This shouldn’t make me feel genuine sympathy because we’re talking about a hunk of metal, an object, with no feelings.
Satellites are operational (they live) for around 10 years.
Right now, there are ≈5,000 floating around in space.
≈3,000 of them are dead, useless, with no fuel, no nothing.
The other ≈2,000 are hard at work, facilitating wars and pinging your phone for traffic updates. Quite the varied work life.
When a satellite reaches its end, which is usually due to its lack of fuel, its controller either nudges its trajectory to come down to Earth and burn up in our oxygen-rich atmosphere or sends it out into space, to glide into nothingness for the rest of its life.
I don’t know which is worse, being sent to your inevitable death, going out in a fiery blur across our sky or being sent out to explore the universe, alone. Whatever you find, whatever you see lives and dies within your mind.
Guess it comes down to the mortal vs immortal existence argument. The whole “The Gods don’t like us because they’re jealous we can die and they can’t.”
Then again, it’s just a chunk of metal, going through the journey of sustaining intelligent human life on Earth onto its demise, finding itself as space junk, just interplanetary litter.
I keep trying to dumb this down to a level I can live with but keep seeing it as truly, a very deep topic.
I need a new hobby.
Song of the week, what i’d listen to floating off into space