I did a calculation yesterday that made me want to scream. If you look at the *current* density of satellites in 1km altitude bins in Low Earth Orbit, and assume they are travelling at circular velocities (generally true), then Starlink satellites pass within <1km of each other EVERY 30 SECONDS.
At Starlink altitudes, everything is travelling at 7 km/second, so <1 km close approaches are terrifyingly close. Every 30 seconds. WHY.
Why do they have to be in such a dense orbit? Why do they need 42,000 of them?! They are launching more into this same super dense orbit and we're supposed to just trust that their "autonomous collision avoidance system" will be good enough to keep going at higher and higher densities?
There's an opportunity for error about every 30 seconds. One small mistake and we're in Kessler Syndrome, no more LEO satellites for decades.
"Oh don't worry, SpaceX has amazing engineers! They know what they're doing!"
Well yes, they're amazing. But they definitely make giant mistakes. Like... you know... dropping hundreds of pounds of debris from a "fully demisable" spacecraft by my house. Whoopsie.
SpaceX, please don't whoopsie us into Kessler Syndrome.
I got asked to speak to a Very Important group of people about the many terrible environmental consequences of satellite megaconstellations (collisions, atmospheric pollution, ground casualty risks) and I was wavering because it's a really really long trip and it has to be in-person (I guess because Very Important people can't Zoom or something...)
Anyway. This calculation made my decision for me. I'm going to yell at the most important people I can, hopefully it will help. (More details later)
Oof way too many replies for me to go through here, and while some are hilarious, some of them are really frustrating (yes, I know how orbits work, and I'm pretty darn good at math).
Signing off for a bit to focus on some other ways to teach people about the terrifyingly bad situation in orbit.
Prof. Sam Lawler
Gurre Vildskägg
Upstart Crow