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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) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:18PM
The U.S. has plenty of serious problems in this area, and if you're honest about it we're not alone.
There are many, many more good possible outcomes. I was in kindergarten in 1971, the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" stats had recently shifted (for boys) from 47% policeman 48% firefighter 5% whatever dad does to about 60% astronaut... even girls were responding >30% with astronaut or something related. Watching live moon landings undeniably shifted interest toward STEM education...
Elon's Japanese billionaire taking artists and philosophers along with him to the far side of the moon is another great thing... keeping the whole "we can go to space" thing out of science fiction and in tangible reality. It changes people's attitudes, how they live, and what they vote for.
As for international laws... I'm not terribly impressed with their effectiveness to-date, in many areas. They're better than no laws at all, but fall FAR short of what's needed to protect future generations from the present.
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