I realize that we’re already numb, but this is kind of a big deal…

In another decade or so of madcap and mapless techno-culture acceleration into the chaotic antisocial future, we might be able to explain away spontaneous multiple explosions among Elon Musk’s infinite legion of StarLink communication satellites as regrettable but noble decisions to commit hari-kari by wise and sentient AI devices orbiting and despairing over the tragic earth. But at present, while mired in an era of merely dumb ‘smart’ appliances, we have to wonder: WTF.

Everybody by now knows that Elon is a boy genius whose half-cocked lack of concern about planning or considering the societal impact aspects of any of his stability disrupting projects couldn’t possibly be a contributing factor to the agglomerating mess we collectively find ourselves ensnared in. After all his metaphors for chief reinvention officer for how the U.S. budget is allocated and how the wildly successful Twitter social media company could be turbocharged were wielding a massive chainsaw in a black baseball cap and arriving while hoisting a white porcelaine kitchen sink on day one, respectively.

As usual when monitoring Elon’s current massive fuck-ups threatening the teetering harmony of the social fabric as we know it, there is a difficulty in confining ourselves to one specific area. But let’s go with the headlines of the moment and analyze space junk. Some preliminary facts first. As of this time last year about 15,000 satellites were in orbit above our planet. About half of these are active — the rest are older, obsolete, and non-functional orbital garbage. Of the active ones, nearly 75% are classified as U.S.-owned. (The situation is murky enough — what with the DOGE decapitation of non-essential government services and all — that competing analyses exist too). These numbers are sharply on the rise however. More than 30% growth per annum the past two years. StarLink claims, right now, April 2026, to be operating over 10,100 satellites in low-earth orbit. The picture will only get more complex with the advent of privately-owned satellites. SpaceX, the owner of StarLink wants to blow this picture out of the water. It has subitted plans to the FCC for about one million new satellite launches to facilitate a space-based AI computational data center infrastructure. I guess to assist humanity with difficult decisions.

This latest example of Elon’s sociopathic hubris staggers cautious earthlings’ minds, and it should alarm us to no end. You can read all about the concerned astronomers whose telescopes will become useless or the ordinary watchdog scientists who meekly suggest it’s a tad bit reckless to locate the capacity to implement this insanity within one man in one country upon the earth. Know what else? These million AI satellites have relatively short lifespans! A mere technicality, SpaceX public relations soothes, because a certain proportion of them will be allowed to de-orbit after a few years and yet others will be placed upon orbits around the Sun when retired. In case you recall anything about arithmetic from childhood, even a tiny proportion of one million is catastrophically large. Check the video just below to disambiguate the term “de-orbit”. Further not-to-worry pronouncements from PR mentioned that SpaceX is committed to a gradual rocketing of the million saetllites into space, enough so that environmental studies can be completed and compensatory plans developed. Boy is that fucking reassuring!

Returning to the less terrifying present SpaceX snafus, maybe we should console ourselves in the faith that geniuses like to work with other geniuses and tend to hire one another. After all, just recall the stable One who made Elon the temporary DOGE-master last year, effectuating his bull-in-a-China-shop detour excursion into political funding management and government program architecture. DOGE was supposed to save 1.5 to 2 trillion $$ for the U.S. economy through the mechanism of insightful waste cutting, an arcane esoteric alchemy which apparently only the rare genius can perform. Elon and his chainsaw got booted after a few months having precipitated two air tragedy collisions due to traffic controller ‘improvements’ and a TSA crisis at airports, having thrown tens of thousands of taxpayers into a monetary crisis because his social security enhancements made contacting support at the SSA a tedious nightmare, and having achieved, when all was said and done, a total U.S. budgetary savings of approximately 3% of his boasted projections.

He then was free to return to running X, the previous Twitter, whose market cap valuation he’d already reduced from US 44 billion$ to US 9 billion$ after about half a year of enlightened stewardship during which he axed 80% of the employees. Bored, he turned his high-powered mentations to SpaceX, and hired a public relations department staffed with language geniuses. He then back-tracked on his earlier sworn mission to get humanity to colonize Mars before it was “too late” and redirected efforts to the more modest destination of the Moon, seeing as how less imaginative geniuses (including the Chinese) were focusing there. Still not entirely juiced, he schemed up the million-satellite space-based AI mega data center. But just when his propaganda team was arguing their case, two StarLink satellites inexplicably demised, and one of them “de-orbited” in the past two months. Fuck. Now all the simpletons are going to get vocal about social and environmental and economic concerns. What clueless lemmings! But Elon had his staff of marginally lesser geniuses in PR mollify the mess once again. Check out their verbiage; would’ve made George Carlin proud.

“…detected a fragment creation event involving SpaceX Starlink 34343… Starlink satellite 34343 experienced an anomaly on-orbit, resulting in loss of communications with the satellite at ~560 km above Earth… observation immediately detected tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite after unplanned rapid disassembly… trackable debris is being carefully monitored.”

A SpaceX statement from the previous month’s unplanned satellite break-up appeared to subtly implicate the Chinese who launched nine satellites into a similar altitude days before the explosion which is not allowed to be called an explosion. SpaceX contends the Chinese did not bother to coordinate with other actors in the orbital business. In view of the typical Chinese instinct towards caution, I wonder if this is so, if it has anything to do with Trump’s second term normalization of the U.S. tendency to do whatever it feels like without informing anybody, except Netanyahu, about anything. SpaceX says it is carefully monitoring the detectable fragments as they descend towards our atmosphere and are coordinating with NASA and others. But before letting you leave in a semi-relaxed state I feel the need to bitch and moan about one last imminent tidbit.

The Kessler Syndrome

You might want to ask about the less than trackable debris fragments mentioned in the SpaceX statement. Because they are too tiny. But tiny needn’t mean harmless. Space debris experts hastily point out that even a relatively small object hurtling at orbital speeds could cause a chain-reaction of havoc were it to collide with an oncoming satellite. Then the resulting new debris fragments make the orbital band in question even more dangerous. Further collisions could rapidly multiply the destructive fragments and even hurl some off into different but nearby orbits. This potentially unstoppable and rapid acceleration of lethal space junk is called the Kessler Syndrome. LeoLabs, a space junk monitoring company, has tentatively concluded that the most recent StarLink anomaly was due to an internal energy source instead of a collision. They also said that the debris result bears a close resemblance to the previous Starlink anomaly two months ago. Not too clear which is worse: the prospect of Elon’s technology occasionally self-destructing or the increasing liklihood of unplanned collisions. Especially given that Elon wants one million more. KS does not merely create problems with retaining our satellite-based internet foundation in orbit, upon which modern daily life is completely dependent, but it also destroys what the night sky looks like for children (of all ages) during the next and coming decades. I was much happier when Elon was hellbent upon getting his ass to Mars, because I was basically certain he’d never return. But now it seems we are stuck with him for his entire lifespan.

Note that the following simulation is only for 12000 starlinks, not the one million which has been proposed to the Trump-controlled FCC. In other words, things could soon get eighty times worse! Perhaps by centuries’ close children wont be able to distinguish the night sky in Iowa from the steet scene on any given evening in Las Vegas, Nevada.

_______RS

[ Images : (Top Of Post) a recent ‘unplanned de-orbit & disassembly incident’ of a Starlink satellite; (End Of Post) a half-hour time exposure capturing satellite intrusions in front of stars and planets taken from a March 2026 Scientific American article. ]

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