Hacker News Reader

Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

So they are designed to be crap ? Why not produce more waste ?

No, you misunderstand.

They need so many satellites that using higher orbits would quickly guarantee Kessler syndrome. Instead they orbit low enough to require significant fuel simply to maintain orbit. These low orbits also allow individual Starlink satellites to be less than 1/10th the mass of normal communication satellites at ~260kg.

In comparison at the opposite side of the spectrum, the largest communication satellites are Telstar 19V launched in 2018 @ 7,076 kg, and TerreStar-1 launched in 2009 @ 6,910 kg.

> They need so many satellites that using higher orbits would quickly guarantee Kessler syndrome.

I know there are good reasons to be in LEO, but wouldn’t higher orbits mean a lower likelihood of collision simply due to the increased distances?

Probably, yeah. But higher orbits means that dead satellites will stay in orbit for much longer, and that the debris from colliding satellites will stay in orbit for much longer. When the satellites are in such a low orbit, dead satellites will quickly deorbit due to atmospheric drag, and same with the debris produced by collisions.

Sure, but space is big, and satellites are small. I bet all the Starlink satellites in orbit fit comfortably inside the area of an American football field.

Satellite visualizations always make space appear more crowded than it really is.

That’s a misleading was of thinking about it. A sofa doesn’t need much space, a sofa traveling 17,000 mph for decades needs a lot of space.

Worse a sofa hit with another sofa at 5,000+ mph creates a cloud of debris that then endangers stuff across quite a lot of space.

Actually no, because junk stays in the space longer altitudes and velocity. Collision risk = density X junk time in orbit X velocity

They fell and desintegrwte.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com