Starlink satellites are making thousands of avoidance maneuvers as low Earth orbit becomes more crowded, feeding worries that a catastrophic impact is inevitable. SpaceX’s orbital communication satellites performed maneuvers just over 25,000 times in the six-month period between December 1, 2022, and May 21, 2023, the company told the Federal Communications Commission in a recent […]
For the most part, they all are falling towards earth and will burn up. No need to do anything.
Great. Another $900 million wasted. We could have laid a lot of fiber with that money.
Nah, there would have been another stock buyback and the existing “shitty DSL meets all of the FCC requirements for broadband Internet access” would have closed out another hearing.
I detect no lies.
Running fiber globaly is very expensive. The satellite solution has its cons, but it’s available to a lot of people who otherwise might not have access.
It is expensive, but in SOME rural areas it’s still affordable. Obviously not in poorer ones, but it might get cheaper over time. Or it might not. Who knows.
I recall that the decaying orbit means that they constantly have to put more satellites up. All that energy, all that propellant, and all that space garbage. Billions of dollars wasted. Better spent on fiber. Once installed, baring cuts, it will last for nearly 100 years or more. It has benefits for some, but, IMHO, resources are better spent on fiber.
Universal global fiber is sadly unlikely to happen. I wish it wasn’t so, but the fight for me to get fiber in a town has been a decade.
I spent five years and gave up on it because Republicans.
Different country here, I’m getting it in autumn.
Humans who punch down have no borders.
True. We’ve just managed to keep ours mostly in check. It helps that they scored multiple blunders before the last election, otherwise it would’ve been scary.
Kessler syndrome is one hell of a lot more expensive than fiber.
These are in LEO. Once they lose propulsion after 3-5 years, they fall and burn up on re-entry. It isn’t possible for these satellites to cause Kessler Syndrome.
Could a high-speed impact not send debris flying into a higher orbit?
It could send debris into a more elliptical orbit, but it wouldn’t be possible for it to raise the entire orbit above LEO. The point of impact will remain in the orbital path and since the entire orbit is currently in LEO, there will be, by extension, some part of the new orbit still in LEO and therefore subject any debris to atmospheric capture.
I guess we can choose between people in remote areas having no internet access and Kessler syndrome :/
The third way costs not 900 million, but hundreds of billions, maybe trillions. Rich countries can afford it, but many can not.
Wasted how? Because some satellites moved to dodge debris?
Fiber is too slow when you want to charge billions for letting High Frequency Trading bots running arbitration across different markets to get a few miliseconds advantage over those running through fiber.
Having a mesh of satellites running on “laser through vacuum” to go around the globe, can get you those billions. Which, let’s be clear, is the real business goal of Starlink.