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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: 5, Insightful) by black6host on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:35AM (1 child)
Ok, so I'll buy the premise that we should consider that perhaps space is different from out planet and that there won't be a power struggle to control every square inch that could be. No religious wars, no technical wars... Man, space is just free!!!!!!! Like, peace man, it's just art!
Sure. Ain't nobody going to cede control to anybody and the folks with the most money, and likely military, will win. That's just the way it's going to be. Wake me from my cryogenic chamber and prove me wrong, :)
Note: no artists were killed in the making of this post and frankly I hate the world today that has made me such a cynic. Please prove me wrong.
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:41AM
Thank you very much, ~black6host. I appreciate it. You think like my Generals. Not General Assembly losers & haters. We're putting a Sword in the Sky. Space Sword. The biggest one. Because it's gonna be the only one. Beautiful sword, perfect size. Believe me, there's no problem there. We'll be the only Country that has it. And we'll point it at anyone we want to. Whether they want to see it or not. Folks in Venezuela will look at the Sky. Folks in Nambia. In Iran. Cuba. And they'll know -- USA. Those lightweights just can't compete. Space Force all the way! 🇺🇸