Re:China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nob...
by lorenzhs on Friday February 23, 2018 @05:45AM
(#16445510)
The risk of Kessler Syndrome is being exaggerated a lot on HN. These new, very large satellite constellations aren't in stable orbits, they only last for a few years before decaying naturally. So even if every satellite there were to be destroyed by some magical event, the debris would re-enter the atmosphere within at most a couple of years. It would be quite bad if geostationary orbits became unusable, but there are way fewer satellites there, and GEO is becoming less important for many of its traditional applications (e.g. communication, see for example the spacex starlink project which just had its first two test satellites launched, or planet labs' constellation of small and cheap imaging satellites). Much of this is due to a reduction in launch prices and a focus on many small and cheap satellites, instead of few large and expensive ones.
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Re:China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nob...
by greglindahl on Friday February 23, 2018 @12:01PM
(#16447557)
You might want to double-check your claim about orbits -- everything but SpaceX's 2nd constellation is not in orbits that "only last a few years".
Iridium: 781 km
O3b: 8000 km
OneWeb: 1200 km
Starlink: 1,125 km and 340 km