On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 22:16:57 +0200, (Anders
Eklöf) wrote:

Quadibloc wrote:


I'm surprised that the United States doesn't have laws prohibiting the
launch of such payloads by private launch operators. After all, I'm sure
they have restrictions on launching, say, Earth observation satellites
with mirrors above a certain size.

In what way is this contraption worse than one Iridium satellite?
And there are 88 of them, right?

One thing I teach my students when we hit engineering is about
harm/benefit analysis. Yes, Iridium satellites can potentially
interfere with an astronomical observation. But they also provide a
massive communications benefit. Is the benefit of something placed
just for somebody's aesthetic gratification worth the various harms it
can cause?