Earth’s atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats
Earth’s atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats
21 comments
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Yes, because the first thing I think about with a thinning atmosphere, is some megacorpo's potential monetary losses, and not my home's likely demise. Fuck them.
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Why don't you cold hearted demons ever think about the vulnerable investors? They don't have marketable skills ffs! How will they live when the profits stop?
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How will they live when the profits stop?
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"Modelled CO2 emissions scenarios from years 2000-2100 indicate a potential 50-66 percent reduction in satellite carrying capacity between the altitudes of 200 and 1,000 km."
That’s a severe reduction.
I imagine Starlink still plans to launch as many as legally allowed.
Imagine if Mr. “Occupy Mars” ends up being the guy to trap us here on Earth forever by clogging up space.
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Imagine if Mr. “Occupy Mars” ends up being the guy to trap us here on Earth forever by clogging up space.
The starlink satellites orbit far too low for that to happen. Without expelling limited propellants to periodically boost their orbits, every satellite in the constellation will fall to earth in less than 10 years, most in less than 1.
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You’d think that this would place Musk on the “stop climate change” side, but I doubt he has the intelligence to figure that out.
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Doesn't that just mean that lower orbits can be used? Less air resistance?
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Not exactly. If it goes into full blown Kessler syndrome, it will become everyone's problem, including at the newly "freed up" lower orbits.
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Except that isn't how it works. The lower your orbit, the quicker your orbit decays due to atmospheric drag. If the atmosphere was 10% less dense, this wouldn't significantly reduce that at those altitudes. In the current scenario, if every one of those satellites stopped working right now, the vast majority of them (and their parts) would deorbit within 10 years. This would be a bit of a problem for manned space flight, but wouldn't affect things too much otherwise.
If this was happening in geosynchronous orbit, with comparable amou to of mass, it would be a bigger deal.
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I imagine it'd make the business more expensive low orbit satelites slowly fall into the atmosphere and are supposed to burn up after a couple of years. I imagine with lower orbits that they'd fall sooner and you'd have to launch more to sustain your system which then produces more pollution and perpetuates the problem.
Edit article says more space junk and slower burning up in the atmosphere as an effect so that's interesting. If it becomes a space junk graveyard I imagine satellites will more frequently get damaged by them and become junk themselves?
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Things fall into the thicker parts of the atmosphere because drag from the tiny amounts of air up there. if that is shrinking, then you can get lower before you have the same amount of drag? Therefore lower orbits might be more feasible?
Lower orbit means faster though, so it may not be linear? Would be interesting to see (someone else do) the maths.
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21 comments