FRESH

Hacker News

SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for safety's sake

70 points by thread_id

by benabbott

1 subcomments

Won't this make running Starlink more expensive?
Lower orbits > Increased atmospheric drag > More fuel expended to maintain orbit > Heavier sats due to more fuel > Increased launch cost per unit
Or even: Lower orbits > Increased atmospheric drag > Quicker orbit decay > Shorter lifespan of sats > More frequent launches
Forgive my Kerbal-based space knowledge here.

by choeger

1 subcomments

I think it's important to note that not all collisions are equally dangerous. Consider a sat on a polar orbit colliding with one on a equatorial orbit. Or two satellites on different directions. That is going to be spectacular. Otoh, these kind of collisions are unlikely and should be manageable by just assigning certain shells (say 5km) for every possible direction and orientation.
If two Starlink satellites collide that go roughly in the same direction, it's not exactly a huge problem.
I think the biggest issue is to coordinate this and potentially disallow some excentric orbits.

by Jean-Papoulos

8 subcomments

From a comment :
>The first move in the coming WWIII, where the emperors try to expand their empires militaril,y will be to wipe out any orbit with Starlink satellites.
I find this highly unlikely, given Starlink is soon to reached 10k satellites and will continue to grow. Why expand 10 000 ballistic missiles to bring down one of many communications networks ?

by yanis_t

2 subcomments

by nelox

1 subcomments

by aucisson_masque

9 subcomments

There are so many satellites in orbit that there is a pretty good chance that if even one was to be hit by something and explode in many pieces, it would crash another one and then another one until there is nothing left.
The nasa is pretty scared of it, so is SpaceX.

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment