[HN Gopher] One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to E...
___________________________________________________________________
One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day
Author : af78
Score : 151 points
Date : 2025-10-06 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (earthsky.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (earthsky.org)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite
| reentries per day_
|
| Starlink's next-generation V3s, which will require Starship to
| launch, weigh in around 2 metric tonnes [1]. (They're currently
| "around 260 and 310 kilograms" [2].)
|
| "Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons [91 metric
| tons] of dust and sand-sized particles" [3]. So we're talking
| about a 2 to 10% increase in burn-up by mass. (Not accounting for
| energy, which natural burn-up has more of, or incomplete burn-up,
| which reduces the atmospheric effects of artificial mass.)
|
| Broadly speaking, we don't seem to be in a problematic place in
| respect of the atmosphere. Where improvement may be required is
| in moving from splashdown, where we sink space junk in the ocean,
| to targeted recovery.
|
| [1] https://starlink-stories.cdn.prismic.io/starlink-
| stories/Z3Q...
|
| [2] https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-next-gen-
| starlink...
|
| [3] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-
| fa...
| Y-bar wrote:
| Asking from a place of ignorance on my part, but does the
| chemical composition of the satellites versus asteroids/dust
| have any adverse effects?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The satellites are mostly metal and silicon I would guess,
| not too different from asteroids.
| bwestergard wrote:
| If someone has the time, I'd love to see the total amount
| of lead added to the atmosphere by burning up satellites
| compared to the amount from other anthropogenic sources.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Rough napkin math would be negligible impact. The amount
| of lead in a satellite is very small, if not actually
| zero. The amount of lead added by burning coal is about
| 30 tonnes per day.
| everforward wrote:
| There is almost definitely a small, negligible amount of
| lead in the solder in them. Eg NASA requires a small
| (single digit I think) percentage of lead to prevent tin
| whiskering.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _almost definitely a small, negligible amount of lead
| in the solder in them_
|
| Emphasis on negligible. Assuming 0.07 to 0.28 ppm lead
| [1] in meteoroids, space is dosing us with half to 2 kg a
| year [2].
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii
| /001670...
|
| [2] https://earthsky.org/space/tons-of-extraterrestrial-
| dust-fal...
| perihelions wrote:
| It's postulated that the high aluminum content of satellites
| (for perspective, Bennu samples are only 1% Al), as oxidized
| Al2O3 particles in the stratosphere, catalyze chemistry that
| destroys ozone. But that's far from a quantitatively
| meaningful problem, at the current scale.
|
| This source[0] says satellite reentries are about about 12%
| of the space industry's contribution to ozone depletion (the
| big one is chlorine from solid rockets), which in turn is
| 0.1% of the entire anthropogenic contribution; i.e. satellite
| reentries are ~0.01% of the total.
|
| https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-reentry-pollution-
| dama...
| schiffern wrote:
| >0.01% of anthropogenic ozone depletion
|
| The sheer percentage increase in stratospheric AlO is still
| alarming.[0]
|
| Satellite reentries in 2022 (ie mostly pre-
| megaconstellation) were already raising stratospheric AlO
| levels by 29.5% above normal levels (with satellites adding
| 'only' 17 t/year), but megaconstellations could raise that
| to ~480% above natural levels (360 t/year).
|
| This isn't a rounding error, it's a non-trivial change in
| chemical composition across the entire globe, and effecting
| a complex and poorly-understood part of the climate system.
| What could go wrong?
|
| What else can this effect (as usual, discovered belatedly)
| beyond ozone? Hopefully it's nothing! But I guess we're
| gonna find out...
|
| [0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/202
| 4GL10...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Satellite reentries in 2022 (mostly pre-
| megaconstellation) were already raising stratospheric AlO
| levels by 29.5% above normal levels_
|
| Those findings are simulated, not observed. Hence
| "potential."
|
| > _it 's a non-trivial change in chemical composition
| over the entire globe, and effecting a complex and
| poorly-understood part of the climate system. What could
| go wrong?_
|
| Perhaps a lot. Perhaps not much. It's a good question to
| study. But if this is an issue, it's solvable--carbon
| composite satellite structures could use a boost in
| demand and funding.
| schiffern wrote:
| Interesting. Incidentally SpaceX is probably the _most_
| likely to preemptively adopt those measures.
|
| Of all the megaconstellations, SpaceX has historically
| been the best at being a "good neighbor," with low orbits
| for debris and lots of engineering to reduce
| brightness.[0] But hype around SpaceX gives the real bad
| actors a pass, for example AST is much worse on
| brightness,[1] and OneWeb and Qianfan are much worse on
| debris risk.[2]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNc5yCYth5E&t=1717s
|
| [1] https://spacenews.com/astronomers-raise-interference-
| concern...
|
| [2] https://spacenews.com/chinas-megaconstellation-
| launches-coul...
| tehjoker wrote:
| i still don't understand why we need huge constellations
| of satellites at all
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Because it's a way to provide communications from space
| with acceptable total throughput and latency.
| HanClinto wrote:
| Because providing infrastructure to remote regions is
| incredibly difficult through other mechanisms. I don't
| believe it's hyperbole to say that -- for the goal of
| improving infrastructure access in some of the most
| remote and challenging places in the world -- Starlink in
| particular is one of the most successful pro-humanitarian
| engineering projects that I can think of in maybe the
| last 20 years.
|
| Starlink is easily one of my favorite engineering
| projects. I don't believe anybody has done it cheaper,
| better, or at wider scale than Starlink has.
| perihelions wrote:
| That's still much less than the aluminum from solid
| rockets, which have been ongoing since the 1970's. Per
| your own link,
|
| > _" In situ measurements showed evidence of a 1,000%
| increase in stratospheric aluminum levels from 1976 to
| 1984 (Zolensky et al., 1989), which was associated with
| the emission of hundreds of tons of such particles from
| solid rocket motors (SRM) during atmospheric ascent
| (Brady et al., 1994)"_
|
| If you follow _Brady et al. (1994)_ [0], you'll read that
| every Space Shuttle launch (Table 1) deposited 112 tons
| of Al2O3 into the stratosphere (>15 km).
|
| [0] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA289852.pdf
|
| This _isn 't a new phenomenon at all_; in fact the peak
| alumina pollution from in the past (112 tons per STS
| launch) exceeds the worst-case future estimates from
| academic research (360 tons per year from satellite
| reentries).
|
| (/meta Coincidentally, I once linked that exact _Brady_
| paper on HN, three years ago[1]. Actually, _long_ before
| the current social media fad for being concerned about
| satellites. At the time I wrote, and this has truly aged
| well, "No one ever gave a shit").
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34812863
| schiffern wrote:
| As I understand it, the concern is not just AlO but
| specifically _nanoparticles_ with high reaction surface
| area and long lofting lifespans.
|
| The importance of this distinction is acknowledged in
| _Brady et al (1994)_ : >The exact
| chemical nature, as well as size distribution (and total
| surface area) of particles formed in rocket exhaust in
| the stratosphere is currently unknown. Preliminary
| experiments at Aerospace by L. R. Martin indicate that
| plausible particle compositions give highly variable
| rates of direct ozone destruction.
|
| The 17 t/year and 360 t/year figures are specifically for
| AlO nanoparticles (formed by hypersonic ablation),
| whereas Brady et al gives numbers for all AlO particles,
| regardless of size.
|
| Nice username btw.
| svmt wrote:
| Bloomberg ran a piece about this in March:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-
| satellit...
| nicce wrote:
| There is a limit how much satellites LEO/GEO can hold unless
| every satellite has perfect dodging system. Called as Kessler
| syndrome [1], and one estimate is around 70k satellites. So it
| is a race who can get the most satellites orbiting, because
| after a certain point, there is no "space" anymore, and anyone
| who tries to launch after that point, will be blamed for
| destroying the satellites of the others. Winner takes all.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I'm just a layman, but why can't they increase the orbital
| radius to solve this problem? Like, if the current "layer" is
| too full, have the new satellites orbit further out?
| nemomarx wrote:
| Low orbit is how star link is able to achieve their
| connections, isn't it? I think of they moved to normal
| telecom orbit the performance would be like normal
| satellite internet too
| peterfirefly wrote:
| They originally planned to be about 1100km up. They are
| currently about 550km up. Plenty of possible layers in
| between...
|
| Another 500 km won't affect latency much. It'll be around
| 3 more ms per round trip.
| nemomarx wrote:
| That's not a bad latency addition, you're right. Good
| note
| parl_match wrote:
| very simple explanation but there's a few issues
|
| radio bandwidth: higher frequencies travel a shorter
| distance and provide more bandwidth. so you get frequency
| contention and also you need your sats to be physically
| closer
|
| latency: the further a sat is, the higher the latency. not
| an issue for text messages. a huge issue for phone calls
| and general internet tasks. the further you "push" your sat
| "back", the worst the user experience is
|
| there's other issues too, like geostationary vs
| geosynchronous and coverage and exposure.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| WP says Low Earth Orbit is popular because it's cheap to
| get stuff there, the latency is low (speed of light starts
| to matter when you're a couple Earth diameters up) and
| bandwidth to the ground is high (I assume it's harder to
| send a signal a longer distance, even through vacuum)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit see "Use"
| 4rt wrote:
| The reason starlink are so low in the first place is its
| cheaper to launch to that altitude, you need way less
| signal strength for devices to connect to them and the
| round-trip latency is vastly improved. They're intended to
| be essentially disposable, they're going for shorter
| lifetime and iterating on hardware improvements faster.
|
| The further out you get, there's less atmospheric drag and
| each satellite is in view of the ground stations for longer
| but the cost of launch is higher and latency becomes a big
| issue. People expect 50ms latency for internet access not
| 500ms.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Not with a geostationary orbit. That must have a fixed
| radius. The problem is that satellites have to move to
| counteract the force of gravity to avoid falling out of
| orbit. But if they move too much or too little, then the
| satellite moves with respect to the earth and the orbit is
| no longer geostationary.
|
| (Caveat: Not an expert by any means, just someone who had a
| similar question and did some reading, so my answer may
| well be incomplete or not fully correct.)
| zwily wrote:
| Starlink satellites aren't geostationary.
| tejtm wrote:
| This has already been addressed as LEO is not
| geostationary but to point as to why. Consider the earths
| equator rotates at a particular velocity so there is a
| particular orbital radius where the two cancel and NO
| energy is needed to fall around the equator at the same
| rate the equator is moving. That is a geostationary
| orbit.
|
| LEO maxes out ~ 1,200 miles radius, geostationary is at
| little over over 22,000 miles radius.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why can't they increase the orbital radius to solve this
| problem?_
|
| Because there isn't a problem. LEO contains more than 200x
| the volume of commercial airspace.
|
| We run out of spectrum and launch capacity well before
| Kessler cascades become a problem.
| tejtm wrote:
| Automatic EOL (end of life) deorbiting is a feature not a
| bug.
|
| I will again note that if Saber Tooth tigers had put things
| in the orbits we have, it would still be our problem.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| A land grab. That might explain the desire to put anything in
| space, even something useless like mirrors to reflect
| sunlight
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That's one single estimate, and the problem is much more
| nuanced.
|
| For example, Starlink satellites orbit so low, that even if
| every single one of them collides and becomes dust, it will
| all decay and burn up in a matter of months, a couple years
| at most. The debris cannot physically move to higher orbits
| to affect other "normal" satellites, though it might impair
| launches.
|
| Conversely, collisions at much higher geosynchronous orbits
| can't possibly create a dense debris field as the total area
| is immense, deorbit will take millions of years, and
| everything is usually moving at the same speed (the
| synchronous part).
| nicce wrote:
| > For example, Starlink satellites orbit so low, that even
| if every single one of them collides and becomes dust, it
| will all decay and burn up in a matter of months, a couple
| years at most.
|
| That is way too long. The threshold we are speaking of
| cannot allow any fragments, because they start chain
| reaction and destroy more satellites. And there is always
| one which is on the highest level. What if that gets
| destroyed?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| No it's not. Kessler simulations show those chain
| reactions happening over multiple decades.
| nicce wrote:
| It purely depends of the density of objects. The whole
| definition of the Kessler syndrome is about the
| estimation when the density is too much to handle.
| zevon wrote:
| Maybe this is helpful:
| https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-
| the...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _threshold we are speaking of cannot allow any
| fragments, because they start chain reaction and destroy
| more satellites_
|
| Kessler cascades are localised to specific orbits. In
| low-earth orbit, they're a problem for a few years.
|
| They're going to be annoying. But not catastrophic.
|
| > _there is always one which is on the highest level_
|
| Highest level?
| nicce wrote:
| > Kessler cascades are localised to specific orbits. In
| low-earth orbit, they're a problem for a few years.
|
| > They're going to be annoying. But not catastrophic.
|
| I think there is a misunderstanding about the whole term.
| If it is not a big problem, then it does not meet the
| definition. So there must be some threshold where they
| aren't problem. What is that threshold? Because certainly
| there isn't space for infinite amount of objects. Primary
| question is that whether that threshold matters on
| practice. If it is 70k, then it is certainly a problem,
| but who knows the exact number yet.
|
| > Highest level?
|
| There is always the one which is classified orbiting on
| the highest level in LEO. Also that object can get
| destroyed; which means it will start deorbiting and with
| a _chance_ to hit some other object below.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What is that threshold?_
|
| Way beyond anything we can currently achieve with current
| and planned launch capacity or radio technology.
|
| > _that object can get destroyed; which means it will
| start deorbiting and with a chance to hit some other
| object below_
|
| Got it, altitude.
|
| Yes, in theory. In practice, the odds of that happening
| are vanishingly low. If it did happen, the volumes we're
| talking about are still so big that you'd struggle to
| come up with a way to cause a third collision even if we
| remove satellites' abilities to marginally change their
| orbits.
| nicce wrote:
| > Way beyond anything we can currently achieve with
| current and planned launch capacity or radio technology.
|
| How are you so sure, when scientist have been debating
| this for decades?
|
| > Got it, altitude.
|
| Quibbling isn't an argument.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _when scientist have been debating this for decades?_
|
| They have been. That's what I'm basing my arguments on.
|
| You've been mentioning a ca. 70,000-bird limit. I think
| that comes from Bongers & Torres [1]. Their paper runs
| LEGEND (LEO-to-GEO Environment Debris Model). It does not
| distinguish between LEO and GEO. That's material because
| the natural decay period for an object in LEO is on the
| order of months to years, for LEO, to decades to
| centuries, for GEO.
|
| Kessler in GEO? Real problem. If you wanted to be a space
| terrorist, you could probably engineer a cascade today
| that would make large sections of GEO unusuable for
| decades if not centuries. The point is that isn't
| possible for LEO, where you may make a mess in a few
| orbits for a few years at best.
|
| > _Quibbling isn 't an argument_
|
| Sorry, wasn't quibbling. I genuinely couldn't tell what
| you meant by "highest level." (I was picturing a food
| chain, where big clouds of debris "eat" smaller
| satellites in their way.)
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S09
| 2180092...
| lxgr wrote:
| Why would there be a single numeric threshold?
|
| You can pack many, many satellites into the same orbit
| without any danger, for example - as long as they move in
| the same direction. Let's make it 1000 for this thought
| experiment.
|
| On the other hand, just two moving in opposite directions
| are obviously going to crash.
|
| So is the number of "safe satellites in all of LEO" 1000
| or 1?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > If it is not a big problem, then it does not meet the
| definition.
|
| It's still a big problem to wipe out low orbit, but it's
| not a long lasting one.
|
| > What is that threshold? Because certainly there isn't
| space for infinite amount of objects.
|
| Even if you crash a billion objects together at 300km,
| they're all going to go away in a few years. There is no
| threshold for semi-permanently ruining low orbit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _still a big problem to wipe out low orbit_
|
| You're not wiping out LEO, but a particular LEO.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I don't know the specifics of starlink satellites but a
| rupture of any pressurized line has a chance of causing an
| unintended ascent. Thankfully in most cases the satellite
| is stabilized, so there is a good chance the satellite just
| gets a huge amount of rotational velocity added to it with
| no increase in altitude.
| nradov wrote:
| You seem to have a misunderstanding of basic orbital
| mechanics. That wouldn't cause an "ascent" like with an
| airplane or something. There will be a change in orbital
| parameters but a permanent change in orbital altitude
| isn't really possible in that scenario.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Whatever you do to launch an object higher, it will
| return to its original altitude once per orbit. If you
| want to stay high you first have to boost up and then you
| have to boost _again_ half an hour later, which will
| happen just about never with debris.
| lxgr wrote:
| You'd still have an eccentric orbit intersecting some
| "higher" ones periodically, no?
|
| Certainly less dangerous than something "going the wrong
| way" in a given orbital shell, but not sure if it's
| completely negligible either.
| observationist wrote:
| It's a mass problem. Instead of imagining the gravity
| well as something moving away from earth out into the
| vacuum of space, think of it as a ball that needs to be
| rolled uphill - even if you give it a huge burst of
| energy, it's not going to go as far as you think from
| that one big push, and it's still going to roll back
| downhill. In order to make it out of the gravity well,
| you need a lot of focused, continuous energy over huge
| distances.
|
| There are other factors, too - imagine you're trying to
| send a penny around the entire equator of the earth, and
| think of the largest possible explosion you could subject
| it to without vaporizing it. A stick of dynamite could
| launch a penny only around a half mile's distance around
| the equator, assuming ideal conditions, which is about
| .0025% of the circumference of the earth, which is 10% of
| the distance between the earth and the moon, and the moon
| is about 25% of the distance from which earth's gravity
| stops being a significant factor.
|
| If you carefully deployed a large number of well timed
| series of dynamite sticks precisely located so that each
| blew up perfectly beneath the penny at its apex following
| each previous explosion - you'd need 150-300 sticks to
| get the penny out past the edge of the effective
| gravitational well, the point at which other factors in
| the solar system have the dominant influence - it'd
| effectively leave earth and start falling toward the sun.
| At any point closer to earth than that, it will slowly
| and inexorably return back to earth, reaching up to
| 25,000 mph before vaporizing itself in the atmosphere (if
| it fell from the outer edge). If you had no atmosphere, a
| clear shot, and the "ideal" penny cannon to launch it,
| you could hypothetically reach escape velocity with only
| a quarter stick of dynamite.
|
| Incidental bursts of gas, or even outright exploding
| objects in space are not going to launch a bunch of stuff
| into much deeper orbit. There's a constant downward pull,
| and gas and dust creating drag and downward acceleration
| the closer in you get, and just vast, incomprehensible
| distances to travel under the influences of gravity.
| Getting things to go faster than 25,000mph, or reaching
| escape velocity, without vaporizing the thing you're
| trying to make go fast, requires as big a continuous
| explosion as you can make over as long a time period as
| possible.
|
| I love that AI can whip up an xkcd style "What-If?" type
| scenario for these questions.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The debris that ends up with equal or lower orbital energy
| than one of the satellites started with doesn't move up,
| that is true.
|
| But all the bits the bits that end up with more energy than
| the orbit the satellites were on obviously _do_ move up,
| and some bits will move up very substantially as we know
| from Mission Shakti debris: debris from that event at 300
| km got apoapsis of up to ~2200 km.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Starlink's orbits are so low that everything deorbits
| automatically. The satellites need to actively work to stay
| up. That means no Kessler syndrome there.
|
| How many you can fit depends on the available technology. It
| should eventually be a lot more than 70K just in those low
| orbits... and still leave plenty of space for rocket launches
| and returns to thread their way in between them.
| nicce wrote:
| > Starlink's orbits are so low that everything deorbits
| automatically.
|
| It is enough if it goes one round around. They can make a
| cascading effect which can destroy tens of satellites at
| once, and few fragments are enough. And closer to earth you
| are, less space there is. They can't all orbit on exactly
| the same level. There is always one which is on slightly
| higher level.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _closer to earth you are, less space there is_
|
| Humans are bad at intuiting exponents. There is roughly
| 200x more volume in LEO than there is between the ground
| and cruising altitude. Plane changes, moreover, take a
| _lot_ of energy--you aren 't going to get enough energy
| out of a collision to pollute nearby orbits.
| nicce wrote:
| > going to get enough energy out of a collision to
| pollute nearby orbits.
|
| There is no infinite space. The problem is exactly
| defining the number objects when that "small" amount of
| energy is actually enough to cause problems.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There is no infinite space_
|
| Straw man.
|
| > _problem is exactly defining the number objects when
| that "small" amount of energy is actually enough to cause
| problems_
|
| The exercise, maybe. The problem? No. In LEO, which is
| where Starlink orbits, there is no known solution for
| causing a Kessler cascade that causes more than a few
| billion in damage. Space isn't infinite, but it's really
| big.
|
| Again, a few hundred thousand planes land every day [1].
| They operate in a volume less than 1% that of LEO. To
| approach the object densities where we _start_
| controlling an airspace, you 'd need tens of millions of
| objects in LEO alone. We simply do not have--not have any
| roadmap to having--the sort of launch capacity required
| to keep 30 million objects in LEO at a time.
|
| There are real problems with more Starlinks in space.
| Kessler cascades are not one of them.
|
| [1] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-
| airports/number-of...
| lxgr wrote:
| > They can't all orbit on exactly the same level.
|
| Sure they can: Leading/trailing each other is quite
| common. Intersecting orbits are riskier, but also
| possible without inevitable collisions.
| wat10000 wrote:
| A 2-10% increase seems like a hell of a lot.
|
| Human CO2 emissions are well under 10% of natural CO2
| emissions, and yet that additional amount has been enough to
| increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by over 50% and
| substantially alter the planetary climate.
|
| CO2 in the atmosphere is at a vastly larger scale than mass
| falling in from space, so that doesn't mean this _is_ a
| problem, but that percentage certainly seems to indicate that
| the question should be studied further.
| ogig wrote:
| I hear 10% increase on a global constant and that doesn't sound
| like peanuts. If we increase 10% each few years that might be a
| problem? I don't know anything about whatever field studies
| this but given that LEO constellations born yesterday even that
| 2% increase in stuff coming from the skyes sounds significant
| to me.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Short answer is we're still theorizing. Models suggest we
| might see accumulation. But we might not, or it might not
| accumulate at relevant altitudes. (Current LEO satellites
| burn up before hitting the ozone layer.)
| shizcakes wrote:
| edit: okay I misunderstood what everyone meant
| organsnyder wrote:
| I don't see anyone worrying about planetary mass. I'd be
| more concerned about atmospheric effects.
| palata wrote:
| Is that what you say when you litter? "I don't see a
| problem with plastic in the ocean, it came from the Earth
| in the first place".
| lxgr wrote:
| > please recall that the mass of de-orbiting man-made
| satellites came from the earth in the first place.
|
| Then again, so are CFCs, CO2, radioactive materials...
|
| Just because some elements naturally occur on Earth doesn't
| mean we're completely insensitive to where they end up.
| (That said, I have no idea if atmospheric Aluminium is
| actually a problem or not.)
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I was watching a video the other day which happened to
| mention that sodium lasers are used to create artificial
| stars, used for calibration of adaptive optics in ground
| based telescopes. This works because one particular layer
| of the upper atmosphere is rich in sodium due to impact
| with sodium rich debris.
|
| Obviously it requires a more scientific analysis but it
| does seem to me that burning a lot of shit on the
| atmosphere might be problematic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is that really what people are concerned about though?
| cowpig wrote:
| Why is a 2-10% increase a small amount? What increase would be
| too much?
| benjiro wrote:
| > (They're currently "around 260 and 310 kilograms" [2].)
|
| v1.5 is like 300kg, the v2.0 mini (ironic as its far from mini
| compared to its predecessors) are 800kg.
|
| The V3's are the one's that need StarShip to deploy. But the
| current launch platform can take 21x v2.0 Mini's per launch vs
| the 60x v1.5's they did before.
|
| Taking in account that the v2.0 Mini's are way more capably on
| a kg/capacity. And the tech keeps getting better. SpaceX does
| not really need Starship, that is more or less a bonus at this
| point.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" SpaceX does not really need Starship, that is more or
| less a bonus at this point."_
|
| Starship is the moat SpaceX needs to be developing today to
| stay ahead of where the Chinese competition will be in 5-10
| years.
| trenbologna wrote:
| Does this create pollution? I don't think I want to inhale
| satellite dust.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Unfortunately right now we just don't know how it will affect
| things.
|
| But, it WILL affect things in climate and atmosphere.
|
| https://csl.noaa.gov/news/2025/427_0428.html
|
| "Pollution" is what this is
| metalman wrote:
| The real world concentrations of all of the elements that are
| in a satelite, dont go up by any measurable amount dues to
| space X sattelites burning up. What does have a huge impact is
| climate change causing industrial waste sites to dry up and
| spread dust, or just the inevitable increaes due to more human
| activity and mining for our resouce heavy consumption,
| especialy anything with chips, and batteries, exotic alloys in
| screens
| ggreer wrote:
| Current Starlink satellites are 800-970kg[1] and 100% of their
| mass is vaporized on reentry, so 1-2 satellites a day would be
| approximately 1.5 tons per day added to the atmosphere. The
| atmosphere's mass is 5.15 quadrillion tons. Even if satellite
| vapor stayed in the atmosphere forever, it would take
| approximately 10,000 years before it reached 1 part per
| billion.
|
| So basically it's not worth worrying about.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#v2_(initial_deploymen...
| Veedrac wrote:
| This is correct from the perspective of direct health
| hazards, but there are still plausible risks. We know from
| history you don't need a lot of mass to cause global
| problems, if the material is catalytic.
| ggreer wrote:
| If the vaporized satellites were entirely converted into a
| compound that was as damaging to the ozone layer as the
| most potent CFC (R-12 [1]), and the compound stayed in the
| atmosphere forever, it would take 5,000 years to reach
| current atmospheric concentrations of R-12.[2]
|
| Vaporized satellites really don't seem like a concern.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorodifluoromethane#En
| viro...
|
| 2. https://gml.noaa.gov/hats/graphs/graphs.html
| dimal wrote:
| Yet?
|
| My point is, Starlink is doing this now, but they are
| continuing to scale up. Other companies are going to follow.
| Is there a point that this does become something to worry
| about because the scale has increased?
| ggreer wrote:
| The highest numbers I can find for the final Starlink
| constellation is 40,000 satellites. Let's assume Starlink
| and its competitors have constellations totaling 100,000
| satellites, and satellites need to be replaced every five
| years, and each satellite weighs 1 ton. That means 20,000
| tons of vaporized satellites per year. The atmospheric
| emissions would be 3.88 parts per billion per year. This
| would still be less than the mass of asteroids and space
| dust that burn up in the earth's atmosphere every year.
|
| If the reentering satellites were somehow transformed
| entirely into chlorine gas that somehow stayed in the
| atmosphere forever, we would reach the OSHA permissible
| exposure limit of 1ppm after 250 years. Chlorine is
| detectable by smell at 3ppm, which would take 750 years.
|
| It's very likely that the vast majority of the vaporized
| satellites are inert, as they are basically incinerated on
| reentry. It's also likely that most of of the vaporized
| satellite does not stay in the atmosphere for very long.
| The only way this could be a problem is if the satellites
| emit a long-lived compound that catalyzes a reaction in the
| atmosphere, similar to how CFCs destroy the ozone layer. So
| far, the only candidate for that is aluminum oxide
| particles, and solid rocket boosters create more of that
| than reentering satellites. (Fortunately aluminum oxide
| isn't nearly as bad for the ozone layer as CFCs, and SpaceX
| does not use solid boosters.)
|
| Also once you are launching tens of thousands of tons to
| orbit per year, it starts to become feasible to build
| infrastructure in space. Satellites at the end of their
| service life contain valuable raw materials. It would
| likely become cheaper to refurbish or recycle them rather
| than deorbit and launch new ones.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The launches are probably significantly worse!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _launches are probably significantly worse_
|
| Kerosene rockets produce soot. Methalox rockets (like
| Starship) produce plain CO2 and water.
| rurp wrote:
| Hold on, are you saying that burning rocket fuel produces
| little to no pollution? As in, we could launch a million
| rockets per day with a negligible effect on the air and
| other environments? That's pretty surprising to me assuming
| I'm understanding correctly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _are you saying that burning rocket fuel produces
| little to no pollution?_
|
| There are high-atmosphere effects we don't yet
| understand. RP-1 produces soot, particularly when burned
| fuel rich. And methalox still releases methane since
| again you're not burning your fuel perfectly.
|
| But the simplicity of non-hypergolic non-kerosene rocket
| fuel chemistries like the ones SpaceX uses is they burn
| remarkably clean. You don't get a bunch of additives
| producing weird neurotoxins, or incomplete combustion
| inventing organic compounds in the high atmosphere.
|
| (I'm ignoring cryogenic fuels, which literally produce
| water vapour as an exhaust because liquid hydrogen is a
| bastard.)
|
| > _As in, we could launch a million rockets per day with
| a negligible effect on the air and other environments?_
|
| No. Starship releases like 360 tons of CO2 per launch
| [1].
|
| That said, nobody is launching a million rockets a day.
| We _might_ get to like 3 or 4 a day in our lifetimes.
| Barring some novel economic opportunity in space, launch
| emissions are likely to remain negligble for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| [1] https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/news/elon-musk-
| rocket-emitte...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| At this point, Im just waiting to find out that Falcon launches
| aren't actually that much cheaper in reality, and are just
| heavily subsidized.
| adastra22 wrote:
| You'll be waiting a long time, because that is simply not true.
| chermi wrote:
| [flagged]
| londons_explore wrote:
| 0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions.
|
| Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass
| being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution,
| the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc.
|
| One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.
| loeg wrote:
| Personally, I've never suffered from satellite plasma or
| light pollution _from satellites_ , or spectrum allocation. I
| suspect most of the 100% are like me.
| ggoo wrote:
| Scientific advancement has suffered from the light
| pollution and that advancement is a driving force behind
| your modern life. So you have (or will) suffer indirectly
| over time.
| loeg wrote:
| I think your attempted connection between astronomy and
| modern technological conveniences is pretty thin.
| ggoo wrote:
| Does your phone have a camera on it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Scientific advancement has suffered from the light
| pollution_
|
| Has it?
|
| Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light
| pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I
| suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-
| space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is
| real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is
| a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.
| ggoo wrote:
| Your response is not in good faith - this is very easy to
| google.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this is very easy to google_
|
| Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have
| complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to
| output, including the complaining astronomers.
| runarberg wrote:
| Search term: "low earth orbit satellite effects on
| astronomy" first result:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| OP said "scientific advancement has suffered from the
| light pollution," past tense. Your source explores a
| "potentially large rise in global sky brightness," and an
| "expected...rapid rise in night sky brightness."
|
| These are not risks to be ignored. But we haven't even
| observed or quantified them, which is the first step to
| weighing mitigation options. (Which could be physical,
| _e.g._ lowering satellite reflectivity. Or geographic,
| putting more observatories are higher latitudes. Or even
| statistical, by launching space-based calibration
| telescopes, or building more array-based observatories.)
| runarberg wrote:
| This paper shows how in 2023 scientists were already
| _annoyed_ by this, that they had to accommodate this into
| their observations, and adjust their measurements
| accordingly. _Suffered_ (past tense) may be hyperbolic,
| but it isn't untrue either.
|
| This 2023 paper is also issuing a warning, that if this
| continues without mitigation, ground based astronomy will
| be affected. They have the calculations to prove that.
| What they are particularly concerned about is detecting
| faint objects inside the radio wave spectrum will be
| impossible because it will be lost in noise.
|
| Now 2 years have passed since this paper was published,
| and we still don't have mitigations for ground based
| radio astronomy. I seriously doubt we will ever have one.
| And that the predictions of worse astronomy will become
| true, externalized into a type of internet you could have
| gotten with traditional cable, fiber optics, or a 5G
| radio tower.
|
| EDIT:
|
| > But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which
| is the first step to weighing mitigation options.
|
| The paper I cited does that. In the abstract they say:
|
| > _We present calculations of the potentially large rise
| in global sky brightness from space objects in low Earth
| orbit, including qualitative and quantitative assessments
| of how professional astronomy may be affected._
|
| and inside the paper they devote a whole chapter (chapter
| 5) to possible mitigations which is titled:
|
| > _Mitigations: potential gains and risks_
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They have the calculations to prove that_
|
| They have calculations that show this is how our models
| play out.
|
| > _What they are particularly concerned about is
| detecting faint objects inside the radio wave spectrum
| will be impossible because it will be lost in noise_
|
| Could become. They're not talking about mitigation
| because we haven't observed the problem yet.
|
| > _Now 2 years have passed since this paper was
| published, and we still don't have mitigations for ground
| based radio astronomy_
|
| Again, where is the "scientific advancement" that "has
| suffered"?
|
| > _seriously doubt we will ever have one_
|
| Based on what?!
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Unless you don't breathe air, you can't make the first
| statement with absolute certainty.
|
| "Workin' in these coal mines ain't hurt me none no-how."
| oceanplexian wrote:
| A single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's
| also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea,
| Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military
| use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency
| services to countless people who might need it in an
| emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina.
|
| Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create
| revenue for SpaceX and to fund the Starship program. The
| value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is
| extremely high.
| tgv wrote:
| > The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals
| is extremely high.
|
| I beg to disagree. I see no value at all. This must be one
| of those accelerationist or extropianist/utilitarian
| beliefs.
| xnx wrote:
| > The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals
| is extremely high.
|
| Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is
| near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend
| their money on, go nuts.
| thrance wrote:
| You're discounting the fact that building Starship, if
| successful, has a non-zero chance of taking Musk away
| from Earth forever. That's a huge potential positive.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars
| is near useless.
|
| I strongly disagree.
|
| If "Starship to Mars" is a possibility, then so is
| "Starship to the asteroid belt". It's very close to
| "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return
| to Earth orbit" - and that's very close to orbital mining
| of metals that are rare and valuable on Earth.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt,
| capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit"_
|
| To put this into perspective, an Earth-Mars round trip
| costs about 15 km/s; Earth-main Belt about 13 km/s.
|
| You'd need to add Dv for returning the mass of the
| asteroid. But you get your reaction mass for "free."
|
| (To be clear, we are hundreds of billions of dollars of
| capex and decades away from asteroid mining. But the work
| to get there is decently in line with the work we would
| need to establish a logistical chain to Mars and back.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Starship to Mars is near useless_
|
| Apollo to the Moon was near useless by that metric. We
| wouldn't have Starship to orbit if we hadn't gone to the
| moon.
| leptons wrote:
| >The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals
| is extremely high.
|
| This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do
| succeed. If a human colony on Mars is established, and all
| of humanity is wiped out on Earth, does it really benefit
| "humanity" or only the 0.000000001% of "humanity" located
| on Mars?
|
| And life on Mars is going to be difficult, it isn't
| habitable, and is in fact quite hostile to life. I
| seriously doubt any colony on Mars would be viable long-
| term. If life on Earth is wiped out, the colony on Mars
| will very likely wither and die soon after without
| continued support from Earth.
|
| Any colony on Mars is going to be so exponentially more
| fragile and fraught with problems for sustaining life, that
| the suggestion that it's somehow going to save humanity is
| ridiculous.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The primary benefit of Starship is a sizable reduction of
| the cost of getting mass to orbit, not Mars dreams.
| leptons wrote:
| That's a bit of a re-branding.
|
| How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity
| more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but
| maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us
| don't know about.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That 's a bit of a re-branding_
|
| No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in
| being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to
| LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term
| pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always
| been about LEO.
|
| > _How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of
| humanity more than what we have now?_
|
| Better Earth observation. Better space observation.
| Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires
| strung through it.
|
| Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact
| of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably
| useless?
| leptons wrote:
| Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is
| how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a
| colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be
| used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even
| made movies about it:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spac
| ex+...
|
| Google tells me exactly this:
|
| > _" Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the
| explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars,
| with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test
| missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed
| missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The
| Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is
| the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to
| eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the
| planet."_
|
| It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship
| after starship when they could have spent that money
| launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments.
|
| Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now
| that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it
| was.
|
| There are better things humanity could be doing with the
| time and money spent blowing up "starship" after
| "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's
| just meant for LEO? _Because it wasn 't intended for
| LEO_, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship"
| if it's just going to be launching satellites.
|
| It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-
| delivering.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Every story I 've ever heard about "Starship" is how
| it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a
| colony_
|
| Could this reflect your media diet?
|
| > _never once heard that "Starship" will be used to
| launch even more starlink satellites_
|
| That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff
| first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink
| whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch
| explosion or Artemis.
|
| > _pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship
| after starship when they could have spent that money
| launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments_
|
| V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch
| costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons.
|
| > _why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO?
| Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why_
|
| Starship isn't an interstellar platform...
| londons_explore wrote:
| > The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals
| is extremely high.
|
| If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund
| the program directly through investment, donations or
| taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also
| value highly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would
| fund the program directly through investment, donations
| or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we
| also value highly_
|
| ...Starlink and SpaceX are funded through investments and
| taxes. When they launch a non-profit 's satellite I
| guess, indirectly, through donations, too.
|
| Also, what? Why is the funding source a measure of value?
| xnx wrote:
| Could we say the same about flights to Hawaii? Small number
| of people take lavish vacations, everyone else gets the
| pollution.
|
| It's good to look at the costs vs. benefits of everything,
| but satellite networks are way far down on my list of concern
| (and I do some astrophotography).
| ggoo wrote:
| After just coming back from a trip to Maui, yeah you can
| totally say the same about flights to Hawaii.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| We should. A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of
| problems.
|
| A strong and trustworthy global democracy to enforce it,
| and to provide for the general welfare of everyone
| currently trapped in car-based cities... Is left as a
| simple exercise to the reader
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of
| problems_
|
| There is a reason these taxes are popular among rich
| countries and opposed by emerging ones.
| runarberg wrote:
| Also worth considering is the Uber effect of public
| infrastructure. Meaning that politicians may use the
| existence of StarLink as an excuse to delay or cancel public
| projects which would otherwise have delivered broadband
| internet to under-served areas via traditional
| infrastructure.
|
| This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused
| delays or cancellation of public transit projects because
| politicians were able to say the people were better served
| with Uber than public transit.
| chermi wrote:
| I'd wager many of those connections are serving much more
| than one person, considering they're often hubs in rural
| areas. But screw them.
|
| It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain
| about how the poor are causing the privileged some
| difficulties.
| runarberg wrote:
| I would like to see stats how many people got new
| connections via traditional infrastructure. I bet that
| number is much higher, probably even an order of magnitude
| higher.
|
| This is HN, so I should probably look for the data my
| self...
|
| EDIT:
|
| In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users
| to 5.5 billion. Starlink grew by only a 1/100 of that in
| absolute terms, from 2 million users to 4 million over the
| same time period, majority of users in the USA already had
| access to the internet via traditional infrastructure.
|
| I tried to find how many StarLink users got internet access
| (or even high speed internet access) that didn't have one
| before, but I couldn't find the numbers. Somebody could
| correct me, but I very much doubt that number is high
| enough to consider StarLink to make even a blimp in
| providing internet to new users.
|
| EDIT EDIT: I was off by a factor of 100 in initial EDIT,
| see child post.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion
| users to 5.5 Starlink grew by a similar absolute amount,
| from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time
| period,
|
| Is this some AI answer or did you foobar this math by a
| factor of 100?
| runarberg wrote:
| Whoops, a standard off by a factor of 100 error.
|
| StarLink got 2 million new subscribers in 2024. Meanwhile
| the internet got 200 million new users. So even if every
| new StarLink subscriber would be a new internet user
| (which is obviously not true) they would still only
| account for 1% of new internet users. The real number is
| off course much much much lower.
| chermi wrote:
| This is definitely a small number. But I don't think it
| tells the whole story. Not every n+1 is the same. New
| satellite hookups in rural places, especially poor rural
| areas, combat zones, emergency situations etc. are more
| impactful than a new wired hookup in a city where there's
| already wifi in the library, for example.
| runarberg wrote:
| You made the statement:
|
| > It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to
| complain about how the poor are causing the privileged
| some difficulties.
|
| Now it is up to you to show that this has outsized
| influence on impoverished communities.
|
| According to ITU[1] the number one factor for lack of
| internet access is economical. The price of internet
| access can be reduced with traditional infrastructure,
| but governments are often unable or unwilling to invest
| in the infrastructure needed to bring faster and cheaper
| internet connectivity to underserved areas. StarLink
| should in theory fit perfectly here, but in reality very
| few people from underserved communities, especially in
| impoverished areas, can afford StarLink, and keep being
| underserved. What makes this even worse is that in the
| rich countries (like the USA and Australia) underserved
| communities that had been promised infrastructure to
| bring the broadband internet are facing delays and
| cancellations _because_ politicians believe the community
| can get StarLink instead (when in fact they cannot afford
| it). This is known as the Uber effect (from when
| politicians used Uber as an excuse to cancel public
| transit projects).
|
| 1: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/1
| 0/ff24...
| dweinus wrote:
| If we wanted to subsidize internet for rural and low-income
| communities responsibly, we could invest in fiber and other
| solutions, and control the externalities (this is exactly
| the ReConnect program is). Starlink is not that, it is a
| classic case of privatizing profits by socializing hidden
| externalities, in this case to the entire world.
| Externalities in the form of pollution that will cost us
| all more than fiber in the long run. Funny story though,
| Starlink was awarded a $900M subsidy to provide rural USA
| internet access. In the end, that money was not given
| because the FCC found that Starlink "failed to demonstrate
| that the providers could deliver the promised service.". So
| no, it is not about screwing rural people, it's about not
| getting taken advantage of by fat cats and grifters like
| Elon.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If we wanted to subsidize internet for rural and low-
| income communities responsibly, we could invest in fiber
| and other solutions, and control the externalities_
|
| Running cables across out land is less impactful than
| lofting satellites?
| dweinus wrote:
| Per the article, Starlink runs 8k satellites with an
| average life of 5 years. They launch in payloads of 20-40
| satellites. That's 50+ launches per year if everything
| goes perfectly. About a million pounds of kerosene per
| launch. Plus everything else that goes into the rockets
| and satellites. Then the pollution impact from the
| launches and reentries. Then the eventual need to clean
| up LOE to avoid Kessler Syndrome. So yeah, well
| understood ground tech may be cheaper over the lifecycle.
| At a minimum, it should be a reasoned choice, not
| environmental debt pawned off by the richest man in the
| world.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _About a million pounds of kerosene per launch_
|
| Quarter of a million pounds kerosene per Falcon 9. Zero
| for Starship, which burns methane. (And thus emits pure
| methane, CO2 and water vapor.)
|
| > _the eventual need to clean up LOE to avoid Kessler
| Syndrome_
|
| Not a thing. (Search this comment thread for the term.
| There are good answers on the current state of research.)
| chermi wrote:
| The last mile problem is difficult and expensive. I think
| satellites are a good solution to it. As for SpaceX
| fucking up that contract, that sucks and is no good.
| j45 wrote:
| It's less about percentage.
|
| Economic opportunity is largely shifting towards not only
| having internet access, but performant internet access.
|
| Costs will come down. There will be alternatives.
|
| But they might have taken much longer to come to market
| without something like this.
|
| I'm not a fanboy, but there's obviously a lot of people who
| have worked hard to make Starlink a reality.
| runarberg wrote:
| Traditional infrastructure is a proven method of bringing
| both the availability to uderserved areas, as well as
| bringing the costs down for those already served.
|
| StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to
| delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given
| broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban
| planning this is known as the Uber effect.
| chermi wrote:
| Take this argument to it's conclusion. Take any point in
| history and freeze infrastructure. The only option we
| give ourselves is building more of that same type and
| maintaining it? So, more riders and more horses to carry
| messages, but no telegraph? Or maybe more accurately,
| keeping the medium the same, never using planes or trucks
| to deliver mail?
| runarberg wrote:
| I don't follow how that is the conclusion, nor do I
| understand your analogy.
|
| Broadband internet via cables, fiber optics, and radio
| towers is state of the art in telecommunication
| infrastructure. Satellite is both slower, more limited,
| and more prone to various disruptions. The capabilities
| of the wires and the radio towers is also improving. 5
| years ago we didn't have 5G towers, and 20 years ago
| fiber optics seemed a distant dream. The only thing
| freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in
| place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will
| never materialize.
|
| If I understand your analogy correctly (which I'm not
| sure I do) this is like looking at the new technology of
| pneumatic tubes and stipulating that all postal delivery
| will be done using this new technology in the future, and
| we may as well stop funding the national postal service,
| remove mail-rooms from our ships and trains, because
| somebody will build a pneumatic tube that will deliver
| mail door to door between New York and Chicago.
| gtsop wrote:
| Or you know, we could use wires..
| thrance wrote:
| Musk and his right-wing propaganda platform plays a big part in
| the destruction of Western democracy. He deserves the hate he
| is receiving. Providing internet to an insignificant fraction
| of the global population does not even begin to offset that.
| Fairburn wrote:
| No, not because of Elon. But I can see how you think so.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| chermi wrote:
| Thanks, you're right.
| superkuh wrote:
| Short lifetime and quick re-entry is a great feature of vLEO
| constellations. No long term space junk. Compare that to MEO or
| GEO where sats are there pretty much forever (hundreds to
| thousands of years). Or even high LEO with many tens of years.
| whazor wrote:
| Yes, it is much better to error on the side of losing
| satellites, versus making future space travel impossible.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _versus making future space travel impossible_
|
| Not a real thing. (It was proposed as a possibility. We
| searched the parameter space. Mostly in the context of
| militaries trying to figure out how to deny orbits to an
| adversary. It's _really_ difficult, to the point that even if
| one were intentionally trying to cause Kessler cascades, they
| wouldn 't deny an adversary access to orbit.)
| MikeNotThePope wrote:
| Although it could become risky enough that the cost
| mitigation becomes untenable. For example, I wouldn't want
| to live in a neighborhood so dangerous that I have to pay
| to cover my house in thick armor plating just to avoid
| being collateral damage of the violence shenanigans outside
| my front door.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it could become risky enough that the cost mitigation
| becomes untenable_
|
| What cost mitigation are you referring to?
|
| > _thick armor plating_
|
| It makes about as much sense to armor a satellite as it
| does a plane. (Much less, actually, given the fuel costs
| are higher, energies in orbit are higher and densities
| orders of magnitude lower--to approximate the global
| density of airplanes in LEO, we'd need something like 4mm
| satellites up there. To approximate the density of
| controlled airspaces in LEO, we need about 10x _that_.)
|
| > _violence shenanigans outside my front door_
|
| Where the closest object to your front door is 10+ miles
| away.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm not sure you're describing a different scenario,
| since I don't think anyone was ever only concerned about
| a future where there's a 100% chance of a launch being
| prevented by debris.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It sure would be nice if we found out if this mattered before it
| does.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I am not convinced that Starlink will continue to exist long
| term. They reported break even in 2023 but I don't think that
| included the ongoing cost of replacing satillites.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Their accounting does include that cost.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They reported cash flow positive. "Cash flow positive" is a
| much stronger statement than "profitable" because it doesn't
| let you play games with amortization. So it included the
| ongoing cost of replacing satellites plus 100% costs of putting
| up new ones for future use where normal accounting would allow
| you to amortize those costs.
|
| SpaceX is obviously quite profitable. They're obviously
| spending many billions annually on salaries, Starlink launches
| and Starship development yet they haven't raised significant
| money via debt or equity financing rounds in the last few
| years.
| mothballed wrote:
| Starlink is operated by Starlink Services, LLC which allows
| SpaceX to play all sorts of accounting tricks by mixing in
| engineered contracts with SpaceX.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Independent estimates are for $5B of profit on $10B of
| revenue for Starlink for 2025.
|
| You don't get numbers like that by subsidizing it from the
| ~$1B/year launch business.
|
| https://www.advanced-
| television.com/2025/10/01/forecast-8-2m...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Starlink is not publicly traded. That lowers the bar on
| transparency so we're all relying on estimates and press
| releases which are mostly marketing vehicles. Absent rela
| quarterly financial reports I think most of this is still in
| the realm of opinion.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Starlink has to continue existing.
|
| That's how SpaceX justifies its launch capabilities. Their
| strategy of using assembly line techniques to build reusable
| rockets make no sense unless there is a lot of stuff to launch.
| Satellites are crazy expensive, and the launch represents only
| a smaller part of the total budget, so even if the launch was
| free, there is only so much demand.
|
| Starlink is more than half of SpaceX launches, building their
| own demand.
|
| And replacing satellites regularly was the plan. I don't know
| how they did their report, but they certainly budgeted it
| internally. SpaceX is a private company, they tell you what
| they want to tell you.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| [Disclaimer: Not a hater, just a Nerd looking at data.]
|
| And just as Tesla's stock goes up whenever there are reports
| about them no longer selling cars, or being years behind on self-
| driving tech and robotics... if Starlink would be publicly
| traded, their stock would now shoot way up.
|
| On a more serious note: If analysts would do their job, they
| could have found out years ago that Starlink will never ever be
| profitable, just as no Sat ISP in history ever has been. All
| always have and are funded with tax-payer money.
|
| Why is that? Simple maths.
|
| Including R&D and launch cost and expected usage time, the TCO of
| one of their satellites will be somewhere in the area of
| $2,000,000. One of them in theory has a peak speed of 100 GBit/s.
| If you overbook the link by a factor of 10 as it is common for an
| ISP, that gives you 1,000 Gbit/s to sell.
|
| So in best case over the lifetime of the system you will make a
| revenue of 1,000 * $100 * 36 months. So you end up somewhere in
| the area of $3,600,000. Yes, that is more than $2,000,000, but
| well, there are a couple of billions of investments and investor
| money here to be paid back one day.
|
| "But why are you only assuming a usage time of 3 years?"
|
| While Musk's idea of rapid R&D cycles is fine for Software, it's
| extremely expensive. The "Oops, the Sat-to-Sat links are not
| working, so we now have to build base stations everywhere and can
| not do load distribution" might have cost Starlink something like
| $10 BILLION? I guess I would have tested my stuff first before
| launching it. With now two generations of Starlink sats already
| being outdated and/or falling from the sky, the "in two weeks"
| promises from Musk don't make me very confident that Starlink v3
| will actually be properly tested prior to polluting space with
| their buggy trash again.
|
| But let's restart it in a much simpler way: A currently used
| commercial fiber cable can do 800 GBit/s, so eight times of a
| Starlink Satellite. Real-life data has already proven that the
| lifespan (outdated transceivers etc) is somewhere around 5-8
| years, with the biggest risk being your cable getting cut. The
| cable itself costs virtually nothing. Due to this "developing"
| countries have mostly decided to not lay fiber underground. In
| Thailand for example, the fiber cables are simply thrown onto
| houses and through the jungle, as replacing them is dirt cheap.
| Anyway: If you map this to the TCO on 3 years as mapped above,
| this means compared to the TCO of $2,000,000 for Starlink, for
| fiber you are looking at something in the area of $10,000
| instead. It's a no-brainer.
|
| Real-life proof: I live on a tiny and very very remote Island in
| Asia. Some people used to have Starlink here. But due to their
| Satellites now being massively overbooked, speeds went down
| months to months. So people noticed that it is actually cheaper
| to run 10 KILOMETERS / 6 Miles of Fiber cable through the jungle.
| And on this tiny remote Island there are three Fiber ISPs to
| choose from. Two of them offer 1 GBit/s for $13 per month, and if
| you want a business service, for $40 you can get 2 GBit/s down /
| 1 GBit/s up. And unlike Starlink those ISPs are profitable.
|
| You have to be EXTREMELY remote for Sat internet to make sense.
| No, not rural USA. Fiber will be cheaper. No, not Africa. Fiber
| through the desert will be cheaper. Sat Internet may make sense
| if you live in the artic or on mount Everest or something like
| that. Or Mars. In all other cases the TCO of Fiber will win.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _" But why are you only assuming a usage time of 3 years?"_
|
| Your entire analysis rests on this point, which you fail to
| demonstrate. (You also cite zero sources, which isn't
| encouraging.)
|
| (EDIT: This assumption is conservative, but reasonable.)
|
| Was this AI generated?
|
| > _The cable itself costs virtually nothing_
|
| Did you attempt to look up the cost of laying new fibre trunk?
|
| > _due to their Satellites now being massively overbooked,
| speeds went down months to months_
|
| Then this isn't a remote location. Starlink's economics have
| been pretty obvious for anyone who has been on a plane, boat or
| train in the last decade. They're also terrifically useful for
| remote mining, observation and military operations.
|
| > _people noticed that it is actually cheaper to run 10
| KILOMETERS / 6 Miles of Fiber cable through the jungle_
|
| Well sure, if you ignore negative exernalities a lot of stuff
| is cheap.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Was this AI generated?
|
| It's crazy to me that people use AI to generate comments for
| social sites of all things, but here we are.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| I find it even more crazy that you no longer can comment on
| HN without someone trying to invalidate valid points by
| claiming you not being human. :)
|
| To be honest, while I took it lightly, others might feel
| pretty insulted by such claims. De-humanizing someone
| stinks.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you no longer can comment on HN without someone trying
| to invalidate valid points by claiming you not being
| human_
|
| I made this mistake, but I'll defend it by pointing out
| that I've gone a few comments deep on _HN_ , thinking
| through and citing and engaging in good faith, only to
| realise I wasn't talking to a human but to a bot. (Then
| the commenter gets defensive about using a bot,
| hallucinations and all.)
|
| Instead of taking it as a personal insult, maybe
| interpret it as your comment having inspired someone to
| engage effortfully with what you said.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Wow. Well, I believe that YOU are a bot, not me. Are you
| Grok?
|
| Anyway, yes, I am a human.
|
| And it is not that hard to find the sources for this point:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel.
| ..
|
| v1 constellation was completed in 2021, and decommissioned
| from 2024. v2 deployed from 2023, but the sat-to-sat
| communication is not working, so all of them, will need to be
| replaced by v3, too.
| hughes wrote:
| Why do you believe the inter-satellite links are not
| working?
| Fischgericht wrote:
| [Due to the part of the spectrum I am on, I do not have
| believes or opinions.]
|
| The laser based inter-links still not working has been
| subject on various conferences like AngaCOM etc.
|
| But in my case: I have simply tried it *). And every
| Starlink user can do it, too: Use traceroute. And if you
| think "they might be hiding the hop-to-hops between
| Sats!", you can dig deeper using MTR behind the modem or
| simply rooting the modem itself.
|
| Last time I have connected to a v3 Sat however was ~6
| months ago. Maybe an active user reading this can try
| today?
| niwtsol wrote:
| Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the
| inter-links not working? Hard to find it without getting
| lost in "Troubleshoot your starlink device" SEO hell.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the
| inter-links not working?_
|
| The simpler answer is intra-constellation communication
| is a bleeding-edge technology. It's an extraordinary
| challenge for which extraordinary proof is needed to show
| success, not the other way around. SpaceX has solved most
| of the gating technical problems. But getting it to work
| reliably enough that it becomes more economic than
| ground-based backhaul will take time.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Here is an example thread of someone having done the
| measurements of v3 vs mini:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1eg4e4d/starli
| nk_...
|
| Have a look at the downtimes of the system.
|
| A simple way to verify that their inter-sat links are not
| working and/or are not used is to simply sit and wait: If
| you are switched from one Sat to the next, you get new
| "session" and previous NAT state is lost. If this would
| be a meshed backbone, that would not happen.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I believe that YOU are a bot_
|
| I don't believe you were a bot, but there were one or two
| phrasings that gave me pause. (If I believed you had
| written that with AI, I'd have just asked that and not
| bothered engaging.)
|
| > _v1 constellation was completed in 2021, and
| decommissioned from 2024. v2 deployed from 2023, but the
| sat-to-sat communication is not working, so all of them,
| will need to be replaced by v3, too_
|
| Fair enough. $3.6mm on $2mm--assuming $100,000 per month
| revenue and $2mm paid up front, which is unrealistically
| conservative--yields a 22% annualised. Take that out to the
| increasingly-attained design life of 5 years and it jumps
| to 25%. To put it bluntly, these are both _incredibly_ high
| telecom returns.
|
| You've already incorporated launch, maintenance, disposal,
| _et cetera_ in TCO. So the remainder is customer service
| (usually 5 to 10% of revenue) and cost of capital. Even
| assuming 10% WACC, which is on the upper end for a
| leveraged telecom play, we 're still comfortably generating
| excess return.
|
| Where the comparison fall apart is in respect of fibre.
| Laying physical infrastructure is hard. You have long
| periods between capital outlay and return. Also, you have
| to right scale up front--you can't just launch more birds
| in a few months as demand scales (or hold them back if it
| doesn't).
|
| You're not going to replace fibre with Starlink. But the
| economic case for the latter doesn't fall apart with 20%+
| operating returns.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Well, on purpose I have given Starlink very optimistic
| numbers, yes. :)
|
| And yes, 22% yield sounds nice, but if someone would hand
| me their pitch deck and give me a SWAT analysis I would
| just laugh them away: The risks are far too high.
|
| (See for example the article that this very thread is
| about.)
|
| Of course you can only guess based on that, but it looks
| that in real life things are worse:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-
| growin...
|
| These data points might be interpreted as "Starlink is
| getting 40% of their revenue from tax money".
|
| And while "7 million subscribers" might sound impressive
| on first sight: This is the number of DSL connections
| subscribed to in the tiny country of Belgium. But for
| magical reasons Starlink is valuated at a price higher
| than if you would buy all of Belgium ;)
|
| Your point in regards of laying physical infrastructure
| is valid for a lot of western countries. But not all of
| them. Some countries in the EU for example years ago
| created laws that say that whoever opens the street for
| any reasons has to put in empty tubes for someone to
| later put in fiber before closing the street again.
|
| So: This is a regulatory subject really, not physical
| cost. Fiber is dirt cheap if you are allowed to use
| existing power poles for example (which is unlike with
| copper obviously not a problem in regards of signal
| integrity), or existing underground pipes, or just throw
| it from house roof to house roof.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers_
|
| Your revenue figures are consumer only. And while you're
| generous on utilization factor, we capitalised the TCO up
| front while amortising revenue, and then reduced asset
| tenure to worst case observed during development.
|
| Flex up to 4 years, let $1mm TCO be paid up front and the
| rest amortised, and reduce utilisation to 80% ($80k/month
| revenue) and IRR shoots up to 73%. Take TCO to $3mm ($1mm
| up front, $2mm amortised), reduce utilisation to 75% and
| we're _still_ over 20%.
|
| > _while "7 million subscribers" might sound impressive
| on first sight: This is the number of DSL connections
| subscribed to in the tiny country of Belgium. But for
| magical reasons Starlink is valuated at a price higher
| than if you would buy all of Belgium_
|
| Well, yes. Starlink connections are more profitable and
| you can't scale selling internet to Belgium into a
| Starshield defence contract. Or selling to airlines and
| cruise ships and yachts and mining operations, all of
| which pay more than a Belgian.
|
| > _some countries in the EU for example years ago created
| laws that say that whoever opens the street for any
| reasons has to put in empty tubes for someone to later
| put in fiber before closing the street again_
|
| Starlink doesn't sense in densely-populated areas of the
| EU or Asia. (And the equivalent for SpaceX would be
| ridesharing Starlink on someone else's flight.)
|
| > _Fiber is dirt cheap if you are allowed to use existing
| power poles for example_
|
| If you have the scale. You're underestimating the risk
| that comes from having to place infrastructure up front.
|
| Your analysis is pretty solid. But I don't think it's
| taking into account the fact that you can build
| multibillion-dollar telecoms business on a few tens of
| millions of high-paying customers.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| I guess we can agree that the comparison between Sat
| internet and physical links depends a lot on the physical
| situation in the target region, and the regulatory frame
| work.
|
| And please keep in mind that while you are right that
| there is a risk investing into physical infrastructure
| also applies to Starlink. It's worth remembering here
| that all Sat Internet companies prior to Starlink had
| failed and needed to be rescued with tax payer money.
|
| I don't have exact numbers, and it's a bit muddy due to
| state subsidiaries, but in Germany the average cost to
| connect a subscriber in a medium density town with fiber,
| with given that nothing was prepared and you have to open
| the street etc appears to be in region of EUR/$ 2,000 or
| so.
|
| I don't know if that is done in the US, but also in
| Europe we now do "trenching". It has some downsides and
| pitfalls, but this reduces the upfront infrastructure
| cost for fiber massively.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while you are right that there is a risk investing
| into physical infrastructure also applies to Starlink_
|
| Absolutely. It's why I think assuming the WACC of a
| highly-leveraged telecom (around 10%) is appropriate.
|
| > _this reduces the upfront infrastructure cost for fiber
| massively_
|
| Fibre makes sense where there is density. It's higher
| capacity and cheaper. That doesn't mean it makes sense
| everywhere. And a lot of that everywhere will pay a _lot_
| of money for connectivity.
|
| The global telecom market generates _trillions_ of
| dollars of annual revenue [1]. There is a lot of fruit
| for the picking.
|
| [1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-
| analysis/global-t...
| wmf wrote:
| The sat-to-sat laser links are used to provide connectivity
| on the open ocean and in remote parts of Australia and
| Argentina that are beyond the range of any ground station.
| They're definitely working but AFAIK they are only used
| when necessary so if you're within range of a ground
| station your traffic will never use laser links.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| I will not disagree as I can not verify this claim. Have
| you tested it yourself or have a source which has some
| tech proof on that one?
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Oops, forgot one important thing: Sure, why do additional
| hops if you can see the base station. But what about
| shared state? Why do you definitely still get a
| completely new session when moving to the next sat? If
| the laser links are working, that state should be shared
| between neighboring sats.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why do you definitely still get a completely new
| session when moving to the next sat? If the laser links
| are working_
|
| Imagine Amazon 10x'd its ingress/egress fees between
| regions.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| That's also my opinion - it will probably never be profitable -
| it's a great product, but the economics are not right - and
| that's why no other provider did this (even though they have
| the tech).
|
| Let's see what happens once the bubble pops.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _once the bubble pops_
|
| What's the bubble? It's cash-flow positive. All of SpaceX is
| cash-flow positive--they've been buying back their own
| shares.
|
| You can argue it's overrated, _i.e._ customers will drop it
| after trying it for a while. (Or when a recession forces
| their hand.) But bubble requires leverage and losses, neither
| of which SpaceX (or Starlink) have.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Sorry, I was referring to the general stock market (mostly
| AI) bubble.
|
| As for SpaceX, it's pretty much impossible to know their
| finances - they don't publish audited accounts. We can just
| trust what Elon is willing to share with us.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _for SpaceX, it 's pretty much impossible to know their
| finances - they don't publish audited accounts_
|
| SpaceX has audited financials. They're not published, but
| they leak a lot.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Yes, and Elon companies are well known for leaking
| reliable information.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Elon companies are well known for leaking reliable
| information_
|
| SpaceX isn't leaking their own financials.
| lxgr wrote:
| What does a stock market bubble have to do with the
| profitability (i.e. not the valuation) of any given
| company?
|
| Are you arguing that the demand in Internet connectivity
| in rural/remote areas is somehow caused by an investment
| bubble as opposed to a long-term stable need?
| wmf wrote:
| Analysts that I've seen estimate that Starlink is already
| profitable and will remain so. Unless you can explain the
| differences between your math and their math, this is yet
| another Elon-hating conspiracy theory.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this is yet another Elon-hating conspiracy theory_
|
| Nothing in their analysis is conspiratorial. It's flawed. But
| not alleging conspiracy.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Gimme your source URL, please.
|
| As others have pointed out already in this thread: No serious
| analyst and not even Starlink themselves have claimed to be
| profitable. They have claimed to be operationally profitable.
| This means that the cost of operating the sats is lower than
| the revenue they make. It does leave out all other cost. Yes,
| if they could build and launch the Sats for free instead of
| ~$2 million per piece, that could be a profitable business.
|
| Also, have you actually used Starlink? It's crap. Yes, in
| 2023 when they did not have customers you got decent speeds.
| Now it's completely overbooked. Yes, you can make a year of
| profits milking existing customers.
|
| Google "Starlink benchmark" or "Starlink feedback" etc and
| you will see things like these:
|
| https://www.trustpilot.com/review/starlink.com
|
| At this point Starlink's active customer base is rating their
| service to be worse than... cancer, I guess?
| sib wrote:
| >> Also, have you actually used Starlink?
|
| Yes, for example, via a battery-operated "Mini" terminal a
| month or so ago in extreme rural Finland, ~1km from the
| Russian border, while photographing wolves & bears.
|
| It worked great.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| >are funded with tax-payer money
|
| This has nothing to do with profitability. DoD/War Dept
| contracts are "tax payer money" and shareholders are happy to
| have those.
|
| >it is actually cheaper to run 10 KILOMETERS / 6 Miles of Fiber
| cable through the jungle
|
| Cheaper, sure. But try getting this approved in the US through
| a County Planning Commission. And you did get NEPA/CEQA done
| too right?
|
| >No, not rural USA. Fiber will be cheaper.
|
| My not-that-rural town has fiber only 80% of town. Houses with
| city sewer/water don't have fiber
| Fischgericht wrote:
| All of this is regulatory stuff. Your state has the option of
| making it expensive and a PITA or not.
|
| In my ex home town in Germany we had the exact same thing as
| you are describing - Fiber available everywhere up to 20
| meters away from our house, and no chance to get it
| connected. For purely regulatory reasons.
| lxgr wrote:
| > The "Oops, the Sat-to-Sat links are not working, so we now
| have to build base stations everywhere and can not do load
| distribution" might have cost Starlink something like $10
| BILLION? I guess I would have tested my stuff first before
| launching it. With now two generations of Starlink sats already
| being outdated and/or falling from the sky
|
| You don't seem to understand their strategy: Constant
| replacement is a feature, not a bug, to them.
|
| And in that paradigm, why wait any longer than absolutely
| necessary with any given launch? The problem is already fixed -
| at least inter-satellite links seem to be working well enough
| now (as evidenced by global coverage on the oceans).
|
| > Starlink will never ever be profitable, just as no Sat ISP in
| history ever has been.
|
| How do you explain the non-zero stock price of e.g. Iridium and
| Viasat?
|
| > You have to be EXTREMELY remote for Sat internet to make
| sense. No, not rural USA. Fiber will be cheaper.
|
| Are you sure laying fiber to every last home is really more
| capital efficient in the long term? Have you done the math on
| that side too?
|
| And what about mobile coverage? Even solar-powered low
| maintenance cell stations need to be installed, repaired after
| storms, have their solar cells dusted off etc.
|
| > No, not Africa. Fiber through the desert will be cheaper. Sat
| Internet may make sense if you live in the artic or on mount
| Everest or something like that.
|
| Mount Everest has pretty good cell signal, as far as I know.
| It's a tiny area, compared to actually remote but still
| (sparsely) populated regions.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Due to the nature of the business I am in I very well know
| Viasats customer base. They are too important to fail for
| multiple european military organizations.
|
| As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the intra-links still
| do not seem to be enabled. Can not verify myself due not
| having a yacht and/or time, but I am constantly flying
| between Asia and Europe with various airlines, and so far
| none of them have switched to Starlink but keep paying the
| outrageous pricing from ViaSat & co.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Due to the nature of the business I am in I very well
| know Viasats customer base. They are too important to fail
| for multiple european military organizations.
|
| So there _is_ demand :)
|
| > As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the intra-links
| still do not seem to be enabled. Can not verify myself due
| not having a yacht and/or time
|
| Are you arguing that everybody reporting successfully using
| it far away from land is part of some conspiracy? How else
| would SpaceX get away with claiming that they have global
| coverage?
|
| > I am constantly flying between Asia and Europe with
| various airlines, and so far none of them have switched to
| Starlink but keep paying the outrageous pricing from ViaSat
| & co.
|
| Installing a new satellite terminal on the outer hull of a
| commercial aircraft costs millions, including the lost time
| spent in the hangar, and that's to say nothing about all
| the required certifications.
|
| That said, Hawaiian Airlines have been using it for a few
| months now. Seems to be working great, and their routes are
| also definitely not possible to cover from LEO without
| inter-satellite links.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| No conspiracy, but let's say that it is rather hard to
| get proper benchmarks done by actual users, and one has
| to rely on a lot of anecdotical data. Have you seen any
| real-life benchmark reports with traceroutes, measure
| downtime, handover time etc that impressed you in a
| positive way? If so, please share.
|
| Hawaiian Airlines - very interesting. Sadly wrong side of
| the planet for me to test it myself :)
|
| It very well might be possible that the intra-links are
| only used for special customers like airlines for now,
| and not for consumers, and that this is the reason that
| all people I know who use Starlink still handover
| downtime...
| lxgr wrote:
| "Handover downtimes" for stationary or mobile users? If
| they're stationary, that's not something inter-satellite
| links are needed for or would help with.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| You are very wrong here:
|
| Right now Starlink claims to be operating a mesh, but
| they are not. If they would want to build a mesh, Inter-
| sat links for NOT be used used to pipe through bandwidth
| to the "best" base station. It would be used for shared
| state to be able to prepare a handover. Synching state
| obviously is much easier and more stable if the
| neighboring sats can talk directly, instead of sharing it
| over their slow, high latency and lossy base stations.
|
| See IEEE 802.11r for the equivalent for WiFi.
| lxgr wrote:
| ...what? Where do you see the claim that they are running
| a mesh? Why would they do that?
|
| The main point of inter-satellite links is to provide
| coverage to areas beyond single-hop (subscriber to
| satellite to ground station) coverage. (Theoretically
| they can also be used to provide extremely low latency
| intercontinental routing, but for most traffic, the goal
| would be to minimize routing in space.)
|
| Since the entire constellation is known a priori, all
| paths can be precomputed centrally, just like in a non-
| moving network, and that routing information can then be
| propagated to terminals and satellites. There's no need
| to dynamically make complex "mesh" routing decisions at
| the edge.
|
| 802.11r controls faster key exchanges in 802.11 roaming
| scenarios - what's the relation to satellite ISPs?
|
| It seems like you have some axe to grind with Starlink
| and are collecting evidence through that lens.
| Zufriedenheit wrote:
| Can this become dangerous for airplanes? Or are they fully burned
| up before reaching that low altitude?
| naberhausj wrote:
| This article [1] indicates that they burn up at altitudes
| between 37-50 miles above the surface. If so, that's well above
| the 40,000' that planes normally fly.
|
| [1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-reentry-pollution-
| dama...
| dostick wrote:
| That means there must be launching to orbit equivalent
| replacement, not daily of course.
| darknavi wrote:
| Indeed, SpaceX often has multiple launches of Starlink sats a
| week.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
| ignoramous wrote:
| A launch every 3 days all throughout 2025. Simply incredible.
| varenc wrote:
| This article has a somewhat alarmist tone, but isn't this just
| Starlink working as intended?
|
| It seems much better for an old non-functional Starlink satellite
| to burn up in the atmosphere instead of continuing in an
| uncontrolled orbit. I believe most burn-ups are controlled
| intentional deorbits.
| benjiro wrote:
| Yep, those are the original / older gen sats, that have way
| less capacity then the newer models. They are moving away from
| tons of small sats and more to larger (with longer life time)
| sats that have multiple times the capacity, of the combined
| smaller sats.
|
| Quoting a older post i made on the subject:
|
| -------
|
| Take in account, that a lot of those are replacement sats for
| the first generations that they are deorbiting already. Do not
| quote me on this, but its a insane amount (i though it was
| around 2k) of the first generation that they are deorbiting. If
| there is a issue, its not the amount of sats in space, but more
| the insane amount of deorbiting StarLink is doing.
|
| Starlink wanted to put up insane numbers, but a lot of their
| fights contain a large percentage of replacement sats.
|
| And they are getting bigger ... v1.5 is like 300kg, the v2.0
| mini (ironic as its far from mini compared to its predecessors)
| are 800kg.
|
| So before StarLink launched 60x v1.5's but now they are doing
| 21x v2.0 Mini's per launch.
|
| The technology has been improving a lot, allowing for a lot
| more capacity per satellite. Not sure when they start launching
| v3's but those have like 3x the capacity for inner
| connects/ground stations and can go up to 1Gbit speeds
| (compared to the v2's who are again much more capable then
| multiple v1.5s).
|
| So what we are seeing is less satellites per launch but more
| capacity per sat. This year is the last year that they are
| doing mass 1.5 launches, its all now going to the v2.0 "mini"
| (so 3x less sats).
| smallerize wrote:
| They keep the satellites relatively low for latency, and that
| means they still need a lot of them for line-of-sight
| coverage, right? They have plans to add 15,000 more
| satellites. https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2025/10/starlinks-ambiti...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Deorbiting the v 1.5 has a far lower chance of anything
| hitting the ground than the bigger ones.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| True, but their demising technology appears to be quite
| good too. I had an interesting discussion at the Small
| Satellite conference in Utah with folks about demising and
| they mentioned starlink. "Good" demising has the
| 'slipstream' layer of the satellite burn up quickly on de-
| orbit and then the other bits are made purposely non-
| aerodynamic, especially with fastners which are designed to
| burn quickly to rapidly disassemble to satellite while it
| is still quite high so that the smaller pieces will have
| enough altitude to get to their "full demising" velocity on
| the way down.
|
| The team I'm working with is just doing a cube sat which
| has pretty straightforward demising but overall it was
| interesting to see the thought and strategy that people put
| into this.
| rtpg wrote:
| But if they're adding larger capacity ones that still have
| the same failure mode, then the "1 to 2 a day" becomes even
| worse right?
|
| Or are those larger ones also ones that have a longer shelf
| life?
| rjbwork wrote:
| Are there not concerns with burning up multiple agglomerations
| of metal, plastics, and ceramics the size of a small car in the
| upper atmosphere every day?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The deorbits are controlled to occur over nonpopulated areas
| (i.e. the middle of the ocean). I don't think it amounts to
| much of a concern, compared to, say, the sum total emissions
| of all factories, power plants, ships, airplanes, and
| vehicles.
| zahlman wrote:
| Not to mention the temperatures they'd be burning up at.
| How much would survive of toxic chemicals?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The deorbits are controlled to occur over nonpopulated
| areas (i.e. the middle of the ocean). I don 't think it
| amounts to much of a concern, compared to, say, the sum
| total emissions of all factories, power plants, ships,
| airplanes, and vehicles._
|
| People used to think the oceans could just slurp up all of
| our garbage and plastic forever without a problem. Yet,
| here we are.
| reactordev wrote:
| Indeed, working as intended. SpaceX said at the beginning that
| this was how they would "clean up" older gen sats.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| > NOAA said the stratosphere contains an unexpected quantity of
| particles with a variety of exotic metals. The scientists believe
| the particles come from satellites and spent rocket boosters as
| they are vaporized by the intense heat of reentry.
|
| My start-up is called Strato Mines - collecting rare earths from
| 120km above earth. Willing to give 1% at a 100B valuation to any
| qualified investor.
| allenrb wrote:
| Man, I dream of living in a world in which our biggest (or even a
| top-10) environmental concern is "debris from LEO burning up in
| the atmosphere".
|
| Yes, most of us are pretty angry at/disappointed in Elon these
| days but there are better places to focus than this.
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