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

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

#51

Post by michaelmior »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #34
nicce wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a limit how much satellites LEO/GEO can hold unless every satellite has perfect dodging system. Called as Kessler syndrome [1], and one estimate is around 70k satellites. So it is a race who can get the most satellites orbiting, because after a certain point, there is no "space" anymore, and anyone who tries to launch after that point, will be blamed for destroying the satellites of the others. Winner takes…

I’m just a layman, but why can’t they increase the orbital radius to solve this problem? Like, if the current “layer” is too full, have the new satellites orbit further out?

Not with a geostationary orbit. That must have a fixed radius. The problem is that satellites have to move to counteract the force of gravity to avoid falling out of orbit. But if they move too much or too little, then the satellite moves with respect to the earth and the orbit is no longer geostationary.

(Caveat: Not an expert by any means, just someone who had a similar question and did some reading, so my answer may well be incomplete or not fully correct.)

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

#52

Post by peterfirefly »

nemomarx wrote: post #45
dgs_sgd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just a layman, but why can’t they increase the orbital radius to solve this problem? Like, if the current “layer” is too full, have the new satellites orbit further out?

Low orbit is how star link is able to achieve their connections, isn't it? I think of they moved to normal telecom orbit the performance would be like normal satellite internet too

They originally planned to be about 1100km up. They are currently about 550km up. Plenty of possible layers in between...

Another 500 km won't affect latency much. It'll be around 3 more ms per round trip.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

runarberg wrote: post #19
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions. Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc. One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.

Also worth considering is the Uber effect of public infrastructure. Meaning that politicians may use the existence of StarLink as an excuse to delay or cancel public projects which would otherwise have delivered broadband internet to under-served areas via traditional infrastructure. This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused delays or cancellation of public transit projects because politicians were able…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by loeg »

ggoo wrote: post #20
loeg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I've never suffered from satellite plasma or light pollution from satellites , or spectrum allocation. I suspect most of the 100% are like me.

Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution and that advancement is a driving force behind your modern life. So you have (or will) suffer indirectly over time.

I think your attempted connection between astronomy and modern technological conveniences is pretty thin.

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

#55

Post by thrance »

xnx wrote: post #16
oceanplexian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea, Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency services to countless people who might need it in an emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina. Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund…

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend their money on, go nuts.

You're discounting the fact that building Starship, if successful, has a non-zero chance of taking Musk away from Earth forever. That's a huge potential positive.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

Y-bar wrote: post #11
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

> 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…

Asking from a place of ignorance on my part, but does the chemical composition of the satellites versus asteroids/dust have any adverse effects?

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by nicce »

peterfirefly wrote: post #48
nicce wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a limit how much satellites LEO/GEO can hold unless every satellite has perfect dodging system. Called as Kessler syndrome [1], and one estimate is around 70k satellites. So it is a race who can get the most satellites orbiting, because after a certain point, there is no "space" anymore, and anyone who tries to launch after that point, will be blamed for destroying the satellites of the others. Winner takes…

Starlink's orbits are so low that everything deorbits automatically. The satellites need to actively work to stay up. That means no Kessler syndrome there. How many you can fit depends on the available technology. It should eventually be a lot more than 70K just in those low orbits... and still leave plenty of space for rocket launches and returns to thread their way in between them.

> Starlink's orbits are so low that everything deorbits automatically.

It is enough if it goes one round around. They can make a cascading effect which can destroy tens of satellites at once, and few fragments are enough. And closer to earth you are, less space there is. They can't all orbit on exactly the same level. There is always one which is on slightly higher level.

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

#58

Post by runarberg »

j45 wrote: post #32
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions. Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc. One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.

It's less about percentage. Economic opportunity is largely shifting towards not only having internet access, but performant internet access. Costs will come down. There will be alternatives. But they might have taken much longer to come to market without something like this. I'm not a fanboy, but there's obviously a lot of people who have worked hard to make Starlink a reality.

Traditional infrastructure is a proven method of bringing both the availability to uderserved areas, as well as bringing the costs down for those already served.

StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban planning this is known as the Uber effect.

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

#59

Post by nicce »

ricardobeat wrote: post #44
nicce wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a limit how much satellites LEO/GEO can hold unless every satellite has perfect dodging system. Called as Kessler syndrome [1], and one estimate is around 70k satellites. So it is a race who can get the most satellites orbiting, because after a certain point, there is no "space" anymore, and anyone who tries to launch after that point, will be blamed for destroying the satellites of the others. Winner takes…

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…

> 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.

That is way too long. The threshold we are speaking of cannot allow any fragments, because they start chain reaction and destroy more satellites. And there is always one which is on the highest level. What if that gets destroyed?

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

#60

Post by bryanlarsen »

mothballed wrote: post #43
bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They reported cash flow positive. "Cash flow positive" is a much stronger statement than "profitable" because it doesn't let you play games with amortization. So it included the ongoing cost of replacing satellites plus 100% costs of putting up new ones for future use where normal accounting would allow you to amortize those costs. SpaceX is obviously quite profitable. They're obviously spending many billions annuall…

Starlink is operated by Starlink Services, LLC which allows SpaceX to play all sorts of accounting tricks by mixing in engineered contracts with SpaceX.

Independent estimates are for $5B of profit on $10B of revenue for Starlink for 2025.

You don't get numbers like that by subsidizing it from the ~$1B/year launch business.

https://www.advanced-television.com/2025/10/01/forecast-8-2m...

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