A plan to make artificial meteor showers (2019) (bbc.com)

20 points by jonbaer 6y ago ↗ HN

9 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 35.2 ms ] thread

[dead] uramfndit 6y ago ↗

this is insanely dumb

rbanffy 6y ago ↗

A satellite that can launch pellets in very specific directions at 8 km/s can also be called an orbital canon.

UI_at_80x24 6y ago ↗

Mass Drivers for fun and profit?

All it needs is tungsten ammo.

rbanffy 6y ago ↗

Depleted uranium, perhaps.

outworlder 6y ago ↗

"Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sob in space"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpgxry542M

Aardwolf 6y ago ↗

On slashdot, this would have the tag "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"

3pt14159 6y ago ↗

I'm normally the critic of dangerous satellite stuff (anti-satellite weapons, spy satellites getting dangerously close to each other, etc) but I love this idea. The problem seems well defined, there's lots of eyes on it and the result would be so grand. Meteor showers are so beautiful and having people enjoy them more often is so wonderful.

outworlder 6y ago ↗

Maybe they will be motivated to preserve dark skies then. Maybe.

kawfey 6y ago ↗

I wonder if the artificial meteors ionize well enough to enable meteor scatter propagation on VHF/UHF amateur radio like regular meteors do.