Live data from Hacker News

One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

earthsky.org

181–190 of 347 posts

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#181
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kessler cascades are localised to specific orbits. In low-earth orbit, they're a problem for a few years. > They're going to be annoying. But not catastrophic. I think there is a misunderstanding about the whole term. If it is not a big problem, then it does not meet the definition. So there must be some threshold where they aren't problem. What is that threshold? Because certainly there isn't space for infinite am…

> If it is not a big problem, then it does not meet the definition. It's still a big problem to wipe out low orbit, but it's not a long lasting one. > What is that threshold? Because certainly there isn't space for infinite amount of objects. Even if you crash a billion objects together at 300km, they're all going to go away in a few years. There is no threshold for semi-permanently ruining low orbit.

> still a big problem to wipe out low orbit

You're not wiping out LEO, but a particular LEO.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a mass problem. Instead of imagining the gravity well as something moving away from earth out into the vacuum of space, think of it as a ball that needs to be rolled uphill - even if you give it a huge burst of energy, it's not going to go as far as you think from that one big push, and it's still going to roll back downhill. In order to make it out of the gravity well, you need a lot of focused, continuous energy over huge distances.

There are other factors, too - imagine you're trying to send a penny around the entire equator of the earth, and think of the largest possible explosion you could subject it to without vaporizing it. A stick of dynamite could launch a penny only around a half mile's distance around the equator, assuming ideal conditions, which is about .0025% of the circumference of the earth, which is 10% of the distance between the earth and the moon, and the moon is about 25% of the distance from which earth's gravity stops being a significant factor.

If you carefully deployed a large number of well timed series of dynamite sticks precisely located so that each blew up perfectly beneath the penny at its apex following each previous explosion - you'd need 150-300 sticks to get the penny out past the edge of the effective gravitational well, the point at which other factors in the solar system have the dominant influence - it'd effectively leave earth and start falling toward the sun. At any point closer to earth than that, it will slowly and inexorably return back to earth, reaching up to 25,000 mph before vaporizing itself in the atmosphere (if it fell from the outer edge). If you had no atmosphere, a clear shot, and the "ideal" penny cannon to launch it, you could hypothetically reach escape velocity with only a quarter stick of dynamite.

Incidental bursts of gas, or even outright exploding objects in space are not going to launch a bunch of stuff into much deeper orbit. There's a constant downward pull, and gas and dust creating drag and downward acceleration the closer in you get, and just vast, incomprehensible distances to travel under the influences of gravity. Getting things to go faster than 25,000mph, or reaching escape velocity, without vaporizing the thing you're trying to make go fast, requires as big a continuous explosion as you can make over as long a time period as possible.

I love that AI can whip up an xkcd style "What-If?" type scenario for these questions.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sorry, I was referring to the general stock market (mostly AI) bubble. 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.

What does a stock market bubble have to do with the profitability (i.e. not the valuation) of any given company?

Are you arguing that the demand in Internet connectivity in rural/remote areas is somehow caused by an investment bubble as opposed to a long-term stable need?

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#184
post #130

This article has a somewhat alarmist tone, but isn't this just Starlink working as intended? 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.

Are there not concerns with burning up multiple agglomerations of metal, plastics, and ceramics the size of a small car in the upper atmosphere every day?

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, on purpose I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers, yes. :) And yes, 22% yield sounds nice, but if someone would hand me their pitch deck and give me a SWAT analysis I would just laugh them away: The risks are far too high. (See for example the article that this very thread is about.) Of course you can only guess based on that, but it looks that in real life things are worse: https://arstechnica.com/space…

> I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers Your revenue figures are consumer only. And while you're generous on utilization factor, we capitalised the TCO up front while amortising revenue, and then reduced asset tenure to worst case observed during development. Flex up to 4 years, let $1mm TCO be paid up front and the rest amortised, and reduce utilisation to 80% ($80k/month revenue) and IRR shoots up to 73%. T…

I guess we can agree that the comparison between Sat internet and physical links depends a lot on the physical situation in the target region, and the regulatory frame work.

And please keep in mind that while you are right that there is a risk investing into physical infrastructure also applies to Starlink. It's worth remembering here that all Sat Internet companies prior to Starlink had failed and needed to be rescued with tax payer money.

I don't have exact numbers, and it's a bit muddy due to state subsidiaries, but in Germany the average cost to connect a subscriber in a medium density town with fiber, with given that nothing was prepared and you have to open the street etc appears to be in region of €/$ 2,000 or so.

I don't know if that is done in the US, but also in Europe we now do "trenching". It has some downsides and pitfalls, but this reduces the upfront infrastructure cost for fiber massively.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Due to the part of the spectrum I am on, I do not have believes or opinions.] The laser based inter-links still not working has been subject on various conferences like AngaCOM etc. But in my case: I have simply tried it *). And every Starlink user can do it, too: Use traceroute. And if you think "they might be hiding the hop-to-hops between Sats!", you can dig deeper using MTR behind the modem or simply rooting the…

Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the inter-links not working? Hard to find it without getting lost in "Troubleshoot your starlink device" SEO hell.

> Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the inter-links not working?

The simpler answer is intra-constellation communication is a bleeding-edge technology. It's an extraordinary challenge for which extraordinary proof is needed to show success, not the other way around. SpaceX has solved most of the gating technical problems. But getting it to work reliably enough that it becomes more economic than ground-based backhaul will take time.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#187
post #130

This article has a somewhat alarmist tone, but isn't this just Starlink working as intended? 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.

Are there not concerns with burning up multiple agglomerations of metal, plastics, and ceramics the size of a small car in the upper atmosphere every day?

The deorbits are controlled to occur over nonpopulated areas (i.e. the middle of the ocean). I don't think it amounts to much of a concern, compared to, say, the sum total emissions of all factories, power plants, ships, airplanes, and vehicles.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers Your revenue figures are consumer only. And while you're generous on utilization factor, we capitalised the TCO up front while amortising revenue, and then reduced asset tenure to worst case observed during development. Flex up to 4 years, let $1mm TCO be paid up front and the rest amortised, and reduce utilisation to 80% ($80k/month revenue) and IRR shoots up to 73%. T…

I guess we can agree that the comparison between Sat internet and physical links depends a lot on the physical situation in the target region, and the regulatory frame work. And please keep in mind that while you are right that there is a risk investing into physical infrastructure also applies to Starlink. It's worth remembering here that all Sat Internet companies prior to Starlink had failed and needed to be rescu…

> while you are right that there is a risk investing into physical infrastructure also applies to Starlink

Absolutely. It's why I think assuming the WACC of a highly-leveraged telecom (around 10%) is appropriate.

> this reduces the upfront infrastructure cost for fiber massively

Fibre makes sense where there is density. It's higher capacity and cheaper. That doesn't mean it makes sense everywhere. And a lot of that everywhere will pay a lot of money for connectivity.

The global telecom market generates trillions of dollars of annual revenue [1]. There is a lot of fruit for the picking.

[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-t...

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#189

[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…

>are funded with tax-payer money This has nothing to do with profitability. DoD/War Dept contracts are "tax payer money" and shareholders are happy to have those. >it is actually cheaper to run 10 KILOMETERS / 6 Miles of Fiber cable through the jungle Cheaper, sure. But try getting this approved in the US through a County Planning Commission. And you did get NEPA/CEQA done too right? >No, not rural USA. Fiber will be…

All of this is regulatory stuff. Your state has the option of making it expensive and a PITA or not.

In my ex home town in Germany we had the exact same thing as you are describing - Fiber available everywhere up to 20 meters away from our house, and no chance to get it connected. For purely regulatory reasons.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m not sure you’re describing a different scenario, since I don’t think anyone was ever only concerned about a future where there’s a 100% chance of a launch being prevented by debris.
Post reply on HN