NASA fears SpaceX plan for 30k satellites could hamper space missions

theguardian.com

24 points·incompatible··5 comments

I'm not at all excited about the privatization and "free market" reign of space.

Who gets to say yes or no to these satellite proposals?

Also, I have seen what seems to be a surge in space startups, almost all revolving around the satellite space. What is driving the need for these and who is paying for them? I've been curious about that.

For the US, the FAA and FCC regulate satellite launches and communications.

Space is much bigger than the ground of earth. So 30k in a larger volume than the ground.

There are over 1.4 billion vehicles on just a small fraction of the earth.

There is a long way to go before traffic in space is a serious concern.

It's not a huge problem now, but it will be a lot easier to handle/prevent becoming a problem if we think about it before we've filled space with junk.

Sure, but satellites do cluster in useful orbits — it’s not some uniform distribution over the space. That significantly increases the chance of direct collision, which has already managed to occur a few times, despite back-of-the-envelope low odds.

And the risk of a runaway effect is fairly unique to the orbital setting. If cars magically kept careening down the highway after a collision, constantly tumbling and shedding parts and disintegrating without losing any kinetic energy, we probably couldn’t tolerate the current density of vehicles on roads.

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