
SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Program Could Start a Space Junk Disaster - Michaelanjello
https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17951-spacex-starlink-satellite-space-junk-disaster
======
gliboc
This does not deserve a sensationalist depiction. Everyone in space industry,
astronomy and even the public now thanks to this terrible movie Gravity knows
about the Kessler effect.

Some thoughts:

\- Putting 12000 big freezers (900 pounds at most) in orbit is never going to
"crowd" the place; imagine these objects on Earth, then the claim that on a
much higher radius sphere these could be seen at any point seems ridiculous.
(I am not speaking about speed or dangerosity, which even up the numbers a
bit, or powerful light-emitting projects)

\- In that sense, the video displayed is annoyingly misleading.

\- The danger of the Kessler effect is a long term one, and as such it seems
purely economic to me. Increasing the number of space debris will gradually
increase the probability of collisions, and raise the costs of space industry,
in an upwards trend that may at some point represent a real financial burden.
This is the only question: at which point does it become economically
interesting to tackle this problem, and are we not underestimating the future
costs at this point ?

\- My take is not yet, and SpaceX will do fine managing their 12000 space
fridges.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/15/space-j...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/15/space-
junk-apocalypse-gravity)

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chiph
The USAF Space Command tracks orbital objects[0]. Adding more satellites would
certainly increase their workload, but they regularly upgrade systems to
handle it. Here's the ribbon cutting on Maui for one upgrade:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWby884p6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWby884p6I)

Like most mountains in Hawaii, it's on top of a volcano. So Madame Pele had to
be appeased.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillance_Network)

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_ph_
It is also worth considering, that of the planned 12k satellites, only 4k will
be in a higher orbit where long-living space junk can be created. The vast
majority of the satellites will be in an orbit about 200 miles over ground
where there is some minimal atmospheric drag, cleaning up any possible. Even
without any other action taken, these satellites will reenter the atmosphere
after 5-10 years on their own.

Those satellites in the higher orbits require some care though. They wouldn't
deorbit on their own and any space junk from collisions would stay around an
extremely long time. For those sent up by SpaceX, there would be plenty of
space, but if there are enough competing companies, things could get quite
crowded. Of all people though, I would think that Elon is the most considerate
about long-term environmental impact. After all, he doesn't want to block the
path for his own Mars rockets.

~~~
Michaelanjello
Is he really? Why then did he fire managers who evidently preferred quality
over speed? Time and again in 2018, Elon has proved to make bad decisions.

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tombrossman
Not directly related to the article, but for a neat visualisation of all the
objects in Earth orbit right now see
[http://stuffin.space/](http://stuffin.space/)

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aerovistae
Seems like FUD to me.

Consider that 11,000 satellite-sized objects are spread over the surface of
the earth-- given an entire lifetime to search, how many do you think you
could find?

It helps a little to imagine it as people instead of objects. Imagine there
are only 11,000 people on earth instead of 7 billion-- just the population of
one small town, spread over all the oceans and all the continents. Do you
think you would ever find even one of them?

Then consider that orbital height expands the "surface area" of this satellite
spread by an enormous amount....the surface area of a sphere at LEO is
substantially larger than the surface area of the earth. I don't know the
exact numbers, but I know it's a huge difference.

So the odds of ever finding any would be substantially lower.

I don't think this is something we have to worry about, even if it was 100,000
satellites.

But...I'm not an expert on orbital mechanics. I could be wrong, for sure. Just
seems suspect to me.

~~~
bad_alloc
The problem is that these 11000 objects are moving among the existing ones.
Some are nearly stationary on a geostationary orbit, while the LEO objects
tend to zip around on wildly different orbits. So they are not sitting there,
waiting to be found, but each object has a certain chance each orbit to hit
some other object. These probabilities go up the more we put in orbit.

~~~
AllegedAlec
Bad explanation; the LEO and the Geostationary satellites will never ever bump
into each other; they are in completely different orbits that never cross.
Furthermore, we don't just randomly chuck these things into orbit without any
thought or consideration. They do not 'have a certain chance each orbit' to
hit something.

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Michaelanjello
For a better article, definitely read
[https://mashable.com/2018/03/06/starlink-spacex-
satellites-o...](https://mashable.com/2018/03/06/starlink-spacex-satellites-
orbital-debris/)

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jekub
This si full FUD and I don’t known the author objective. Those satellite will
be in low orbit where one of there big problem will be to keep theire orbit.
Their end of Life depend on how much fuel they have, and when they have no
more fuel they decay. Or takes only some months (or at most a des years for
the ones in higher orbit) to burn in the athmospher.

The only problem Witness so much satelite in low orbit si tracking them during
their life which us easy for thoses as they require precise tracking for being
operational.

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saagarjha
> The only real solution companies like SpaceX has when disposing of a
> satellite when it's outlived its usefulness is to let them get pulled into
> the atmosphere and burn up on re-entry, but when it comes to managing 12,000
> of them at once (and 4,000 in higher orbits, where they're less likely to
> get pulled down naturally), how many will slip through the cracks?

This is the only real solution _anyone_ has. It’s just not feasible to do
anything else other than park the satellite in a graveyard orbit or deorbit
it.

~~~
simonh
The entire premise of the article is daft and ignorant of basic orbital
mechanics. The Starlink satellites will communicate with each other directly
via laser. They can only do that by knowing very precisely where they and the
other satellite are, so the whole constellation will have to be continuously
tracked at high precision just to function at all.

~~~
saagarjha
That is, if all the satellites are functioning. Those that aren’t do actually
end up becoming space junk.

~~~
mirashii
Onjects in LEO don't really become space junk because there's enough
atmosphere to force a natural decay of the orbit for most objects within a
human lifetime.

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guachesuedehack
Anything could, a soyuz rocket exploding would invalidate any launches for the
next 5 to 10 years. Boom and shards all over the atmosphere.

~~~
simonh
If the shards are in the atmosphere, they'll fall to the ground immediately.
Even the IIS at over 300km altitude needs a boost every now and then to
maintain altitude due to the drag of the rarefied atmosphere that high up.
Very few satellites are put in orbits below 300km because they'd only stay up
for a few years or less.

