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One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day (earthsky.org)
submitted 10 months ago by [M, B] to c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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[–] 27 points 10 months ago (1 child)

This is normal and by design. They fly super low, way in the upper atmosphere. This means they can't stay up there for more than 3-4 years. It's partly to reduce latency, but more likely it's just a part of the trick to keep SpaceX in business. Starlink is their biggest customer, a lot of the launches are just for Starlink. And they need to keep on launching, otherwise the network will fail. This means Musk can pump the huge pool of investment money from Starlink straight into SpaceX. This keeps them in business to keep funnelling money from taxpayers in the form of NASA grants into SpaceX. Musk then used that SpaceX money to invest in xAI, which was used to absorb a lot of the debt created by buying Twitter.

All just a scam, pumping money around to keep filling their pockets.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I'm with you on suspecting it's a scam, but it's also understandable. Low earth orbit is so much cheaper than higher orbits. Regularly launching small, low earth orbit satellites is really economical, and takes care of disposal too so requires very little on-board capabilities. University researchers and amateur radio folk have been doing that for decades because it's cheap and practical - starlink just upped the scale.

    I'm actually glad his garbage is low enough that when whatever bubble pops or he gets bored, they won't contribute to orbital debris.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago*

    i'm still worried about the reports about the possibility of the satellites influence on the ozone layer when they burn up in the atmosphere. The effect is still not fully understood but the amount of satellites are scaled up a lot in the next years nonetheless. Once they are up there, there is nothing more we can do

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    • [–] 17 points 10 months ago

    1.7 - 3.4 million dollars destroyed each day

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    [–] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    There are now one to two Starlink satellites falling back to Earth each day, burning up in the atmosphere with consequences not fully understood.

    Wait, what?!

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    It’s my new panic spiral pet theory for the end of days. There’s a possibility that this could fuck up our magnetosphere, leading to losing our ozone layer, which would then eventually lose us our atmosphere.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I mean it doesn't take an expert to understand that putting cloud of metal and rare earthes into the upper atmosphere is probably not the best of things to do

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