Should Space Art be Absolutely Banned? Our Use of Space Turns to Insidious Orbital Clutter #poem #poetry #space #satellite #spacecraft

News follows the poem:

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Stuff orbits the Earth like a swarm of gnats

Every satellite we send

Turns into space junk in the end

Runs out of batteries and fuel,

Orbits decay, a physics rule.

It may break up,

It may crash down,

Strike other craft,

Or hit your town.

Will a loose bolt

Cause a war

When one of mine

Runs into yours?

Perhaps an artificial moon

Will light your streets

Sometime soon.

The space above us

Once seemed grand.

Limitless,

No need to plan.

Who gets to choose?

What uses should?

Profits? or spies?

What’s public good?

Kate Rauner

I’ve rhymed about space junk and apparently limitless natural resources before.

The news is longer than today’s rhyme. Maybe a Space Sanitation Force is what we need:

City officials recently announced plans to build an artificial moon, launching it to hang over Sichuan province’s capital city by 2020, Chinese news site People’s Daily Online (PDO) reported… [it] will be eight times brighter than the natural satellite.

Regarding concerns about the Chinese artificial moon interfering with astronomical observations or disrupting animals that are active at night, Kang Weimin, the director of the Institute of Optics of the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, said that the light would amount to only a “dusk-like glow,” PDO reported.

However, research has shown that many animals are highly sensitive to the light and phases of the moon. livescience.com

What belongs in space? What deserves a spot in our crowded orbit? Is your opinion different if what’s launched is called art?

There are more than 1,800 active satellites currently in orbit around Earth, carrying out a myriad of jobs: collecting weather data, helping drivers navigate roads, spying on enemy targets, the list goes on.

[Soon, SpaceX will carry a CubeSat into orbit. When the] CubeSat reaches a point about 350 miles above Earth, it will break open. Its silver, plasticlike contents will then unfurl into a 100-foot-long sculpture in the shape of a diamond. The result is called Orbital Reflector, the work of the artist Trevor Paglen… The sculpture reminds some astronomers of another satellite, launched in January: the Humanity Star, a three-foot-tall spherical object built by the U.S. spaceflight company Rocket Lab and covered in dozens of highly reflective panels. Its purpose, too, was simply to be seen from Earth. theatlantic.com