This CalPoly presentation takes an ecological view and suggests that constellations of several hundred or more could be too many, if poorly managed. I would hope that we could manage orders of magnitude more safely with planning/control software and good thinking. http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~workshop/archive/2016/Spring/Da...
There are more than 1 billion cars on earth. Cubesats are smaller than a car and can be distributed in an additional dimension (altitude). I think there is little risk of oversaturation currently.
Well, cars can park (and stay parked most of the time). Cars generally do not go offroad.
Also, cars do not go 8 km/s (30 Mm/h, 17k mph). That really compensates the actual satellite size. And a single debris can ruin your day at these speeds.
Cars spend most of their time at rest, don't travel at cosmic speeds, and when they collide, don't send tens of thousands of pieces of shrapnel flying around the world for months/decades.
Cars seem to have a lot in common actually: satellites are "at rest" most of the time, it just that this rest could be a hazard as some point; but a car parked badly, around a sharp turn or in the middle of the highway would be a hazard as well. Cars can collide too, they can leave debris, which can become dangerous themselves for other cars, or pollute the nature around from leaks, ...
The only reason I'd say cars are in a "better" situation is simply because we can clean up. We don't do it yet with satellites.
Other cars can steer around a badly stopped car. Satellites can't. A better analogy would be if once they entered their lane, cars would have to travel down it at their maximum speed, without being able to steer, or brake. Under those constraints, I, uh, wouldn't get into a car.
Cars are also not phased if they run over a loose bolt. The same can't be said for satellites.
> We don't do it yet with satellites.
Basic orbital mechanics indicates that we won't ever be able to clean up Kessler-syndrome space debris in a remotely-economical manner. There'd be too much of it, and it would travel at vastly disjoint orbits.
Satellites have propulsion and sometimes adjust orbit.
Maybe a bolt wont break your car, but a nail will flatten your tire.
And most of the time we don't clean much the highways: a lot of small debris end up here and there...
The problem is indeed that cleanup is expansive and not interesting when it's not such a big hazard, but after some time the sum of those small hazards become a big problem, and the sum of cleanups almost impossible.
I'm not spinning anything, and the scenario I'm responding to (62k satellites in one launch) has not occurred. I've been a fan of SpaceX for years, but apparently even a whiff of anything short of pure adoration is enough to send some fanboys into a tizzy. It's tiresome.
> [...] even a whiff of anything short of pure adoration is enough to send some fanboys into a tizzy. It's tiresome.
I think it's more that the question you asked, _in the way you asked it_, is so oft-repeated and shallow that it's indistinguishable from concern trolling or other similar kinds of low effort drive-by sniping.
Of course that doesn't mean that your question was insincere. But consider that pretty much anyone who has shown the slightest bit of interest in spaceflight has probably seen nearly that exact question hundreds, if not thousands of times. It's nearly as common as "why are we spending money on space when there are still so many problems to fix down here on Eaaaaarth?" It's likewise not a constructive question, and it's just not reasonable to expect a positive response.
EDIT: By the way, I do find the question of what to do about all the stuff already zipping around in various Earth orbits, and how we regulate the addition of new satellites to be a really interesting and important topic. It's only that I've never seen "how much X is too much X" — especially when asked in response to a report of someone doing X — generating meaningful discussion. How about... "if one country regulates its own space industry to mitigate addition of new LEO debris (limits, tracking, investing in clean-up tech), then at least some other countries will just ignore it. Are there any existing multilateral agreements in place for this stuff specifically, or maybe agreements in other domains that have successfully avoided similar kinds of tragedy of the commons down on Earth? Nuclear disarmament and ocean protection aren't working perfectly, but have had some positive impact..."
> I've been a fan of SpaceX for years, but apparently even a whiff of anything short of pure adoration is enough to send some fanboys into a tizzy. It's tiresome.
I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction leftover from when SpaceX was still trying to get its foot in the door and was more vulnerable to the whims of public opinion (since early on, it was wholly dependent on NASA contracts which strong public pressure could get cut).
Spaceflight is also one of those subjects that tends to attract opinions and fears more based in sensationalized headlines and Hollywood depictions than reality. This is natural since space isn't exactly accessible to general public, but it can be frustrating for enthusiasts, especially since unfounded claims spread much more widely and quickly than corrections do.
All that said, no company is above criticism and I do not encourage fanboyism.
> I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction leftover from when SpaceX was still trying to get its foot in the door and was more vulnerable to the whims of public opinion (since early on, it was wholly dependent on NASA contracts which strong public pressure could get cut).
> Spaceflight is also one of those subjects that tends to attract opinions and fears more based in sensationalized headlines and Hollywood depictions than reality. This is natural since space isn't exactly accessible to general public, but it can be frustrating for enthusiasts, especially since unfounded claims spread much more widely and quickly than corrections do.
Well said.
> All that said, no company is above criticism
Agreed.
> and I do not encourage fanboyism.
Nah man, it's cool to be a fanboy of SpaceX. But I think the point is that we're not overly sensitive to criticism of SpaceX.
Ehh, your phrasing was dangerously close to the "how many is too many" political rhetoric that typically connotes not only the existence of a moral boundary but having already crossed the boundary and caused significant damage. That's what set people off, not "a whiff of anything short of pure adoration."
A small change, like tweaking the phrasing to "is there a limit?," would have avoided the landmine and signaled that you were looking for a good faith engineering discussion rather than political headbutting.
If LEO space were priced as real estate / property and assuming there are currently little restriction to zoning. SpaceX is about to own most of it.
I am thinking of it like a Game of Monopoly but SpaceX currently has anywhere from 5 - 10 rounds of head start if not more.
Interestingly once you start thinking about it. If TSMC were blown up by CCP. Samsung and Intel would caught up to their progress and volume within 2 years time.
Compare to SpaceX AFAIK There are currently nothing remotely close to SpaceX's offering within 3-4 years time frame.
So discounting small details like deployment mechanisms and volume:
260 x 240 = 62400 cubesats for one Starship launch by weight.