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Can this become dangerous for airplanes? Or are they fully burned up before reaching that low altitude?
[1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-reentry-pollution-dama...
[Disclaimer: Not a hater, just a Nerd looking at data.] And just as Tesla's stock goes up whenever there are reports about them no longer selling cars, or being years behind on self-driving tech and robotics... if Starlink would be publicly traded, their stock would now shoot way up. On a more serious note: If analysts would do their job, they could have found out years ago that Starlink will never ever be profitable…
Analysts that I've seen estimate that Starlink is already profitable and will remain so. Unless you can explain the differences between your math and their math, this is yet another Elon-hating conspiracy theory.
Nothing in their analysis is conspiratorial. It's flawed. But not alleging conspiracy.
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> versus making future space travel impossible Not a real thing. (It was proposed as a possibility. We searched the parameter space. Mostly in the context of militaries trying to figure out how to deny orbits to an adversary. It's really difficult, to the point that even if one were intentionally trying to cause Kessler cascades, they wouldn't deny an adversary access to orbit.)
Although it could become risky enough that the cost mitigation becomes untenable. For example, I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood so dangerous that I have to pay to cover my house in thick armor plating just to avoid being collateral damage of the violence shenanigans outside my front door.
What cost mitigation are you referring to?
> thick armor plating
It makes about as much sense to armor a satellite as it does a plane. (Much less, actually, given the fuel costs are higher, energies in orbit are higher and densities orders of magnitude lower--to approximate the global density of airplanes in LEO, we'd need something like 4mm satellites up there. To approximate the density of controlled airspaces in LEO, we need about 10x that.)
> violence shenanigans outside my front door
Where the closest object to your front door is 10+ miles away.
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That’s one single estimate, and the problem is much more nuanced. For example, Starlink satellites orbit so low, that even if every single one of them collides and becomes dust, it will all decay and burn up in a matter of months, a couple years at most. The debris cannot physically move to higher orbits to affect other “normal” satellites, though it might impair launches. Conversely, collisions at much higher geosyn…
I don't know the specifics of starlink satellites but a rupture of any pressurized line has a chance of causing an unintended ascent. Thankfully in most cases the satellite is stabilized, so there is a good chance the satellite just gets a huge amount of rotational velocity added to it with no increase in altitude.
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> Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution Has it? Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.
Your response is not in good faith - this is very easy to google.
Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.
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That's also my opinion - it will probably never be profitable - it's a great product, but the economics are not right - and that's why no other provider did this (even though they have the tech). Let's see what happens once the bubble pops.
> once the bubble pops What's the bubble? It's cash-flow positive. All of SpaceX is cash-flow positive--they've been buying back their own shares. You can argue it's overrated, i.e. customers will drop it after trying it for a while. (Or when a recession forces their hand.) But bubble requires leverage and losses, neither of which SpaceX (or Starlink) have.
As for SpaceX, it's pretty much impossible to know their finances - they don't publish audited accounts. We can just trust what Elon is willing to share with us.
That means there must be launching to orbit equivalent replacement, not daily of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
> Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite reentries per day Starlink’s next-generation V3s, which will require Starship to launch, weigh in around 2 metric tonnes [1]. (They’re currently “around 260 and 310 kilograms” [2].) “Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons [91 metric tons] of dust and sand-sized particles” [3]. So we’re talking about a 2 to 10% increase in burn-up by mass. (Not a…
I hear 10% increase on a global constant and that doesn't sound like peanuts. If we increase 10% each few years that might be a problem? I don't know anything about whatever field studies this but given that LEO constellations born yesterday even that 2% increase in stuff coming from the skyes sounds significant to me.
It seems much better for an old non-functional Starlink satellite to burn up in the atmosphere instead of continuing in an uncontrolled orbit. I believe most burn-ups are controlled intentional deorbits.