Starlink quietly lost over $250,000,000 in burned satellites this summer.
Starlink quietly lost over $250,000,000 in burned satellites this summer.
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Not one major news outlet is covering the destruction of Starlink this summer. Though Lemmy might enjoy Elon losing more money.
this is just a mathematical reality of LEO satellites like this. They are hitting the thermosphere which causes drag and they need to constantly adjust their altitude to keep in place and not fall to the earth. Currently 5 years is all the fuel they can carry. If they were higher they would last longer but the network latency would be very bad so it's a tradeoff.
whether or not we need this LEO constellation idk but this isn't some big gotcha. Elon (and everybody else) would love to have longer LEO orbits but until there is some new tech this is what we've got.
The article seems to indicate that the loss of 200 satellites is largely attributed to solar flares, not orbit degradation.
And the point of the article is that this is higher than expected.
It is also potentially interesting for people that weren't aware of how often these satellites will deorbit and so the potential costs associated. Even people aware that this happens may not have thought about it much with Starlink or be aware of the scope.
OP is being a little stupid with the editorializing, and the article could be better, but the article is generally good and useful.
The difference between an orbit that lasts 5 years and one that lasts a hundred is approximately 100-200km, the limit is quite sharp and actually quite tricky to get exactly right. That will cost you about a millisecond or two in latency tops. It is more likely that SpaceX is required to adhere to rules made by the FCC/FAA.
550km height is partly to ensure that they WILL deorbit in a reasonable time if failed or EOL. Which is important for such a huge number of (relatively cheap) satellites.
That's because we're not fucking morons like you and we understand the realities of life.
Listen, fuck Elon, to be crystal clear. But also, OP, fuck you too for being the same brand of cringe.
Spaceship is hard you're going to lose a bunch of satellites if you're putting that money up there, it's planned and this is within the norms. Maybe dont be such a gigacunt, it's super unattractive.
Okay, being harsh and insulting just isn't necessary. Yes, OP got something wrong — they posted something that they thought was significant but actually isn't — but why not correct them like a reasonable person? In general, we should be trying to encourage discussion and foster a positive community, and that means treating other people like human beings when they don't know much about space stuff.
But noooooo, we need dopamine from cussing out people who've been on Kbin for a day because they dared post about satellites being lost without knowing that it doesn't mean that much. You might as well have told them to fuck off and never come back. And of course, this is the comment that gets all the upvotes.
How are people supposed to feel comfortable posting when any error they make is going to be met with insults and blocks? You're talking to another person, ffs, and personally attacking them over something as small as this. Communities aren't enjoyable when people are supporting this stuff.
Please take this hostile, hateful and juvenile attitude elsewhere. No one here is impressed or captivated by it nor do we want it in this community.
Your not wrong...your just an asshole.
You're kind of a Dick. Minus the kind of part
He's taking government money to the tune of billions of dollars and wasting it on space. We are starving down here.
Yeah, but you know what's really, really important for space travel?
A cheap, efficient, and reliable source of portable food production.
OP has submitted this link elsewhere. In the comments there, in response to someone asking about the site's legitimacy, I checked and then commented:
OP is also the only person who's submitting the site here. Also, one of the links from the site that they submitted here is of "Interesting video from South America showing what looks like an alien abduction", to which OP added the comment "Kiind of interesting don't know if you guys can see the person being sucked into the cloud". So yeah, I suspect you are correct to be dubious about this source.
Here's a reputable site that says SpaceX is no longer operating (or has otherwise lost) 378 of the 5000 satellites they've launched
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/09/starlink-7-2-6-14/
However that's an all time number, not just the last few months. The biggest single hit I'm aware of was a batch in 2022 that hit a solar storm that engineers thought they could weather.
Objects in orbit experience very minor drag from what's left of Earth's atmosphere up there. Objects in low orbit like starlink satellites experience more drag. Unless it gets periodically boosted to a higher orbit it burns up in the atmosphere falling back to earth. This is all well understood and planned for. Satellites falling out of orbit is literally the norm.
Quietly
