SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster

#21

Post by emiliobumachar » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #3

Seems like FUD to me. Consider that 11,000 satellite-sized objects are spread over the surface of the earth-- given an entire lifetime to search, how many do you think you could find? It helps a little to imagine it as people instead of objects. Imagine there are only 11,000 people on earth instead of 7 billion-- just the population of one small town, spread over all the oceans and all the continents. Do you think yo…

Consider that each person is as fast as Flash in the comics. And if two ever collide, each blood droplet just keeps going.

Re: SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster

#22

Post by mirashii » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #16

simonh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire premise of the article is daft and ignorant of basic orbital mechanics. The Starlink satellites will communicate with each other directly via laser. They can only do that by knowing very precisely where they and the other satellite are, so the whole constellation will have to be continuously tracked at high precision just to function at all.

That is, if all the satellites are functioning. Those that aren’t do actually end up becoming space junk.

Onjects in LEO don't really become space junk because there's enough atmosphere to force a natural decay of the orbit for most objects within a human lifetime.

Re: SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster

#23

Post by jekub » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

This si full FUD and I don’t known the author objective. Those satellite will be in low orbit where one of there big problem will be to keep theire orbit. Their end of Life depend on how much fuel they have, and when they have no more fuel they decay. Or takes only some months (or at most a des years for the ones in higher orbit) to burn in the athmospher.

The only problem Witness so much satelite in low orbit si tracking them during their life which us easy for thoses as they require precise tracking for being operational.

Re: SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster

#24

Post by simonh » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 8:52 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #16

simonh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire premise of the article is daft and ignorant of basic orbital mechanics. The Starlink satellites will communicate with each other directly via laser. They can only do that by knowing very precisely where they and the other satellite are, so the whole constellation will have to be continuously tracked at high precision just to function at all.

That is, if all the satellites are functioning. Those that aren’t do actually end up becoming space junk.

Not functioning doesn’t make them harder to track. There are clumps if needles up there from an experiment decades ago that are still tracked.