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It seems to me that we should be thinking smaller, not heavier, when anticipating future satellite demands.

According to the Goddard Space Flight Center, over 3500 satellites (active and dead) are already in orbit. In April 1991, the Atlantis shuttle carried the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite into orbit, which, weighing in at 17 tons (38,000 pounds or 17,273 kilograms), was, at the time, the heaviest shuttle payload ever launched. The full BA-2 rocket, according to Beal's site, has the capacity to carry a 37,400 pound payload into low earth orbit or 13,200 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit.

As Donald Robertson states in a 1995 article on commercial satellites,

... you have a market for satellites, and the rockets to launch them, that could reach into the thousands -- all paid for with private money. All of a sudden, satellites and launch vehicles are no longer a glorified hand-craft, turning out a dozen or so literally hand-made models a year. They are a real industry mass-producing commercial products on assembly lines... [but] no matter how many satellites are launched and how much data each satellite can transmit, supply simply cannot catch up to demand.

What's going to happen when media conglomerates decide to upgrade their orbiting infrastructure with a new, 2000-era mindset of "bigger is better, and hell, now it's cheap too?"

It's long been known that large companies care little about such problems. Many agricultural companies care little for the land they desecrate, and I doubt that media companies will show any more compassion toward the limits of Nature (whether terrestrial or in orbit). It seems our only hope lies with governmental regulations, but I fear that in the future the mighty dollar may prove to be greener than Nature.

enmity.

Which is complete and utter hypocritical bullshit. The Mormons were bullied by the gun of the law into "voluntarily" giving up the practice. See the Chronology of Federal Legislation on Polygamy and Polygamy and Mormon Persecution.

-dj

we don't need no steenkin' marriage license