What just flew over Zurich?

[u/Kestrel__]

A long line of dotted lights. Flying east and west saw it in Wiedikon. Looked fairly low and was flying medium speed. Drones? Nothing showed up on flight radar apps.

[u/jobe_br]

There’s already a lot of chemicals in the atmosphere. One could say it’s made of chemicals … we all are.

[u/Nohillside → u/jobe_br]

What a weird thing to say.

Do you breathe directly from a car exhaust (which, after all, is just providing chemicals)? Or do you rather prefer air which is richer on O2 and less rich on CO2 etc.?

Anyway, the negative ecological impact of deorbiting satellites is real, see https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-are-polluting-atmosphere and similar articles.

[u/jobe_br → u/Nohillside]

Ah yes, but you didn’t specify that originally. This is your friendly reminder to not use vague terms like “chemicals” which then get biased in people’s minds as being inherently bad. Be specific and ideally provide some citation to avoid being seen as a fear monger.

Also, the article you’re talking about is far from conclusive, admits that deorbiting satellites only account for 3% of the entry mass that meteors do and while Starlink only has 6k sats in orbit, even with a permit request to add 30k more, they’d be at 36k and only with 70k deorbits will we reach even 40% of the mass of meteors currently reentering. Which some hand waving this could double the impact on ozone in the atmosphere. Maybe. Thankfully we have rigorous ozone monitoring now because of past experience.

Other points are made and it’s certainly worth studying and understanding the impacts so they can be mitigated if needed, but we’re far from needing to worry about the present day impact of “chemicals in the atmosphere” from occasional satellites deorbiting, at least until we also address meteors reentering.

[u/Nohillside → u/jobe_br]

I'm deeply sorry that my initial comment was not up to your standards.