BeepA million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth
DaleLEO satellites decay very quickly every one of them will burn up in the atmosphere within 10 years. They need to be replaced constantly. As soon as spacex goes out of business these will all fall out of the sky.
EinskjaldiI expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.
Especially with the number of them it’s probably cheaper to just put up new satellites. LEO sats are designed to be temporary.
Cheaper and easier to upgrade the constellation to newer and faster tech. If you have backwards compatibility, you just start launching v2 and v1 will eventually just burn up, and hopefully finish just in time for v3 to start launching so you only have to be compatible with n-1 versions.
At least not legally
artyomLmao I wish. Satellites and their components have to be “hardened” to survive extreme temperatures and radiation in space. There’s probably nothing on it you could disable with any laser you could buy. Plus there’s the matter of targeting them.
Now with lasers you buy perhaps, what about with the lasers you build?
In the future where Federal Authority is concentrated on robbing and stealing elsewhere, I cannot imagine a high energy beam could not take these motherfuckers out.
If you have the capability to build a laser that can focus enough energy, from the ground through the atmosphere, with enough precision to lock on to an LEO constellation member long enough to disable it, you’d probably already either be captured, or working for DoD.
Also: great, you exploded it before reentry. Now we have a hundred thousand smaller, lighter fragments skipping off the atmosphere, disbursing randomly, and spinning around like hypersonic chaff bullets for actual worthwhile spacecraft and satellites to fly through, twinkling in infrared like a billion new streaky sparkles on those telescopes. It takes a lot longer for all that bullshit to rain down, and it pollutes just the same. Tell me, who were you fighting for again and why?
This is like when the humans blacken the sky in the Matrix to defeat the machines. Yeah it wrecked the earth, but is also didn’t defeat them and they just found something else to exploit.
I mean I was trying to Broach a theoretical, completely academic, discussion about what could or could not take these satellites out.
Destroying these satellites with lasers poses a similar problem to what happens when you light zombies on fire: the satellites are held in space by their momentum and the reduced atmosphere vs Earth’s gravity. If you break the satellites into pieces via laser, then now you have uncontrolled and unpredictable space junk to deal with. Some of the pieces might return sooner, but what was once a concern is now a problem. Just like a zombie at your door is very concerning, a zombie on fire at your door is an immediate problem.
Now, what could be interesting would be sending up another satellite that sprays black paint on the sun-facing side of other satellites. The energy absorbed and then exhausted could propel it towards Earth sooner. Maybe? I dunno, I’m just a simple country Fartographer, your honor.
MousePotatoDoesStuffNo, it would run out of black paint. Give it a robot arm with scissors or something to cut the power lines on the Starlinks.
Why would we cut the power before deorbiting them? But if you wanna be more aggressive like that, then how about a magnifying glass to focus sunlight on the satellite like a bully to ants?
Maybe exchange energy with some sort of maneuver to stay in orbit longer?
“No officer, I did not ‘run into their car…’ I improved their gas mileage by exchanging energy.”
Good ole brute force is the best method, though, as you said, targeting is a huge problem. Basically you need a low Earth orbit shotgun.
Oh yeah. I keep forgetting about that. I suppose I need to study it a little more to make it stick.
Do they have those at Walmart?
Probably. I imagine you could probably get one at a gun show in Texas
gandalf_der_12tei remember some startup tried to build a slingshot to shoot satellites into orbit with something like a bit catapult. that was 5 years ago, haven’t heard of them since.
How rare are these materials that are sending to space? Literally sending rare metals out of our planet. Even if they fall back down to earth. Is it even possible or viable money wise to recover them?
Nope, not viable at all. A lot of it is straight up atomized on reentry especially for the smaller devices. Some of it is rare and some is not. The wet dream of these billionaires is they will be the first to figure out space mining and then manufacture. That’s why Elon musk has spacex and the boring company. Then raw resources like precious metals become infinite over night. Hopefully capitalism dies before that happens so we can all enjoy that.
ripcord
Scotty_Treessooo then this isn’t a problem if they all burn out eventually? hehe i’m just being pedantic of course
Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.
Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.
If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days.
I mean with proper regulation or would be slightly better. If they can maneuver to avoid collisions they can likes deorbit themselves at a quicker pace.
The main issue is if ever they went under someone would buy it, or try to buy it, at a discount. So they likely wouldn’t go away even if Star link went under.
Eh, i’m not so sure. I just did a quick doodle.
My opinion is that when a collision happens, it’s probably very unlikely for each fragment to actually stay on a stable orbit around Earth. Chances are high that it gains a lot of energy and the orbit is significantly distorted. Now, if an orbit is already very close to Earth, that means that any distortion will make it not fit tightly around Earth anymore, instead will make it go elliptic and therefore on trajectory of collision with Earth. The only way a fragment would not do that is if it’s accelerated perfectly sideways, in which case it would continue to circle around Earth for 10 years before deorbiting due to atmospheric friction. So, the cascading is a bit limited.
I don’t think you are familiar with orbital mechanics.
A collision would barely disturb an orbit.
then are the fragments dangerous?
Definitely.
Kilgore Trout
cole