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

earthsky.org

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

#321

Post by prennert »

lithocarpus wrote: post #303
ecommerceguy wrote: post #231

"What’s not usual is the atmospheric fallout. The fiery re-entry of even one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide vapor, a compound that erodes the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the Great Re-entry Event increases this pollution even more. To put this into perspective: Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only…

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202... Apparently earth soaks up ~400-800 kg of aluminum oxide in cosmic dust each day. So with 1-2 starlink satellites producing 30kg each dissipate each day, that's adding about 10% to this figure. I'm not sure if the cosmic dust aluminum finds itself in the same places up there as the dissipating starlink aluminum. Maybe that could be figured out from the ab…

wow your post gave me a bit of perspective. The distribution might really matter here.

Are those ~400-800 kg of aluminum oxide in cosmic dust each day uniformly distributed, and if not how big are those clouds of aluminum oxide that the earth is travelling through? Those 30kg from the satellites are going to be extremely concentrated and therefore take longer to "soak up".

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

#322

Post by inemesitaffia »

runarberg wrote: post #307
inemesitaffia wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their problem isn't LEO. If SpaceX sells Starlink to Amazon and buys Corning, Ciena and Nokia, they'll be extolling the virtues of LEO Megaconstellations

I am advocating for state funded infrastructure. So no, never will I be extolling this technology, especially not if it changes hands from the worst billionaire on the planet to the second worst billionaire on the planet.

i.e just make Kuiper owned by the Feds in this example.

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

#323

Post by inemesitaffia »

runarberg wrote: post #302
inemesitaffia wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the community can't afford Starlink, surely they can run Fiber and buy equipment from Ciena and Nokia (Huawei outside the US) to light it up themselves since it's more affordable than Starlink in your view.

That is not the point. These communities depend on their state for their infrastructure, the state was (hopefully) able to provide them with garbage disposal, sewage, electricity, running and clean drinking water. The state should also provide them with quality telecommunication infrastructure.

The state can give them Starlink.

eg Quebec, Nunavut, Wales, New Zealand, Zimbabwe.

Both actual users and Governments paying for it value it in ways you don't

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

#324

Post by inemesitaffia »

lxgr wrote: post #317
Fischgericht wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that you are giving more weight to photos done of a powerpoint presentation over actual data points? Sorry, that's not a path I am willing to follow. Religion is not my cup of tea.

Serious question: If you are not willing to entertain anybody else's data or observations, why should anyone entertain yours? Is there any input whatsoever that could change your foregone conclusions? If not, what's the point of this discussion?

I don't even want him to entertain my data or observations.

He can go to or recruit a user in territories that can be only served via laser in 2025,(I've listed 10 at least so far) install a computer that boots to desktop and remotely test his theories.

His base argument is no one can hold a phone call or run a game without interruptions every 120 seconds on Starlink if they are served via lasers (two more countries, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia) not because of packet drops but because of session terminations. Now I can understand the possibility of broken middle boxes, but the thing is we'd see the effect in our applications before even bringing out any network analysis tools.

He's also skipped the users doing BGP over the lasers. Doesn't BGP have sessions?

Why did this country https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=602234895877639&vanity=61560... switch to a product that's so bad it's unusable

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

#325

Post by nurettin »

dloy wrote: post #320
nurettin wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people including you were oblivious to this significant re-entry event until it appeared in the news. So off-hand dismissals and taking this personal will not help your case. Also, since you brought him up, where are the studies of the environmental impact of satellite launches and space debris funded by Elon Musk? Is the argument "planet big satellite small defund NASA"? In that case I'm going with the arti…

Are we going to debate him on his argument or only on his character? Shoot the messenger I guess.

I would like to see the argument, too.

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

#326

Post by casenmgreen »

ecommerceguy wrote: post #231

"What’s not usual is the atmospheric fallout. The fiery re-entry of even one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide vapor, a compound that erodes the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the Great Re-entry Event increases this pollution even more. To put this into perspective: Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only…

IIRC there recently was a white paper about the environmental affects of the metallization of the upper atmosphere by satellites - not just those burning up, but the general emission over time of tiny particles of metal from all satellites.

However, quick Google now I can find research which has determined pure rare earth metals in the upper atmosphere coming from satellites and boosters and so on, but nothing about the consequences, and I thought I recalled something about consequences.

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

#327

Post by lxgr »

Fischgericht wrote: post #273
inemesitaffia wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. How's service delivered to the South Pole? Iqaluit? As long as your traffic is terminated at the same POP, you won't get any session terminations. And Starlink tells you when your public IP changes anyway

Erm. That person has posted a detailed explanation on how he has measured. How can this be ridiculous? Is it ridiculous because the data does not match your believes...? Confirmation bias? It's Data. And it hints, amongst other things that they have seen the same that I am seeing on every single Starlink installation I got my hands on so far: There is no active handover, and no shared state between Sats. And you are…

That person is measuring periodic packet drops (which can also be caused by e.g. having an incomplete view of the sky), and you're drawing unsupportable conclusions on "session drops" from that. (The word "NAT" does not even occur in the observation thread you've linked!)

So, yes, confirmation bias.

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

#328

Post by lxgr »

Fischgericht wrote: post #310
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. And starlink is a way to bypass all your/my local regulatory hurdles. They had to deal with several very large regulatory hurdles, and then they're golden. No dealing with every little town separately.

Not true really. You will hit regulatory hurdles if your rockets explode in other countries too often :) And: RF spectrum is HIGHLY regulated. Also, 4 weeks ago they spent 17 BILLION USD on buying ~30 MHz of spectrum in the 2 Ghz range. 30 MHz translated to a total bandwidth capacity of about 300 MBit/s. Yes, you have read that correctly: 17 Billion for 300 MBit/s.

So you're telling people to live with bad/no Internet connection now (due to local regulations) because of hypothetical future problems with their viable alternative in the future?

Easy advice to give from the outside, especially (presumably) from a place with great fiber options.

> Also, 4 weeks ago they spent 17 BILLION USD on buying ~30 MHz of spectrum in the 2 Ghz range. 30 MHz translated to a total bandwidth capacity of about 300 MBit/s.

That's L-band spectrum for direct-to-device services, which comes at a heavy premium due to its advantageous physical properties and inherent scarcity (the entire L-band has fewer Hz of spectrum than what Starlink alone is already using in the Ka band). Ka-band spectrum is much, much cheaper. You're comparing the cost of real estate for factory/campus on a green field hours away from everyone with that of a high street storefront.

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

#329

Post by rjbwork »

asadotzler wrote: post #251
rjbwork wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not really. What are your concerns?

Idk anything specifically but something that comes to mind is we floated CFCs into the upper atmosphere for decades before we figured out that was doing terrible things up there.

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

#330

Post by _heimdall »

ecommerceguy wrote: post #231

"What’s not usual is the atmospheric fallout. The fiery re-entry of even one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide vapor, a compound that erodes the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the Great Re-entry Event increases this pollution even more. To put this into perspective: Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only…

If we're really concerned with heavy metals and particulates added to the atmosphere we should also be considering all of the weather modification projects that go on effectively unregulated.

NOAA collects reports[1] of what is done in the US but they don't officially regulate it. They currently have 1,113 reports publicly available.

[1] https://library.noaa.gov/weather-climate/weather-modificatio...

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