41–50 of 116 posts
Assuming all these companies are interested in launching their own constellations of ~10K-100K satellites into L/MEO, how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry?
Well, this shoots down the argument that Blue Origin is just Amazon's space wing. Strange to see them launching a direct Amazon Leo competitor but now that they have reusable boosters (on paper) it does make more sense for them to control the lion's share of their launch manifest with their own megaconstellation.
It's not a Leo competitor, it's a different type of service offering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting that people have a hard time visualizing this. The area in Earth's LEO is, definitionally, bigger than the Earth itself. The SEA parking garage fits 12,000 cars in it. Two of those spread over the entire planet would be an imperceptible amount of space. You could drop a pin on a map your entire life and probably never hit one.
SEA parking garage? Unfamiliar with this size reference.
Assuming all these companies are interested in launching their own constellations of ~10K-100K satellites into L/MEO, how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry?
> how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry? Twenty of them at 100,000 birds each to start approaching the density of planes in the sky [1]. Not around an airport. In all of the sky. Oceans and all. Practically speaking, this is not a pressing concern for our generation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711405
Satellites need to travel at 8 km/s to not fall down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry? Twenty of them at 100,000 birds each to start approaching the density of planes in the sky [1]. Not around an airport. In all of the sky. Oceans and all. Practically speaking, this is not a pressing concern for our generation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711405
Speed matters a lot. You can fit a lot more walking people than speeding motorcycles in the same space. Satellites need to travel at 8 km/s to not fall down.
Not really. You're correct inasmuch as it increases collision energies. But it also increases momentum, which maintains orbital integrity within predictable bounds. Nobody is maneuvering around satellites, they–and their debris–stay where the math tells them to.
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Starlink etc. use directed spotlight-like beams, so if you're not near a receiver (on the road) then no signal will be present. Why would they waste energy directing the signal anywhere other than where their dishes are?
(I personally don't believe in the harms of low power non-ionising radiation sources, but this comment is written in the context of avoiding them.)
From a technical standpoint: amazing achievement, and the tech nerd in me is in awe. But it feels like a lot of people don't understand (or care?) how much these companies are polluting the space. Before the "new wave", in 2010-2015 or so, Earth had around 1500 active satellites in orbit, and another 2,000-2,500 defunct ones. Starlink now has almost 9,500 satellites in orbit, has approvals for 12,000 and long-term pl…
> We might be the last generation that is able to watch the stars. I'm not convinced this is a major issue, but I'd like to hear arguments for why it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't LEO satellites only going to reflect light from the sun when they're at low angles near sunrise and sunset? For night time stargazing, they're going to be in Earth's shadow, too. The amount of light they reflect back is also small…
Iridium's LEO satellites were sometimes (impressively) visible after midnight.
Assuming all these companies are interested in launching their own constellations of ~10K-100K satellites into L/MEO, how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry?
According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b66ZZ05wKC0 this might end very badly very soon.
The paper they cite [1] estimates "the no-manoeuvre collision time" for various orbits. It has no alarming results.
That paper cites another paper [2], which raises the possibility of runaway conditions. It, in turn, runs a model developed in this paper [3].
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09643
[2] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234449150_Critical_...
Assuming all these companies are interested in launching their own constellations of ~10K-100K satellites into L/MEO, how many companies could actually do this before cascading collisions starts becoming a real worry?
Randomly place 50,000 shoe boxes up and down the entire eastern seaboard.
Randomly place 50,000 shoe boxes up and down the entire western seaboard.
Send them in straight lines towards the other side of the country.
See if any collide. Almost certainly none of them will. Edit: They will almost certainly
For reference, if you placed all 50k boxes next to each other on the same beach, it would be about 10 miles wide. The total shoreline on either side would be ~1800 miles wide.
And that's only 2D.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many causes Kessler syndrome?
> How many causes Kessler syndrome? Space is huge. Try this trick: the number of satellites in orbit is about the same as the number of planes in the air at any time. (~12,000 [1].) The volume of space from the ground to 50,000 feet is about 200x smaller than the volume from the Karman line to the top of LEO alone (~2,000 km). Put another way, we approach the density of planes in the sky in LEO when there are milliio…
For a given period of time, a single satellite will travel through a vastly larger volume of space than a single plane.