 children)
If only there were scientists who could educate this first group that the value of things isn't just in the observations, numbers, and evidence -- it's in the non-measurable, external, and emotional responses to putting shiny crap in space, conspiracy theories, anthropogenic contributions to climate change, curvature of the earth, heliocentric theory, witches, et al. It would probably help everyone all around if they could learn a little about theoretical/applied 'convincing' along with the raw facts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:17AM (7 children)
You may have a point if not only the scientists emotions would have been considered, but also their budget.
Imagine yourself waiting for 2 years to get your 2 days access slot for some observation and charged for it [google.com], only to discover that half of your slot time you are blinded by that reflector.
Honestly, would you be so considerate to the esthetic emotions of others?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:08AM (1 child)
Who are these scientists who think they own the night fucking sky?
It's no so clear that studying the flow of nebular gases, you know, because reasons, is more important that putting a smile on millions of people's faces and thereby inspiring young, inquisitive minds to look up into the sky, where they may dream of building a telescope on the dark side of the moon instead.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:21AM
Uh, oh. Almost lost my sense of humor after the first line.
An excellent troll, good sir, if I may say so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:36PM (4 children)
Then, of course, these people are either willfully ignoring, or unable to mentally process, the social value of "awareness."
Whether or not the value of awareness exceeds the cost of the project (including delayed or otherwise hindered "hard science" projects) is a subjective question - but "art" which can reach 7+ billion people, even if it has a tiny positive social value, can be far more valuable than a less than 1% reduction in the "science capacity" of this year's impacted research.
Now, it is entirely possible that the net social value is negative (though highly improbable that it is zero, or even insignificant given the 7B multiplier), that is a subjective matter based on how you measure value - much like the age old question: what is Art?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:04PM (3 children)
I think it would have to be a hell of a lot more impressive for "7 billion" to be a legitimate multiplier for anything.
TFS says it *might* be as bright as other stars. Which aren't really as bright as aircraft and other crap that's already flying around overhead all the time. So unless you see the news articles about it, and then go look up where it's going to be, and generally go out of your way to find and see it...you won't. Or at least you won't realize that you did.
I don't think something which most of the world probably won't know about, and fewer still will experience, can be said to be reaching the entire global population. Most people never even bother to look up at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:46PM (2 children)
7B may be optimistic, however 2B of us have smartphones and therefore the capability to easily go outside and see this thing if we should choose to (and the sky is clear...) Even if only 1% of the 2B capable even attempt to see it, that is 20 million, and if 1% of those are in some way positively impacted, that's 200,000 positive impacts, and if 1% of those positive impacts end up doing something significant as a result, that's 2000 significant positive results.
Take the cost of the project, including diminished science, and divide by 2000 - that's not a high bar.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:17PM (1 child)
Yeah, that's a more reasonable number :)
I'm not really buying the argument that it's going to "destroy science" in any significant amount...but it does seem like a waste of money and rockets. It's their money, they can do what they want I guess, but this doesn't seem particularly productive considering their goals. The moon landing inspired a ton of people; and even more directly we have things like ISS astronauts talking to ham radio operators. Then we've got hobbyist cubesats and such launching today (Hell, Make Magazine had an article about launching your own satellite back in 2014!). What's more inspiring -- learning that some civilian stuck a big mylar balloon up there, or learning that some civilian is in radio contact with their own makeshift Sputnik? It's pretty expensive to throw a satellite up there; I'd expect that making the satellite actually *do something* would be fairly affordable in comparison. Inspire people to learn a bit so they can tune in to its transmissions or learn what it's actually doing up there rather than just looking through a cellphone screen at some space tracker app going "Oh, there it is"....
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:35PM
Well, being visible is "doing something" - although Sputnik was maybe more impressive with its AM transmitter, but.. that's been done and who has portable AM radios anymore (and knows how to use it)?
I would wish for "better science," but on the other hand, most really good science is far beyond the interest zone of most people, so... again, there's a social value in being simple and that social value (this one time) might just outweigh the lack of science.
I feel it's kind of like the dolphin shows at Sea World - on the one hand, the whole thing sickens me, captives in tiny tanks with nothing to do but perform for little stadiums full of people. On the other hand, the awareness-impact on those people in the stadium, including my children, is going to do far more good for dolphins as a species in the future than any possible suffering the performers might endure, and I don't know of a more efficient and effective way to make that awareness-impact, so....
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:17AM
Yes, because everyone becoming a Brand Ambassador is what has left IT (previously an engineering discipline) so productive, mature and yielding such consistently high quality results, industry-wide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:05AM (1 child)
... man-made climate change, or the idea that we can do anything about it (or should) becomes increasingly suspicious.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:35AM
We must send MORE rockets to heat up the atmosphere and belch tens of tons of toxic gasses and waste into it, while making the man in the street feel guilty about driving to work to support his family. Now some 2c clown wants to slot in his idiot launch... if you're not part of the solution you are a part of the problem.