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Starlinks are in too low an orbit to cause Kessler Syndrome.
but they pollute the night sky visually and that's nearly as bad.
I mean... it's not. One problem solves itself over time if not touched, the other is permanent and prevents us from leaving the planet.
I mean, no it's not.
Kessler syndrome is about a chain reaction that destroys everything in orbit and keeps us from accessing space for years.
Ruining your view is not "nearly as bad". That makes you sound like one of those folks on Martha's Vineyard, opposing offshore wind turbines that local communities desperately need, because they'll "ruin the view".
The night sky is also polluted by your home's lighting and car headlights but that doesn't seem to be a problem for most people.
yeah, you can't turn off your home's lighting, additionally everyone lives in citiee anyway, so it's moot!
Okay, try turning your lights off tonight and report back with how many additional stars you can see.
Everyone lives in cities?
can't you turn off your home's lights?
Is that accurate though? Assume a satellite is in a decaying orbit (thus too low to contribute to Kessler syndrome on its own) and another satellite is in a different orbit eccentricity-wise but they both collide. Are we certain that none of the pieces from the collision would acquire enough speed to become boloids that contribute to Kessler syndrome?
Time to go down the rabbit hole that is orbital mechanics for me again. Byeeee lol
Edit: looks like the lowest orbit for starlink's first shell is at 550km which is very much above VLEO and would definitely be a factor in Kessler Syndrome.
Most starlink satellites are set to deorbit themselves upon failure to avoid this. However the de orbiting could still fail and then it should take about a year or so to deorbit itself?
So it looks like there is a low possibility of it initiating Kessler syndrome. But it's not negligible.
For your question, no. There's no way for an object to have an orbit that doesn't intersect the same altitude where an impulse happened. They could be knocked into an eccentric orbit, but it at least has to have the lowest point at the highest point of the Starlink network.
This is not to say it can't hit something else after that changes the perigee at a later point in it's orbit, thus lifting it higher. For a single collusion though, no, at least with the collision alone.
All they can do is pollute the atmosphere we sometimes breath in even more.
Learn something new every day, thanks!
Dang, I was hoping there was a competitor. I'm boycotting Musk companies as best I can
I invite you to join me in rural Australia, and choose from the many options available. /s
Yeah, sadly SpaceX and Tesla are both very promising companies primarily held back by Elon Musk.
SpaceX sure but Tesla has been in decline for so long that I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the decade it’s either irrelevant or sold off / taken from Musk.
Tesla cars have always been overpriced, low quality, unsafe toys with a shiny case around them.
The first few iterations were good, when they went mass market they let quality go.
Iris2 and Eutselsat OneWeb are currently massively expanding their network - for European coverage first,though, but with the explicit goal to be a Musk alternative.
good hope it stays broken forever
Thank you so much ! /s Come and join me where the options are many and the price is so cheap. /s /s
If you'd like to experience what it's like to access the internet sans Starlink, perhaps you could just throttle your modem to 8 or even 10 Mbps. Yes? No? Then consider how lucky you are, and have some empathy for those of us who have little or no alternative.
push and advocate for municipal and community owned broadband
Your options are limited not by random angry dude on the Internet, but by deliberate and calculated lack of development conspired between legislators and telecoms. Starlink will hit the limits imposed by physics and geometry, and then will get worse and worse the more people sign up.
You seem to know a lot about these limits, can you elaborate?
I don't think there are actual physics limitations on network capacity right now
The limited bandwidth of practical microwaves shared by everyone in the footprint of a satellite, which is thousands of square kilometres. More satellites help, but since it hears the signals from every person on earth in its footprint, even if that person is connecting to a different satellite, there are limited gains when you reach the point where they have a lot of overlap - literally limited by geometry. Compare that with fiber, which allows for virtually unlimited unshared service bandwidth that can get faster as it’s built out and becomes more popular.
Beam steering largely mitigates most of these problems. Fiber is definitely more scalable, but also far more expensive (somehow...) to provide last mile to the entire planet.
From orbit, whole regions are within a few degrees arc from the perspective of orbit. It’s not enough to overcome what is fundamentally a business hype problem. Starlink is wonderful tech for remote outposts, boats, disaster areas, emergency service workers, and things like that, but those customers would never pay enough to be profitable, so they have marketed it as general purpose internet, so it will get slower the more people sign up.
Yes, with the current network this is true. I guess it feels like you're discounting the future growth of the constellation
More birds in orbit just hear more and more overlapping signals from the huge ground area they are over, and so share bandwidth. There’s a reason cell towers get lower and lower the more dense the population.
"I know millions of people use their service because it's the only real option they have, but because it's associated with this one guy I don't like, they can all eat a dick!"
*one guy who is ruining the planet and purposely pushing laws that eradicate queer and trans people
Them: "We need a strong central government to protect everyone!"
Me: "Don't do that! If bad people get control there's gonna be trouble!"
Them: "You just hate people!" votes for strong government
Them when that strong government is then taken over by bad people: 😯
This makes me think that the Starlink system is very poorly designed. I know there are hundreds of satellites, and a large number of base stations.
Even if a large chunk of the satellites were taken out and a few base stations failed, shouldn't the system keep working, just over a different path?
This sounds very much not like a hardware failure, but more like somebody fucked up.
You’re off ten fold. They have thousands. Around 5000 with a planned 12k after gen 3 has been fully deployed. It’s definitely a “let the intern push to prod” type of scenario by numbers alone.
They probably dorked up a bgp route or something. It was down globally.
That would do it!
Did you even read the article? It clearly states a core SOFTWARE component. Not hardware.
Considering it is designed by an American mega corp, yes it is probably poorly designed because they go for profit maximalisation.
Oh, so that's why my internet went out for 4 hours yesterday. RIP.
GOOD
Got a nice fibre-optic connection, have you? Try throttling that to <10Mbps and you might understand what some people have to deal with. DSL at 10Mbps from an evil corporation, or 150Mbps from an evil corporation, hmmmmm, what a choice.
It's easy to shit on the owner, but have some sympathy for folk who don't have a reasonable alternative.
Hear hear!
Everyone is like "Move out of the city, live a life closer to nature" but also "If you use the only service that truly enables that you suck!"
I'll take what I can get until something as good or better comes along.
Verizon is finally laying fiber optic in western maryland. I can't wait to ditch Starlink and save ~$100 a month in the process.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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