this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
1060 readers
46 users here now
A tech news sub for communists
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What is even the point of doing planned obsolescence with satelites of all things? It's not like a smartphone that you want customers to keep buying.
I hate Musk and his companies just as much as the next person on here, but in this case it's a physical limitation. Starlink, as well as all the other orbital mesh networks in construction or proposed, all have to deal with these issues or simply not exist (I personally don't think such orbital meshes should exist).
We already have satellite internet using satellites in geostationary orbit. Those can stay up for a long time (they'll function until the satellite hardware fails, then continue to orbit for thousands of years), but they're much more expensive to launch and performance is really bad with regards to latency and bandwidth because they're few and very far away.
Starlink tried something new, which was a low earth orbit positioning for better internet performance, but that means you need lots of satellites since they're so close to the earth, and they come down relatively quickly due to atmospheric drag. Even at the 550km or so where Starlink is orbiting, there is enough atmosphere to create drag that eventually pulls satellites down, unless they have propulsion of their own which adds weight, cost, and complexity. And even then, the satellites will come down once something fails or propulsion fuel runs out.
Thx @knfrmity for some fellow rocketry knowledge. Just because Elon Musk is a capitalist pig doesn't mean that his company's evilness can transcend the laws of physics.
I do believe these satellite internet constellations in LEO are inevitable. They are a massive force multiplier for the military, and also provide insane soft power via low-cost internet across the globe. China is building their own Qianfan constellation to compete.
What is the probability that this nonsense will eventually cause a Kessler syndrome? Or does that only happen in higher orbits with less drag?
Kessler syndrome is only a big problem for higher orbits where air drag is miniscule. Low-earth orbit refers to a rather large band of space below an altitude of 2,000 km. Objects at the upper end would be much more problematic than at the lower end, since atmospheric density falls off nearly exponentially with altitude.
SpaceX actually says that StarLink is deployed at 550km, much lower than normal.^[https://spacenews.com/starlink-failures-highlight-space-sustainability-concerns/] While this is to decrease latency, it also means their satellites will naturally fall out of the sky in 5 years without periodic boosting of altitude.
Even if Kessler happened at their altitude, we could all just wait a few years for the trash to fall out of the sky. In fact, the more everything smashes together into tiny pieces in said orbit, the faster the problem would solve itself after since as objects get smaller, their surface area to volume ratio increases, which means drag would affect them more per their mass.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for typing all that out. It was interesting.