I'm trying to rage-write an article about all the completely awful, useless, polluting, dangerous shit that companies are proposing to launch into orbit and I can't even tell what's fake and what's real on these fucking techbro websites anymore. It's all so fucking ludicrous.

Like this shit: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/meta-inks-deal-for-solar-power-at-night-beamed-from-space/

Don't worry guys, the CEO says you can stare right into the infrared beam and it's totally safe! I trust him, don't you?

(How you transmit usable amounts of power with a beam that's so diffuse that you can look at it I have no fucking idea.)

Or this shit: https://www.cnn.com/science/space-forge-factory-semiconductors-spc

I guess factories in orbit are already a thing? Tiny factories, for now. Which then have to drop their precious cargo back through the atmosphere somehow and recover it? How does this make any sense economically at all?

Or this shit: https://spacedaily.com/sd-n-nasa-backs-interlunes-2028-bid-to-mine-helium-3-from-the-moon/

The Moon's gravity is much weaker than Earth's so it'll be easy to accidentally launch rocks into Moon-escape orbits, making the Earth-Moon trip even more hazardous than it is already. Fun!

Or THIS shit which is really shit: https://harvardtechnologyreview.com/2025/09/05/the-future-of-energy-unlocking-the-potential-of-space-based-solar-power/

Many companies are looking at different ways to do this (like the stare-into-the-IR-beam company above). All of them have huge safety, tech, and/or feasibility issues.

But of course nothing beats SpaceX's drunk teenager scifi novel of an FCC filing about how we need AI data centres in orbit to ascend into Kardashev civilization land. Which the FCC took totally seriously, opened for public comment in 4 days (record-short time!) https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.pdf

and the FCC will probably approve despite a couple thousand comments from the public and at least two petitions to deny opposing it. Fuckers.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/115345346648445621

A million satellites have obvious consequences, but even one can cause huge amounts of damage. Reflect Orbital, possibly simultaneously the most useless and damaging company ever to exist, which I have ranted about many times, and will continue to rant as their FCC filing is also likely to be approved despite a couple thousand comments against it from the general public and at least 2 formal petitions to deny. I really really hate this company a lot.

I want to see companies that promise to use a handful of well-tested, ethically built, perfectly functioning satellites with decades-long operating lifetimes to do something that benefits the vast majority of humanity. Why can't we have more proposals like that?

Oh. This is orbital enshittification.

Shit.

Another day, another extremely poorly though-out satellite megaconstellation that will enshittify orbit! https://spacenews.com/star-catcher-raises-65-million-for-space-power-grid/