<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/debate-continues-over-what-to-do-about-the-fact-that-starlink-other-low-earth-orbit-satellite-systems-are-causing-irreversible-research-harming-light-pollution/>
"For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low
Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific
research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in
the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a
problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.
Musk and company claim they’re working on upgraded satellites that are less
obtrusive to scientists, but it’s Musk, so who knows if those solutions
actually materialize. Musk isn’t alone in his low-orbit satellite ambitions.
Numerous other companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, are planning to
fling tens of thousands of these low-orbit satellite “megaconstallations” into
the heavens.
One 2020 paper argued that the approval of these low-orbit satellites by the
FCC technically violated the environmental law embedded in the 1970 U.S.
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Scientific American notes how the
FCC has thus far sidestepped NEPA’s oversight, thanks to a “categorical
exclusion” the agency was granted in 1986 — long before LEO satellites were a
threat.
Last week yet another study emerged from the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO, full study here), recommending that the FCC at least revisit the
issue:
“We think they need to revisit [the categorical exclusion] because the
situation is so different than it was in 1986,” says Andrew Von Ah, a
director at the GAO and one of the report’s two lead authors. The White
House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recommends that agencies
“revisit things like categorical exclusions once every seven years,” Von Ah
says. But the FCC “hasn’t really done that since 1986.”
Despite the fact that low-earth orbit solutions like Starlink generally lack
the capacity to be meaningfully disruptive to the country’s broadband
monopolies, and are, so far, too expensive to address one of the biggest
obstacles to adoption (high prices due to said monopolies), the FCC has
generally adopted a “we’re too bedazzled by the innovation to bother” mindset
until recently."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
