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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Lost 200 but launched 345, almost all of which are the latest upgraded version. The satellites are designed to last 5 years (the lifetime is limited by propellant because of atmospheric drag at their low altitude) and the first batches were launched 4 years ago now. As the constellation matures they will be de-orbiting satellites about as fast as they launch them.

Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink (if it's not already profitable) will be assured if Starship meets its goals. They'll be able to launch way more satellites at once, for less per launch, and with faster turnaround.

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Launch way more, and I'd imagine the sweet spot for the amount of fuel each satellite gets to shift up considerably: with a launch the size of starship they can saturate the orbits reasonably reachable from that launch for decades (spares remain in higher orbits with less drag I think) and giving one satellite more fuel is cheaper than deploying two satellites with less fuel each. And achieve far more than twice the runtime, because the fuel complement in today's starlinklings is certainly quite far from 100% mass fraction. The current compromise is far quick global reach running on F9, with a generous dose of iteration.

Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere

Wasn't there debate around their aluminium frame reacting with the upper atmosphere? The ozone layer maybe?

4 or 5 years of lifetime for literal tons of satellites is definitely not sustainable

Perhaps they could find a way to refuel the constellation?

Unfortunately the physics of this don't work very well. And at least for now the satellites are getting generational upgrades frequently, so the old satellites are obsolete. Maybe in the far future it will make sense to try this, but not anytime soon.

Pie in the sky: in the future when they have the ability to put large starship fuel tankers into orbit, they could match the orbits of starlink and have some kind of drone move between satellites and tanker.

5200 tonnes of micrometeorites hit the earth each year. Star link isn’t going to make a difference.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-study-s...

With 22.8 tonnes per Falcon 9 launch, and 50 of those per year? That's 1140 tonnes /year of new debris in the upper atmosphere, a 21% increase. I'd say that is quite a significant change.

Almost none of it hits the earth. They burn up in the atmosphere.

"Burn up" is just "into small pieces". The atoms don't magically disappear.

That's what "pollute" implies.

So in ~5 years they've launched 5113 satellites[1]: 2 * 400 kg + 60 * 227 kg + 1665 * 260 kg + 2987 * ~300 kg + 399 * 800 kg = 1663 metric tons

So if they all burned up today it would be around a 6% yearly increase, globally? (1663 / 5200 * 5). And that's probably the most forgiving estimate I could come up with, I think your ~20% number is more accurate for future projection purposes given most of the mass was launched in a much shorter timespan.

Then the real question is what effect does space dust have on the earth's atmosphere (if any).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Starlink_...

There are two more things to consider. 1) The whole satellite doesn’t burn up. Most of it crashes into the ocean. 2) much of the burning up happens in the thicker lower atmosphere where we’re already putting lots of material from jet engines and factory chimneys.

"I'm commuting every day to work with my private jet. 5200 tonnes of micrometeorites hit the earth each year, so my action isn’t going to make a difference."

See how your argument is wrong ?

"It's simple. I started a charity with $10 million that convinces 1 million middle/low class people to keep their heating off during the winter, meaning my jet is now carbon negative. Sure a few people die each winter, but that's another win for the earth."

This is basically the reality of government leaders jetting in to global climate change conferences.

We’re talking about the risks of satellites burning up in the upper atmosphere. The satellites deposit lots of material when they burn up. People are worried that this might be bad.

Lots of people incorrectly think that the upper atmosphere is pristine and you would never normally get metal up there. In fact thousands of tons of micrometeorites hit the earth each year, depositing lots of rock and metal up there.

This means that the burning satellites cause an increase in metals deposited in the upper atmosphere. We’re not going from nothing to many tones. We’re going from many tones to slightly more tones.

There is an open question if the increase is a problem, but it’s less likely to be a problem than if we were going from nothing to something.

Given a choice between bigger fuel containers burning up empty and more copies of all the other parts burning up I know what I would pick. The current very short lived design is a compromise to get to operational coverage fast and for quick rollout of improved designs. Future generations with a larger mass fraction for fuel won't get multiple orders of magnitude more runtime (in orbits that low this would require some bussard drive equivalent..), but a generous multiplication.

What's not clear from the article is whether the ones lost were old ones or newer ones.

If they're losing ones that were close to their max. life anyway that's possibly no great loss, however if they were newer satellites on top of expected attrition that's more of a concern.

How many satellites can be launched at once? I assume that the number of satellites per orbit will be limited and changing the orbit would take extra fuel that either the launch vehicle or the satellite has to provide.

They typically launch 60 on Falcon 9, last time I checked.

The article says average of 50

It's unfortunate that this misinformation is being upvoted on this site. The headline is completely incorrect, as is the statistics they're using to base the article on.

https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/17055628292254106...

https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html

There has only ever been 350 starlink satellites that have deorbited, and only 8 within the last two months.

> Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink (if it's not already profitable) will be assured if Starship meets its goals. They'll be able to launch way more satellites at once, for less per launch, and with faster turnaround.

This is just wishful thinking without any data backing it up.

Starship is substantially bigger than falcon 9, with significant more mass to orbit capability. And runs on a cheaper propellant. Also Elon has publicly stated starlink s long term viability requires starship.

Which data are you looking for?

Elon publicly stated many, many, many things…

Starship is part of economic equation (or just a diversion when it comes to starlink, as they were suppose to go bankrupt already if starship wasn’t flying biweekly last year, and people didn’t cancel their holiday plans to report to work, according to the Musk himself), but saying that it solves the profitability of the business, is like saying that low price of fuel solves profitability of the logistics business.

I don’t think anyone said that. It’s just intuitively obvious it makes starlink much more viable when you can launch more/bigger version of it with more fuel for less cost.

Not sure about the rest of that axe you wish to grind.

> I don’t think anyone said that

It’s exactly what op said and caused me to engage in this thread. “Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink (if it's not already profitable) will be assured if Starship meets its goals”

Yes, viability of starlink. Not profitability of SpaceX.

Starlink isn’t their only income source.

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