[HN Gopher] China applies to put 200K satellites in space after ...
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China applies to put 200K satellites in space after calling
Starlink crash risk
https://archive.is/zPsmq
Author : nkurz
Score : 74 points
Date : 2026-01-11 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scmp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scmp.com)
| nkurz wrote:
| I wasn't aware how far along some of these Chinese satellite
| networks were. There are several, and the number of satellites
| planned for them is astonishing. This article seems like a good
| intro to them, with comparisons to Starlink:
| https://archive.is/zPsmq
| kikkia wrote:
| Do take that article with a grain of salt as it is South China
| morning post. While in this article they do call out that
| recently the CCP was ridiculing Elon for taking up too much
| space, in space. So I can give them some credit on that.
|
| As for the state of these networks, G60/Qianfan had a plan of
| ~650 sattelites by the end of 2025, but currently sits at 108.
| They hope for ~1200 by the end of '27
|
| Just before the end of the year the GuoWang constellation hit
| 136 of their planned 13,000.
|
| For reference starlink has launched over 10k satellites to date
| with ~9,400 in active service.
|
| Im sure the constellations will grow, but they have been
| experiencing the pains of scaling, especially with 1 use
| rockets. SCMP loves to pump up these crazy plans and massive
| numbers as a national pride win, even when they are not
| feasible or still really far off.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| For reference, we have two internet sat providers based in
| USA (starlink and kuiper), and _both_ have more than 100-200
| satellites that you state for Chinese providers.
|
| If you add in EU providers, depending in how you count then,
| there's at least 2 or 3 providers who have more than 100 LEO
| satellites active.
| bicepjai wrote:
| Already it's getting hard to avoid noticing satellite trains when
| stargazing with the naked eye. If mega-constellations really
| scale into the hundreds of thousands, it feels like we're on
| track to permanently degrade the night sky, even in places
| without much light pollution.
|
| With mega-constellation launches accelerating, the sci-fi premise
| of imprisoning ourselves behind a debris field feels less
| fictional. This is essentially the collision-cascade risk
| described by Kessler Syndrome
|
| Kurzgesagt has a good explainer. Hopefully we never trigger it.
|
| https://youtu.be/yS1ibDImAYU?si=vbs-PY5VEA9xv_gS
| cedws wrote:
| In summer I was lying on a beach in Thailand and used an app on
| my phone to look at things in the sky. Pretty much every moving
| glistening object I could see was a Starlink satellite. I know
| nothing about how their constellation works but I wonder why so
| many are needed. Surely you only need one or two in line of
| sight for it to work? I was seeing many more than that.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They're in LEO which means approximately 15 minutes of
| visibility (horizon-to-horizon). The specific time will vary
| based on the orbital elements but 15 minutes is a good rule
| of thumb. To maintain coverage you need there to be _some_
| overlap in their visibility for a location. There 's also a
| limit to how many connections each satellite can support.
|
| Not all the satellites that you can see will be "looking" in
| your direction for a signal. They support some number of
| cells (specific, small, geographic regions on the ground). No
| one satellite can cover the entire ground visible to it while
| overhead so more satellites are needed.
|
| And to add to the above, Starlink is using laser crosslinks
| to connect their satellites to each other for routing. This
| crosslink network is improved with more satellites visible to
| each other.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > the sci-fi premise of imprisoning ourselves behind a debris
| field feels less fictional
|
| Yeah, no, the numbers don't work for this. The Kessler syndrome
| is bad, and worth avoiding, but you aren't trapped.
|
| The trick is that you're not staying. Suppose a comms satellite
| in LEO would, as a result of a hypothetical cascade like this,
| be destroyed on average in six months but your space vehicle to
| somewhere else passes through the debris field in like 5
| minutes. So your risk is like one in 50 000. That's not _good_
| but it wouldn 't stop us from leaving.
|
| The reason humans won't leave is more boring and less SF, there
| is nowhere to go. Nowhere else is anywhere close to habitable,
| this damp rock is where we were born and it's where we will
| die, we should take better care of it.
| cowboylowrez wrote:
| yeah, all this about inhabiting mars, even when earths
| ecology and economies crash as they're looking to do it will
| still be orders of magnitude more survivable than mars lol
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah a future where Mars is more inhabitable than earth is
| unbelievably depressing.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that Mars will be
| more habitable than Earth. The argument is about the
| possibility of humans on Earth being wiped out due to freak
| events like a huge asteroid impact or global thermonuclear
| war. Earth would still be more habitable than Mars, but the
| probability that human survivors would be equipped with
| Mars-level survival tools is tiny, and any facility
| equipped like this would have to be hardened against
| desperate survivors trying to take it over and bringing it
| over capacity. Meanwhile if we had a self-sufficient Mars
| colony they could resettle any Earth that is more habitable
| than Mars.
|
| Now I'm not saying it's necessarily a smart allocation of
| resources. But it does follow the popular IT saying "one is
| none, two is one. If you care about something make sure you
| have a backup"
| schiffern wrote:
| https://archive.is/zPsmq
|
| For the predictable reasons, the article overemphasizes "number
| of satellites" and under-emphasizes "height of satellites" and
| "inclination of satellites."
|
| The CTC-1 constellation proposes to be at 510 km altitude and
| 97.4 degrees inclination[0], which is already a heavily-populated
| orbit[1] due to being in a Sun-synchronous orbit. Since the
| collision risk scales as the object density _squared_ , this is
| an especially foolhardy decision from the perspective of space
| debris and space sustainability.
|
| Remember that most of the satellite collisions occur in a "halo"
| around the North and South poles where the SSO orbits all pile
| up. Avoiding these orbital slots (and in fact, removing defunct
| objects from these valuable orbits) is the best thing we could do
| for Kessler syndrome. China is doing literally the exact
| opposite.
|
| It also doesn't help that China just abandons their upper stages
| in orbit, rather than doing proper deorbit burns.[2] Since each
| Chinese rocket also can only launch a handful of satellites (vs
| almost 50 per SpaceX launch), the number of abandoned debris
| upper stages is truly massive, and again they're all being
| carelessly discarded in pretty much the worst possible orbit.
|
| [0]
| https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
|
| [1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44021.0
|
| [2] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/everyone-but-china-
| has...
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Why choose to put them on a heavily populated orbit? Is it
| cheaper or something?
| FloorEgg wrote:
| It has a really good balance of engineering constraints.
|
| High enough that atmospheric drag doesn't require constant
| propulsion to maintain orbit.
|
| Low enough to get some radiation shielding.
|
| Lower orbits better for communication latency and imaging
| resolution.
|
| Also sun-synchronous orbits are in this zone.
|
| Good balance for coverage vs number of satellites.
|
| There are a lot of strategic reasons why this altitude is
| ideal.
| notahacker wrote:
| They're internet broadband satellites, they want low latency
| connectivity, as does SpaceX and everybody else launching
| them there. It does also cost more to reach higher orbits,
| and more to stay in much lower orbits for any length of time
| due to propellant requirements.
| remarkEon wrote:
| It's possible this is less about comms or cost, and more
| about occupying an orbit with high utility. I think of it as
| just an extension of PRC's "rape the oceans" policy.
| wmf wrote:
| Sun-synchronous orbits are great for spy satellites. One
| might wonder if this is a dual-use constellation. Of course
| the US is doing something similar with Starshield.
| maxglute wrote:
| >perspective of space debris and space sustainability
|
| PRC are being careless in 800km orbit, which is actually much
| worse, but historically that's where US / USSR abandoned
| debris, PRC still small %, either way it's just stopgap for
| reusables, they obviously can't hit 200k mega constellation
| without reusable tempo. In meantime no point reengineering end
| of life vehicles since reusable replacement likely going to be
| done by then, especially at risk of missing delivery/capability
| to keep ITU filings, or worse, lose them to competitors (US).
|
| Lets be real, space is being soft weaponized post
| SpaceX/Starshield, space debris/sustainability can wait, launch
| is realpolitik now. Much more important to be competitive =
| reserving prime orbits ITU has available in limited quantities,
| first file first serve. Starlink's done their own orbit
| squatting, PRC simply making sure strategic LEO isn't
| monopolized by US mega constellations.
| ur-whale wrote:
| In light of Iran's mullah regime internet shutdown being
| completely bypassed by starlink portable units being smuggled in
| with the help of the Iranian diaspora, I can most certainly
| understand why the thugs in Beijing would want to control the
| internet-in-the-sky.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Ah yes, competing with the U.S. makes them thugs. Right.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Ah yes, competing with the U.S. makes them thugs. Right.
|
| So the great firewall is just a myth ?
|
| Because if it isn't, then ... thugs sounds about right to me.
| monkaiju wrote:
| Weird jingoist tone... Sort sounds like you think their ruling
| class are thugs but ours are fine?
|
| Would you prefer an internationally run mega-constellation for
| rural internet access? I certainly would!
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Sort sounds like you think their ruling class are thugs but
| ours are fine?
|
| I see Whataboutism on the menu today.
| FpUser wrote:
| And hypocrites at the table.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In light of Iran's mullah regime internet shutdown being
| completely bypassed by starlink portable units
|
| Completely bypassed? Only very few people in Iran have Starlink
| dishes. Yes, some video material makes it out of Iran, but it's
| like a few dozen videos and journalists interviewing local
| sources despite the whole country protesting.
|
| I wish them all the best and hopefully the mullahs _finally_
| get the boot - but Starlink is not a panacea for protests.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Only very few people in Iran have Starlink dishes.
|
| Couple of sources I read talk about 40k+ dishes in Iran
|
| Granted, that's not much at the scale of a country of 90M+
| people, but still, if the numbers are correct, that's not
| nothing and that's why we're getting videos of the riots
| outside of Iran.
|
| The sad thing is Starlink dishes (mobile or even worse,
| fixed) are super easy to radio-triangulate and are quickly
| being taken down.
|
| [EDIT]: and the mullahs have just officially announced that
| anyone caught using one will be jailed (which was obvious,
| but not yet official).
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Currently it is controlled by thugs in the USA. Same
| difference?
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Currently it is controlled by thugs in the USA. Same
| difference?
|
| I hate to make such a prosaic answer, but, independent of
| there being thugs in the USA or not ... two wrongs don't make
| a right.
| FpUser wrote:
| So go fix your wrongs, make the world better. Until then it
| is just pot calling kettle black
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's Elon though, that's worth atleast several wrongs.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Having the options between internet controlled by the USA
| and internet controlled by China is almost certainly better
| than only having one of those two options. Competition
| keeps any of the two from degrading service too much, and
| if you are ideologically or politically unaligned with one
| chances are you are at least somewhat aligned with the
| other
| with wrote:
| Filing an ITU submission is one thing, now they need to make
| reliable, reusable heavy-lift spacecraft. Probably 5-10 years out
| tbh. They're just squatting on approvals.
| maxglute wrote:
| >Under ITU rules established in 2019, satellite systems have to
| be operating - or have at least one satellite launched and
| operated for a period of time - within seven years of initial
| filing, after which they have to deploy 10 per cent of their
| constellations within two years, half within five years and all
| within seven years.
|
| 1. regulatory squatting on good mega constellation orbits.
|
| 2. if i'm reading this right PRC needs to hit 9k in 9 years, 100k
| in 14 years. Seems doable on PRC speed. If it's half, i.e. 100k
| with 5 years of filing, then no way target will be hit.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Starlink was sold to investors as being politically neutral and
| almost immediately became a US military asset. It was just a
| matter of time before China wanted their own version. No doubt
| some other countries will want their own systems free of American
| or Chinese control, though obviously it's going to be more
| difficult for them to do something as complete. It's going to be
| an interesting choice for ESA/the EU to decide if they want their
| own thing too instead of relying on the US to be a fair broker of
| access.
|
| And of those countries who would like to have a system free of
| influence from other countries, well, if they can't afford to
| build one out, they might be able to orbit a bunch of chaff to
| even the playing field again.
| torlok wrote:
| Eutelsat OneWeb it's mostly owned by Eutelsat and the UK
| government.
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