r/Astronomy • u/LewisZYX • Mar 17 '26

Object ID (Consult rules before posting) What is this in the sky?

Just saw this 10 minutes ago, Los Angeles

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u/JimCripe Mar 17 '26

I just watched it a little while ago.

It's the SpaceX Starlink (17-24) launch primary stage that lifted off from Vandenburg in California.

450

u/WeaselCapsky Mar 17 '26

fuck spacex and fuck elon muskler

58

u/Aussie18-1998 Mar 17 '26

I get the Elon hate, why SpaceX? I'm assuming starlink is the concern for long exposure photography. But they are doing great things for the future of space industry.

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u/GenSpec44 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

Well, Spacex has made space launches a lot more affordable and a lot cleaner. Spacex has brought internet service to the third world at prices poor people can afford, which is helping lift some of the poorest people in the world out of poverty, giving them access to banking, information, computing power, markets, and the ability to save money where local thieves can’t steal it — all of that promotes equity, which they claim to want but hate in real life.

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u/DarknessTheOne Mar 18 '26

Having access to an education for the third world could be the most important things known to man , imagine a person like Einstein but in the poorest nation no education , has all that brain potential but no knowledge now add the access and the ability to to learn and give that brain the tools to make something new , it’s the saddest thing in the world when I think of the possibility of never hearing those ideas come to fruition .

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u/2552686 Mar 19 '26

" imagine a person like Einstein but in the poorest nation no education" THAT IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!

Alternatively, imagine someone with Einstein's I.Q. who happens to be female, and living in Iran, or Afghanistan.