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After Texas’ blue wave, what happens to Elon Musk and SpaceX? “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 1 week ago* (4 children)

I really hope they don't go into the 700-1000km range with something of this scale if it actually happens as thats where a real risk of debris staying in orbit for hundreds or thousands of years starts to happen if something catastrophic happens to the constellation.

China blew up a satellite in a test in the 800km area and it'll be there for hundreds of years.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (3 children)

    Yeah, that's a valid point. And yeah, that's totally where they're gonna put them. They're gonna be huge, delicate targets...

    I'm generally pro space, I think all the massive advances in space flight in these last couple of decades has been truly amazing. That said, I wish I had a more positive way to spin this, but yeah, that's a serious concern. That's bad.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (2 children)

    It won't happen, but if globally we could agree to put a moratorium on large constellations in those orbits until we have more experience with constellations in the really low orbits, that would at least help and give us more time to learn. Without everyone agreeing though, someone else will just be like, MINE and fill it anyway.

    Edit: like lets see what happens as starlink becomes even bigger and moves into 10s of thousands, and kupier appears etc before moving up higher.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Very low orbits are less of a concern, though. Because if the worst happens, they and the vast majority of their debris will be slowed by atmospheric drag and fall relatively quickly.

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