Shooting Stars as a Service - Japanese space entertainment company ALE will provide on-demand shooting stars for your event
I was watching my favorite weekly space show on YouTube, TMRO, and I learned about Astro Live Experiences (ALE.) They will soon launch two test satellites which will be able to provide a burst of 30-40 man made shooting stars at a prearranged time and place, for a fee.
Japanese company ALE is the first "space entertainment" company of which I am aware. The only event in the same ballpark was New Zealand based RocketLab's Humanity Star which caused a large amount of controversy. ALE's initial technology will allow a 200km radius of earth to see their multi-color shooting star show. According to the interview on TMRO, in the long term, they are planning to allow image rendering and even artificial aurora.
This type of business seems inevitable as we advance into space. I can see some benefits and some downsides to this technology. What do you all think of this?
Maybe this topic belongs in ~misc
Like you say it's inevitable, but kind of sad really. Space had been this pure thing where everything sent their has had an express functional purpose. With satellites like the Humanity Star and now this – just a cosmetic thing, idk it opens the doors on the purely vain endeavours, that will eventually lead to it no longer being 'special'.
Potentially we will have nowhere to look without seeing the message some wealthy sponsor or corporation wants us to see.
On a side note, I really wonder if this project has any ties to the military, it's just a step removed form space bombardment. They would have to deploy a satellite in a high elliptical orbit with a few shooting start charges. Then to shoot them off it would have to be at the furthest point form earth so it would have the most energy for the biggest flash, probably need a guidance system just to get it accurate enough for that 200km radius. I'm not even sure they would be allowed to send up any ordnance with it, so maybe the fuel and just raw material and enough kinetic energy from a high orbit. What I'm getting at is that it's a whole lot of development and tech for just a fireworks show.
I didn’t want to editorialize my post, but I do agree that it’s mostly sad. From a nerdy POV the tech is really cool. The initial shooting stars are not that bad, but the later technology will end up with advertisements in the night sky. It’s all a bit dystopian cyberpunk. The CEO is a Goldman Sachs alumna too, so I don’t feel like holding back on over doing it will be a thing if there is money involved.
I have a telescope, and viewing the night sky is my meditation. The connection to the universe that I find there has no equal. This is not a good thing for me.
Regarding the military aspect, I really don’t think there is any connection. They are working hard to make sure that there is no way that anything can hit the ground. There are still treaties about space based weapons as well.
A related article:
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-stars-demand-japan-start-up-meteor.html
I think it's lame and tasteless. What makes a shooting star special? Rarity and naturalness (i.e. it's something you have to catch, be lucky to catch). This makes it into a pure decoration. And a faux jewel. I can not understand how someone look at something like this and enjoy.
I don't want to see images up the sky. Hopefully the EU would ban such a thing, it is among the last islands of reason left in this world. I can't think of how harmful this would be for our circadian rhythms and of how badly this would affect many animals, especially nocturnal ones.
I sometimes find myself hoping that we won't survive the 21st century given how much boring and lame we are becoming.