Japan To Launch Fake Shooting Stars From Satellite/ End Our Existence

Ephemeral and poetic, shooting stars are among the world's most beautiful natural wonders.

But come 2018, these fleeting fireballs will no longer be left to chance.

Japanese space start-up ALE is developing the technology to deliver on-demand man-made meteors, which could turn the night sky into a blank canvas.

"Imagine a future, where you can use our meteors for international fireworks displays, a proposal for marriage, or a special memorial," says Shinsuke Abe, ALE's research director and Nihon University aerospace engineering professor.

Full article here.

Mmm sending satellites into space that will shoot fireworks down at us through the atmosphere, sounds like a flawless plan!

I can’t imagine how this could go poorly. Did anybody see the movie Geostorm? Me neither. But I did see the trailer, and man this seems pretty similar.

This seems a whole lot like another “Humans get too cocky” scenario. Paint the sky like a blank canvas? Write marriage proposals in the atmosphere? Just wait for it, Dale will finally decide to pop the question to Portia, and the atmosphere will finally say fuck this, implode and we’ll all be sucked into space. There are certain things you don’t mess with, I would consider the only thing protecting us from long dark night of a trillion galaxies to be one of them. Classic Japan, getting so far ahead of us technologically that they unwittingly doom our species.

P.S. On a serious note, this must be terrible for Japanese sky writers. An entire industry is facing their end of days.