SpaceX Starlink Satellites

I’m presently down in La Palma in the Canary Islands off the coast of Western Africa.

Staying in a apartment in small town of Tazacorte which is surrounded by banana plantations.

The weather in la Palma is in the mid 20 degree Celsius range with clear blue skies making it ideal for star gazing.

Watching the sun go down in the west we saw a rather unusual event as the sun became misshaped due to low haze at the distant horizon as it disappeared over the horizon.

Early evening at twilight you see Venus in the west shining brightly on its elliptic heading down to the horizon.

Looking up to the south ward direction Sirius twinkles brightly then as dusk turns into night the winter constellation of Orion.

Last night about 20.00 hours I was walking up the road from the apartment 

https://earth.app.goo.gl/6MEoRp

I happen to look out to the west and sighted a strange sight? It was like a moving train of lights moving along through the black sky heading from the north to the south. Was it the international space station no surely not? What was this strange set of train length lights? 

Surely not a UFO I had to check this surprising phenomenon out after my walk.

I scoured the internet down loaded the space station app. No not that it didn’t come over La Palma at that time. Space station doesn’t look like a train of lights anyway.

I checked out YouTube as well eventually I figured what this light train spectacle was?

It was the 60 satellites of Spacex starlink communication network flying through space at low orbit. What surprised me was the brightness of the reflection of the sun. This is called the albedo of an object. 

The astronomical world aren’t happy about these satellites at all. At the top of the la Palma volcano rim is a number of international observatories.

Here short video of the space x starlink satellites heading over Holland;

Spacex is an Elon Musk company the owner of Tesla electric cars. Space x have developed a number of rockets and now taken space craft to the space station.

https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex%20starlink%20satellites

Elon Musk in someways is a controversial guy certainly a clever entrepreneur. He started out with software banking company that went on to become PayPal and eventually bought by eBay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

Not sure in reality having thousands of satellites flying over the sky is going to be the way forward with internet communications.

Here are some videos of Space x  rockets designs and how they land back on the launch pads

No getting away from things Elon Musk is very brilliant guy if not little strange he certainly thinks outside the box of convention.

The TED interview with the CEO of Space X was interesting and it’s nice to see female engineers spearheading a groundbreaking space rocket company.

At the end I felt a little uncomfortable with her explanation of earth’s climate problem saying we’re interested in space first and foremost. But the Mars habitation programme makes me think is this an escape programme for the very wealthy like Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Will It become a bolt hole for them if things on planet earth become totally uninhabitable?

Mars Human habitation will require constant life support systems, in fact they will have to replicate earth living biosphere on Mars will it be like living inside those Eden modules in Cornwall? Elon Musk has probably been working on this possibility?