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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Technology
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All the satellites in question burn up within 10ish years due to their placement in orbit. In fact, a large number of SpaceX satellites already exploded due to mistakes during their deployment.
Cell towers don't burn up like that just sitting around.
Cool. We already have Hughesnet and have had it for decades.
You don't understand then. The Starlink satellites are designed to fall out of the sky, explicitly. They're at an extremely low orbit. The entire constellation will fall out of the sky on a regular basis.
That's the explicit design of Starlink. Its collossally stupid. The lower your orbit, the sooner you crash into Earth. Starlink has chosen one of the lowest orbits.
Hughesnet's satellite is in contrast, in a 500+ year orbit. So they don't have to replace their satellite all the time. Also, there's only a few of them, its not like Starlink that has thousands of them.
By being lower in the sky, Starlink satellites have a limited range and only cover a small area. They need many, many,many satellites to even have hope, extending the costs and destroying the feasibility of the entire design.