[dhosek]

Proper scale makes the visualization impractical. I wrote about this with respect to a US map showing mountains on my mailing list: https://dahosek.substack.com/p/one-million-stories

“any accurate depiction of elevation would be indistinguishable from a flat map at that scale. The coast-to-coast measure of the US is a bit under 3000 miles, while the highest elevation in the continental US is a bit under 4½ miles above sea level, so in a 1000-pixel map, that would translate to a 1–2 pixel height for Mt Whitney which is the highest point in the contiguous United States.”

and also

“the difference in elevation between Everest and the Marianas Trench is less than the bulging of the earth from its rotation. And that amount is less than you might guess. If we scale the earth down to a diameter of one foot (which would be bigger than my childhood globe), the bulge would be 0.04in or roughly 1mm. Good luck distinguishing your oblate spheroid from a sphere with those numbers.”

[SeriousM]

That would also mean that whenever I see a flat geo image, it could be a heightmap from a creator that was just too honest about scale.

[officehero]

Yes and to be clear on what "practical" means here. If there's a mountain between origin-destination for a road trip it's relevant to highlight it. In the case of orbits the objects may be small but they're very fast and very dangerous.

[mlindner]

I think calling them dangerous is even a bit misleading as they're well tracked. Some of them even autonomously precisely position themselves rather than be on ballistic trajectory.

[schiffern]

Only the largest objects are trackable. Objects in the 1-10 cm range are large enough to destroy satellites instantly but too small to track. Obviously any visualization will only show known objects.

This explains both why "dangerous" is accurate, and why autonomous avoidance based on tracked objects (ala Starlink) is 'necessary but not sufficient.'

[NedF]

> Proper scale makes the visualization impractical.

So lie?

You can see from the comments most Hacker News users can't handle the abstraction.

Your blog post is great, but most people don't know the Earth is a perfect sphere or simple things like the sun is white, the real "Don't Look Up"

Universities have become pop culture, they are Gravity (2013), not 'science', whatever that word means now.

We cross mountains so that abstraction has a use, here it is for the nihilist crowd.

[maybewhenthesun]

> So lie? Any 'visualisation' is a 'lie'.

If you look at google maps you'd think the distance between New York and Los Angeles is about 3 inch (depending on your zoom factor).

If you manage to grasp that abstraction, you might think the roads are about 5 miles wide.

etc etc.

where to draw the line.

[philipwhiuk]

> If you look at google maps you'd think the distance between New York and Los Angeles is about 3 inch (depending on your zoom factor)

But not twice the distance between Sacremento and San Jose.

[fragmede]

> Your blog post is great, but most people don't know the Earth is a perfect sphere

Typo? The Earth is a an oblate spheroid, slighly flattened out at the poles and wider at the equator.

[poulpy123]

> So lie?

You're going to enjoy the log scale