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Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

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Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#71

Post by squigz »

radu_floricica wrote: post #42
NoPicklez wrote: post #3

It's incredible how many satellites Space X have launched It's also surprising from a layman's perspective the "freedom" to launch rockets into space without necessarily needing permission, the originating country of course needs to approve it but none else

That's... good? In more ways than one. The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well. The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are act…

And what do you think the downsides to unregulated space launches might be, particularly as commercial launches become more commonly viable?

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#72

Post by zenmac »

carlsborg wrote: post #13

> "Earth has 4550 satellites in orbit" Rapidly obsoleted information. SpaceX alone has > 7500 satellites in orbit. It added 2,300+ satellites in the one year period ending Jun 2025.

Not sure if number of satellites matters so much at this point. As India has already demonstrated that they can launch 100s of them on one rocket. Which means they can very cheaply put them into space as needed.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4226900/Indi...

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#73

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

radu_floricica wrote: post #42
NoPicklez wrote: post #3

It's incredible how many satellites Space X have launched It's also surprising from a layman's perspective the "freedom" to launch rockets into space without necessarily needing permission, the originating country of course needs to approve it but none else

That's... good? In more ways than one. The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well. The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are act…

If we aren't careful with space debris [1], deorbit protocols [2], and anti-satellite weapons [3], we risk triggering a Kessler syndrome [4] and permanently blocking our access to space. We currently have no international space agreements outside of not putting nuclear weapons in space, which is wholly inadequate for managing the dangers and safety of space development.

The only reason space has been managed decently well until now is because most of it was done through the US and Europe that have very strict regulations around safety. Don't expect this good behaviour to continue.

1. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/04/30/station-m...

2. https://www.livescience.com/chinese-rocket-booster-fourth-la...

3. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007-03/chinese-satellite-de...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#74

Post by HPsquared »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #59
HPsquared wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dimensionality of usable orbits is much less than 3. For example all the GEO satellites are positioned along a 1D line.

I believe I described it badly or you misunderstood me then. What I was referring to in my mention of three-dimensionality is that the area in which all of them orbit isn't a single flat plane over a sphere shape. It's actually several flat planes layered on top of each other, with an obviously ever greater surface area the higher you go. Thus you have LEO, MEO and GEO satellites all sharing orbital space but at diff…

I suppose each satellite has its orbit defined by the elliptical path (4 parameters). Like for GEO you can have many satellites in a single elliptical path.

You can also probably have different satellites on different ellipses whose paths intersect with each other, but the timing is such that they never collide.

I suppose it's quite complex in reality!

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#75

Post by notahacker »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #63
ks1723 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But apart from all the other stuff you mention, you’re missing an important point: these things move. And unless all objects are synchronized (which they are not) they occupy a whole orbit, not only their actual volume. If two orbits intersect, the objects occupying those will eventually collide. Therefore, they occupy much more volume.

What you say is important of course, and it's what makes me less than sure in my assessment. It was after all more of a mental exercise in appreciating just how vast an area of space this relatively tiny quantity of objects is spread across. To give one further perspective example here: a single large bulk container ship can carry up to 8,500 car-sized units. This means that even if every single one of the maybe 15,0…

The mental exercise is fine for realising that satellites don't look as big as pictures of satellites in graphics, it's just missing the point that if you don't want to hit a 20cm x 20cm x 20cm cube that moves at 17,500 mph and has slow and limited capability to adjust that movement you need to allow it quite a bit more space, and be able to predict its movement accurately relative to yours. Especially if any collision means thousands of pieces of shrapnel that continue to move at 17500mph for decades or more, whilst potentially being too small to track but large enough to do a lot of damage.

Trains take up a negligible fraction of the mileage of the lines they operate on and rarely cross other lines, but signalling is still critical.

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#76

Post by bayindirh »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #73
radu_floricica wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... good? In more ways than one. The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well. The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are act…

If we aren't careful with space debris [1], deorbit protocols [2], and anti-satellite weapons [3], we risk triggering a Kessler syndrome [4] and permanently blocking our access to space. We currently have no international space agreements outside of not putting nuclear weapons in space, which is wholly inadequate for managing the dangers and safety of space development. The only reason space has been managed decently…

> Don't expect this good behaviour to continue.

I don't agree. Kessler syndrome is another M.A.D. scenario. Nobody would want it to poison the well for everyone incl. themselves.

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#77

Post by macNchz »

bayindirh wrote: post #76
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we aren't careful with space debris [1], deorbit protocols [2], and anti-satellite weapons [3], we risk triggering a Kessler syndrome [4] and permanently blocking our access to space. We currently have no international space agreements outside of not putting nuclear weapons in space, which is wholly inadequate for managing the dangers and safety of space development. The only reason space has been managed decently…

> Don't expect this good behaviour to continue. I don't agree. Kessler syndrome is another M.A.D. scenario. Nobody would want it to poison the well for everyone incl. themselves.

There are basically countless examples in human history of disparate self-interested parties overusing a shared resource and failing to regulate themselves until that resource becomes unusable for everyone involved, from the most micro scale office fridge scenario through to global scale like ocean overfishing and carbon emissions. I don’t see how polluting orbital space is much different than polluting our water, soil, and air.

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#78

Post by ACCount36 »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #73
radu_floricica wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... good? In more ways than one. The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well. The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are act…

If we aren't careful with space debris [1], deorbit protocols [2], and anti-satellite weapons [3], we risk triggering a Kessler syndrome [4] and permanently blocking our access to space. We currently have no international space agreements outside of not putting nuclear weapons in space, which is wholly inadequate for managing the dangers and safety of space development. The only reason space has been managed decently…

Kessler syndrome is incredibly overrated.

It's completely incapable of "permanently blocking access to space". What it's capable of is "shit up specific orbit groups so that you can't loiter in them for years unless you accept a significant collision risk".

Notably, the low end of LEO is exempt, because the atmosphere just eats space debris there. And things like missions to Moon or Mars are largely unaffected - because they have no reason to spend years in affected orbits.

Re: Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

#79

Post by tlb »

Yokolos wrote: post #45
radu_floricica wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... good? In more ways than one. The most obvious is that any international body would be easily controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more centralized control by the same national entities, but now they'd be controlling other countries launches as well. The other problem is that lately international organizations have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen because they are act…

Somebody has never heard of the tragedy of the commons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons > The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely replace them,…

Space is the one resource that isn't finite. And even in LEO, the amount of space is huge. It's about the same surface area of the earth, but tens of kilometers thick.

We used to have to leave a lot of space between satellites because their orbits varied unpredictably, but we've gotten better at packing them.

Someday we'll talk about the days of 5000 satellites like we talk about when computers had 4096 bytes of RAM, and it will be fine.

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