# The mortal danger Starlink poses to space travel.



## Justin Swanton (Jan 1, 2022)

I came across *this video* on the Common Sense Skeptic channel that tears Starlink to shreds: Starlink cannot offer a service superior to anything currently in existence, it is far more expensive than other internet options and is unaffordable by most of the planet, and it enormously increases the chances of a Kessler Syndrome event - satellite collisions creating debris that causes other collisions in a cascading crescendo that destroys everything in orbit and makes future launches into orbit impossible (the movie _Gravity _gives nice visuals of this event). 

Anyone here with additional/updated data on the problems of Starlink?

The same channel also looks at Starship and Musk's plans to colonise Mars. It summarises nicely what I already thought of Musk's projects. My own feeling is that he will eventually crash and crash hard.


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## CupofJoe (Jan 3, 2022)

I will freely admit from what little I know of Mr Musk, I feel that he is a man-baby with a multi-billion bank balance.
All I hear of him is when he does something outrageous or unexpected. He seems to act first and then [maybe] think about it.
That said, I am all for "disruptors" breaking the mould to do what is said that could not be done. 
Electric cars have got much better, Space launches have got cheaper and more sustainable.
But too many of the projects around now seem to be more vanity projects driven by ego. But they may do some good.
I cannot see how Tesla as a car company is worth more than just about any other car company... Now.
But if the likes of Ford are still wedded to producing giant SUVs and enormous Pickup trucks, instead of lighter electric vehicles, who knows what the world will look like in 10 years.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Jan 3, 2022)

The combination of Starlink and recent anti-satellite weapons tests is worrying. Kessler Syndrome looks more like a "when" than an "if" right now. Beginning to think we urgently need a ground-based alternative to GPS....


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## Lumens (Jan 4, 2022)

Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> Beginning to think we urgently need a ground-based alternative to GPS....


You mean, like a map made out of paper and a compass?


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## CupofJoe (Jan 4, 2022)

Lumens said:


> You mean, like a map made out of paper and a compass?


Never leave home without it!


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## Ambrose (Jan 4, 2022)

And the constellations are a real nuisance for observational astronomy.


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## Vladd67 (Jan 4, 2022)

CupofJoe said:


> Never leave home without it!


I must be one of the few people to have a road atlas in my car.


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## Biskit (Jan 4, 2022)

Vladd67 said:


> I must be one of the few people to have a road atlas in my car.


I have one of those.

I mostly rely on a sophisticated navigation system called Biskitetta. However, I do have to read the map myself if the Biskitetta is not there.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Jan 4, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> Starlink cannot offer a service superior to anything currently in existence, it is far more expensive than other internet options and is unaffordable by most of the planet,



It depends where you live. Starlink isn't intended for people who have access to cable internet, but people with poor internet infrastructure, low speeds or dial up internet, or are nomadic, or want to bypass regional censorship. It has a use case. Speeds over 100mbps are higher than speeds from any local cable providers in my area, so even from that perspective it's better. I imagine it has a relatively small, but wealthy customer base for whom the cost is nothing.



Justin Swanton said:


> and it enormously increases the chances of a Kessler Syndrome event - satellite collisions creating debris that causes other collisions in a cascading crescendo that destroys everything in orbit and makes future launches into orbit impossible (the movie _Gravity _gives nice visuals of this event).



Space above our planet is huge. There are currently 3,000 satellites (out of 8,000 total man made objects) orbiting earth, above 196,900,000 square miles of earth's surface (more if you take into account height). That's one satellite per 65,633 square miles (roughly the size of Oklahoma) - assuming they're travelling at the same height - which is unlikely. The biggest satellite, GOES-R is roughly the size of a pickup truck. The chances of collision are extremely remote at present.

Chris Hadfield is very critical of Gravity:








Justin Swanton said:


> Anyone here with additional/updated data on the problems of Starlink?
> 
> The same channel also looks at Starship and Musk's plans to colonise Mars. It summarises nicely what I already thought of Musk's projects. My own feeling is that he will eventually crash and crash hard.



He most likely will, going to Mars will take incredible engineering and co-operation with space agencies internationally - but at least he's doing _something and _driving the technology forward. I don't even think going to Mars is that good an idea. Venus seems a better destination for exploration, imho.

His commissioning of work on reusable rockets, the raptor engine and falcon heavy have revolutionised space travel. Those are enormous successes that, whilst not attributable to him directly, simply would not have existed at this moment in time without his drive and vision.

People say Musk is a fraud because he doesn't invent anything personally or receives investment from the Government. They view him as a con man or a flim flam artist, but Musk's skill is his ability to mobilise people and capital in service of ground breaking technologies and to promote adoption amongst consumers.


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## RJM Corbet (Jan 8, 2022)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> Space above our planet is huge. There are currently 3,000 satellites (out of 8,000 total man made objects) orbiting earth, above 196,900,000 square miles of earth's surface (more if you take into account height). That's one satellite per 65,633 square miles (roughly the size of Oklahoma) - assuming they're travelling at the same height - which is unlikely. The biggest satellite, GOES-R is roughly the size of a pickup truck. The chances of collision are extremely remote at present.


Thanks for explaining. I think this is forgotten, when we see scary pics like this one. It's not representative. There's still no excuse to create more though, without good reason?






I have gained a lot of respect for Musk in the last couple of years. The world needs people like him. imo


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## Justin Swanton (Jan 8, 2022)

> It depends where you live. Starlink isn't intended for people who have access to cable internet, but people with poor internet infrastructure, low speeds or dial up internet, or are nomadic, or want to bypass regional censorship. It has a use case. Speeds over 100mbps are higher than speeds from any local cable providers in my area, so even from that perspective it's better. I imagine it has a relatively small, but wealthy customer base for whom the cost is nothing.



Starlink's download speed is 61mbps at best and can be as low as 12mbps in Seattle.





This is fine for gaming (but not fast reflex gaming) and video conferencing for one user, but not more than one. Viasat offers comparable download and upload speeds whilst HuguesNet offers 25mbps download speed (I don't know what their upload speed is). The latter two satellite services have free startup (costs you $500 with Starlink) and their monthly payments are substantially cheaper: $30 and $60 vs Starlink's $100. Starlink's unique advantage is that it has little gaming lag as its satellites are close to the Earth whereas the satellites of the other two companies are in geostationary orbit, meaning a noticeable delay in transmission of data via satellite from one computer to another, anathema for gamers. But unless they live in really remote areas, gamers can hook up to cable internet with data transfer speeds more than ten times that of Starlink.

Poor internet structure usually means a poorer area or country and that case users will either suffer the limitations of their cable network or jump on the other two satellite networks as they are substantially cheaper - with the exception of a few wealthier kids who want to play online.



> Space above our planet is huge. There are currently 3,000 satellites (out of 8,000 total man made objects) orbiting earth, above 196,900,000 square miles of earth's surface (more if you take into account height). That's one satellite per 65,633 square miles (roughly the size of Oklahoma) - assuming they're travelling at the same height - which is unlikely. The biggest satellite, GOES-R is roughly the size of a pickup truck. The chances of collision are extremely remote at present.



Surface area is irrelevant. What matters is orbital paths. The Chinese space station has already had to execute evasive manoeuvres twice to avoid starlink satellites. Most satellites are in LEO, in a cross section 1500km deep. There are currently over 2000 satellites plus 1700 starlink satellites orbiting in that cross section. Musk intends to add another 40,300 satellites to complete the Starlink network.

All satellite orbits intersect, twice, so that means a total of 44,000 intersecting satellite orbits in a band 1500 km deep. That's 30 satellites per kilometer which equals one satellite every 33 metres. That's not dangerous?

Yes, I know that Starlink satellites play follow-my-leader in groups in the same orbit, but IMHO that doesn't eliminate the danger of collisions. Orbital intersections still happen frequently with many satellites involved in the same intersecting paths, and keeping satellites precisely positioned in their place in the same orbit as well as keeping that orbit at the same altitude isn't something I can see happening over a long period of time. BTW the Kessler Syndrome has already begun: the ISS has been hit by orbital debris more than once. Over time there will be a steadily growing amount of orbital debris with more collisions producing more debris and so on until it probably cascades out of control, unless something can be done to collect that debris.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Jan 8, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> Starlink's download speed is 61mbps at best and can be as low as 12mbps in Seattle.



I've seen reports of 100. But still 61 is better than my local best of 50 and I live in a reasonable sized city in the UK. 



Justin Swanton said:


> Poor internet structure usually means a poorer area or country and that case users will either suffer the limitations of their cable network or jump on the other two satellite networks as they are substantially cheaper - with the exception of a few wealthier kids who want to play online.



There are still rural places in the US on dial up. 

I think Starlink is really for wealthy people in their 500,000$ RV's, off gridders, scientists on location and rich people in poorer countries that want a reliable connection, not the guy who wants to play team fortress. 



Justin Swanton said:


> Surface area is irrelevant. What matters is orbital paths.



Sure, which is a matter of communication and organisation but the idea that space is full is ridiculous.


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## RJM Corbet (Jan 9, 2022)

I believe everything Musk is doing is practice for colonizing Mars and a comm satellite web (on Mars) is an essential part of that plan? He's fixated on Mars. He says he wants to die on Mars, though preferably not on impact. He's quite a weird guy.


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## Ursa major (Jan 9, 2022)

RJM Corbet said:


> and a comm satellite web (on Mars) is an essential part of that plan


So one could say that it's a trial run for providing sufficient... er... Mars bars....


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## Robert Zwilling (Feb 9, 2022)

40 of 49 of the latest batch of launched Starlink satellites will fallback to earth and burn up. They couldn't get into orbit because of increased drag caused by a geomagnetic storm. Stronger than normal solar winds got caught up in Earth's magnetic field which heated up that part of space. The increased heat put drag on the satellites, which ultimately slowed them down. The effort to save the satellites by making them fly edgewise to reduce the drag only put them into a lower orbit they couldn't get out of. 

Satellites orbiting below 620 miles can lose as much as 18 miles of altitude during interactions with strong solar winds. The Starlink system is only 340 miles above Earth. The question becomes if a big enough solar wind blows through the Starlink formation will it be able to retain 100 percent operational functionality. 

Electrical charges can also build up on the surface of the satellites during interactions with solar storms. How much fuel does each satellite carry for correcting altitude loss or are they considered to be totally disposable products, replace/don't fix. 

One reason the low orbit was picked was to create a method of disposing of the satellites without creating space junk by having the Earth's atmosphere burn them up after they were no longer useful, which is apparently only a few years.


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## Omits (Feb 9, 2022)

Talking about down and upload speeds. Is this measured across the whole network. I am wondering if the whole internet will slow down in the LAN due to increasing demand as we move forward during the 20s and I don't think there is any solution with faster electronics on the way. I am in a village in the UK and over that last few years internet speed is worse. Also the demand by apps on the local processor is also increasing. Interested to know what others think.


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## Robert Zwilling (Feb 10, 2022)

A news report is circulating about a letter written on behalf of NASA about concerns over the deployment of an additional 30,000 satellites by Musk. The five-page letter was submitted to the Federal Communications Commission Feb. 8 on NASA’s behalf by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, along with a separate one-page letter from the National Science Foundation. There is nothing in the NASA web site about this. I guess NASA is between a rock and a hard place. They want commercial space flight to advance rapidly, so they approve of the quick approval of the Starship, and other space vehicles. The downside is that the amount of future space junk being hauled into space will rapidly increase. 

Apparently the FCC is the agency that okays the additional deployment. The FCC may be getting in over its head as it does not seem to have foreseen the space junk problem nor has it any plans on how to fix the situation. It only keeps giving approval for more and more space junk to be launched. A number of companies all have plans to launch mass numbers of satellites. It should be a real mess.

The letter states that the amount of low orbit items that needs to be tracked will be increased 5 fold and double the total amount of items already being monitored. While the space station(s) are not in this orbit, everything has to fly through this zone to get to higher orbits. SpaceX has publicly stated that there would zero risk of accidents because the satellites have self driving software. Which is total rubbish, that is stock boosting talk, nothing has zero risk. Telsa's self driving cars certainly don't have a perfect track record, why would the satellites. Losing 40 of 49 satellites in the latest launch would seem to indicate that the self driving satellite software is not ready for prime time.

This is a slow burn resulting from a story first seen in January. SpaceX has revealed plans to commence regular launches of its new Starship spacecraft as soon as March 2022. The original plan to use the Falcon rockets will be scrapped and the Starships will carry the Starlinks into orbit starting in March. This what triggered SpaceX's request for permission to launch the additional 30,000 Starlinks above the original request of 12,000 Starlinks. It was known all along that the total number of Starlinks would be 42,000, but apparently it was not expected to be done so quickly.

Can armor be made to protect large objects in space from high speed projectiles?


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## Justin Swanton (Feb 10, 2022)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Can armor be made to protect large objects in space from high speed projectiles?



With a combined speed of up to 50 000 km/h? Not a chance. A high velocity tank shell travels at about 3 600 km/h.


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## Robert Zwilling (Feb 10, 2022)

Justin, I like Immortelle, good story. Easy to read screen on a laptop. 

Do you have any scenarios for avoiding space junk?


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## Justin Swanton (Feb 11, 2022)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Justin, I like Immortelle, good story. Easy to read screen on a laptop.
> 
> Do you have any scenarios for avoiding space junk?


Thanks Robert. The next two chapters are up BTW. Re space junk one doesn't yet know how exactly bad it will be but in any case there's nothing we can do about it. If it gets out of control we'll have to wait several decades or more until all the junk has dropped out of orbit and burned up, though I imagine that one could always risk launching to a deep space orbit or beyond, hoping to avoid hitting anything on the way.


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## Ambrose (Feb 11, 2022)

Because the constellations use radio and because their orbits mean that their signals could affect all countries the US as the licensing authority has to approve their use.  The FCC is the body that does this.  Similarly the licensing authorities in other countries have to deal with the systems that they authorise.


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## Wayne Mack (Feb 11, 2022)

Sounds like an interesting occupation for a space opera novel: Space Sanitation Engineer. Runs a cleaning device for orbital lanes. Perhaps takes bribes because it would be a shame for anything to happen to that brand new satellite.


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## Justin Swanton (Feb 11, 2022)

Wayne Mack said:


> Sounds like an interesting occupation for a space opera novel: Space Sanitation Engineer. Runs a cleaning device for orbital lanes. Perhaps takes bribes because it would be a shame for anything to happen to that brand new satellite.


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## Vladd67 (Feb 11, 2022)




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## LostCosmonaut (Feb 16, 2022)

Not a fan of Starlink, between the debris risk and the interference with astronomy. The FAA should try to pressure Musk to scale it back a bit. That said, Starship could be a game-changer, and I'm very excited to see it start sending up payloads for bargain prices.


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## Robert Zwilling (Feb 16, 2022)

LostCosmonaut said:


> Starship could be a game-changer


It is a game changer, assuming that it does work, which it will eventually, if it doesn't already. Musk will be running a freight service to the inner solar system. He owns businesses which can use the ship to space service. He will not charge his own companies to use the ship to space service, as well as back to Earth at some point in time. He will charge others to use his service, companies he will be competing against.

Normally there would be some kind of conflict of interest issue but I would say that the argument will be put forward that shipping stuff into space is not the same as shipping stuff around the globe, and so it is not covered by any existing laws. The same way corporations were allowed to say that cell phones were not the same as telephones and so 100 years of regulations were tossed out the window overnight. Which means that Musk can charge his competitors for shipping their space project materials whatever he wants to, while his projects will not have the same costs attached to them. He could also give his projects a high priority while giving his competitors a lower priority.

I don't know if Musk has thought about it, but his tunneling equipment would be the ideal kind of thing to bring to the Moon or Mars where working outside on the surface brings on all kinds of severe problems caused by the surface dust. Putting roadways and infrastructure underground right from the start would bypass those kinds of problems.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Feb 16, 2022)

Robert Zwilling said:


> .....assuming that it does work, which it will eventually.....



Curious what makes you say this?  Is it not equally possible that he will run out of money and expertise before the enormous problems are solved?  As for digging tunnels on Mars, or even getting there in the first place; not in my life time or in Musks!


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## Robert Zwilling (Feb 16, 2022)

I say this because of how far he has gotten so far. He has his own agenda and he wants to do this in his lifetime. He is not out to clean up the world environmentally which puts him on track with the robber barons of the past. People pay him to beta test drive his "self driving" cars. Without that kind of support I doubt the program would have gotten as far as it has. I would suspect that everything he does is connected in some grand scheme way and not just a bunch of one off accomplishments. We will see what the StarShip does. The Russians pushed the envelope all the time when they were running a viable space program. It was hard on the people but they did it anyway, and it worked. 

As far as tunneling as a way of operating on the Moon, it's not an option. The dust is abrasive in several dimensions and definitely unhealthy. Working outside will require the use of multiple airlocks and cleaning stations to keep the dust out of whatever infrastructure is built. That alone will use a lot of effort just to make a healthy living area. It would be better to not go out in it at all. If everything is done on the surface that will make everything that much more difficult to get done.


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## Harpo (Apr 3, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> With a combined speed of up to 50 000 km/h? Not a chance. A high velocity tank shell travels at about 3 600 km/h.




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1510067170738376712


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## Dan Jones (Apr 3, 2022)

I can't believe I've missed this thread so far. Ok, full disclosure: I work for the UK Space Agency and one of my primary areas of work is in space robotics and debris removal. We (and other agencies) are funding mission studies looking at the removal of debris from orbit - and by debris, we are specifically meaning registered assets that are flying in LEO. I've been involved in another programme developing ADR (active debris removal) tech using autonomous navigation and capture to remove spent apogee kick motors from LEO. These are about the size of a kettle, and are jettisoned after use.

ESA has recorded about 128,000,000 pieces of man-made debris orbiting the Earth. The vast majority of these are very tiny, less than 10cm in width / diameter. As someone said above, there are around 8000 satellites orbiting the Earth, and of these, around 2700 are operational. The ones that are operational don't really pose a problem; they have collision avoidance / alert systems and possess propulsion systems (either chemical or electric) to aid station-keeping. This includes Starlink. The problem comes from the non-operational ones (ie the dead ones) which are no longer communicating with Earth. The poster child for space debris is ENVISAT, a European environmental monitoring satellite that stopped communicating with Earth around a decade ago. ENVISAT is about the size of a tennis court.

However, as Harpo says, space is big. Even if there are 128,000,000 million man-made objects up in various orbits (LEO, GEO, and MEO) there are around 128,000,000 human beings living in Japan. And Japan is not the same size as space. So they are pretty well spaced out. The further thing to note is that the majority of these things will eventually (after 25-50 years) fall into a graveyard orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. 

All of which is not to say that space debris isn't a problem - it is. The big focus now is on prevention rather than cure. There eventually will be a market for missions such as the ones I've described once there is sufficient political will to make it happen (at the moment there isn't), but there is a big push towards developing more modular technologies that will enable spacecraft to be upgraded, repaired, maintained, and even salvaged and recycled in space. If all goes well we might see small-scale test (demonstrator) missions showing this sort of thing before the end of the decade. 

As for Musk, I'm rather an admirer of his. If he reminds others of the robber barons of the past, he reminds me of the Nikola Teslas and Howard Hugheses of the world. True, he's convinced the US Government to underwrite his operations considerably, but the US doesn't do that unless they see huge strategic advantage in doing so. He may well crash and crash hard (I hope he doesn't), but he'll still be the giant shoulders upon which the next generation of space operators (and particularly commercial space operators) stand.


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## Danny McG (Apr 3, 2022)

Lumens said:


> You mean, like a map made out of paper and a compass?


Very useful for drawing circles


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## Christine Wheelwright (Apr 3, 2022)

Dan Jones said:


> I can't believe I've missed this thread so far. Ok, full disclosure: I work for the UK Space Agency and one of my primary areas of work is in space robotics and debris removal. We (and other agencies) are funding mission studies looking at the removal of debris from orbit - and by debris, we are specifically meaning registered assets that are flying in LEO. I've been involved in another programme developing ADR (active debris removal) tech using autonomous navigation and capture to remove spent apogee kick motors from LEO. These are about the size of a kettle, and are jettisoned after use.
> 
> ESA has recorded about 128,000,000 pieces of man-made debris orbiting the Earth. The vast majority of these are very tiny, less than 10cm in width / diameter. As someone said above, there are around 8000 satellites orbiting the Earth, and of these, around 2700 are operational. The ones that are operational don't really pose a problem; they have collision avoidance / alert systems and possess propulsion systems (either chemical or electric) to aid station-keeping. This includes Starlink. The problem comes from the non-operational ones (ie the dead ones) which are no longer communicating with Earth. The poster child for space debris is ENVISAT, a European environmental monitoring satellite that stopped communicating with Earth around a decade ago. ENVISAT is about the size of a tennis court.
> 
> ...



I have so many questions.  Does it really matter if something gets hit by an object the size of a tennis court or a 1/2 ounce piece of plastic travelling at 15,000 mph?  Game over either way, surely?  The people of Japan may not be bumping into each other all the time, but they aren't moving around in an agitated state like gas molecules.  Yes, I can place tens of millions of points into three dimensional space without them coinciding, but surely it is a completely different mathematical conundrum when time and movement is taken into account.  Is Elon Musk contributing to your Agency's research into eventually clearing up his junk?  And wasn't Tesla a scientific genius with limited interest in business, while Musk is businessman of sorts and certainly not a scientist or engineer.  I don't see much of a comparison there.

Regarding Musk, I think we have to ask ourselves; at what point does irrational exuberance and optimism about products under development become outright fraud?


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## Dan Jones (Apr 3, 2022)

Christine Wheelwright said:


> they aren't moving around in an agitated state like gas molecules.


There's somebody who's never been to Tokyo!



Christine Wheelwright said:


> Does it really matter if something gets hit by an object the size of a tennis court or a 1/2 ounce piece of plastic travelling at 15,000 mph? Game over either way, surely?


Yes, most likely game over, though with caveats for materials etc. Depends on the altitude of the objects in question whether it would actually lead to a Kessler scenario. Starlink is reasonably low altitude (compared to, say, Kuiper or Oneweb) so the chances of it causing a Kessler Syndrome scenario are extremely low. The higher up you go, the chances of a Kessler Syndrome scenario being caused in the event of a collision rises, but the chances of the actual collision occuring are reduced by orders of magnitude. So it's a trade-off.

You're right, the maths is different when it's all up in orbit (and I don't get into the mathematics of orbital mechanics). A "close shave" between orbiting objects is deemed to be a distance of 10km between the two objects in question. Most things are tracked. Only around 2700 of the things orbiting Earth are active, and they are the things that can be controlled and kept in station ie they can be moved if something is deemed to be coming a little too close for comfort. 



Christine Wheelwright said:


> Is Elon Musk contributing to your Agency's research into eventually clearing up his junk?


No.



Christine Wheelwright said:


> And wasn't Tesla a scientific genius with limited interest in business, while Musk is businessman of sorts and certainly not a scientist or engineer. I don't see much of a comparison there.


Fair enough, it's not a great comparison in that respect (IIRC Musk is a physicist of some description and perhaps has some expertise in software engineering though I forget the detail). What I meant was that the true value of their work wouldn't become apparent until the next generation come along and begin to actually exploit it. 



Christine Wheelwright said:


> Regarding Musk, I think we have to ask ourselves; at what point does irrational exuberance and optimism about products under development become outright fraud?


NASA wouldn't underwrite a fraudster and entrust them with significant contracts for commercial launches. NASA aren't idiots. One person's irrational exuberance is another's perfectly rational exuberance.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Apr 3, 2022)

Dan Jones said:


> There's somebody who's never been to Tokyo!
> 
> NASA wouldn't underwrite a fraudster and entrust them with significant contracts for commercial launches.



No, I've never been to Tokyo (other than for a flight transfer at the airport, which was busy enough if I recall correctly).

Obviously Space X has a viable rocket capable of carrying payloads for NASA which has given it contracts as a result.  What they think of Musk's business practices is unknown.  Remember this is someone who fraudulently claimed to have Saudi funding to take Tesla private at an inflated price leading to a clear bump in stock value (SEC.gov | Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges; Tesla Charged With and Resolves Securities Law Charge).  He later said the fine was worth it.

He is currently being sued by Tesla investors over the purchase of SolarCity (Tesla shareholders want Elon Musk to pay $13 billion for role in acquisition of SolarCity).  The case alleges he overpaid for this outfit, breaking his fiduciary duty to Tesla.  SolarCity was not in good financial health. Also, from USA Today:

"At the time of the all-stock purchase, Musk was SolarCity’s largest stakeholder and its chairman. In what the plaintiffs call a clear conflict of interest, SolarCity had been founded by Musk and two of his cousins, Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive."

He persistently makes ridiculous claims for his company's technology, using the present tense to describe tech that he simply does not have or, in many cases, will never have.  He even somehow got away with calling a diver in Thailand 'pedo guy', winning the resulting libel case.

I could go on forever about this stuff.  It is all public record.

I think he has been a very lucky boy so far, and I doubt it will continue.


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## Robert Zwilling (Apr 3, 2022)

The only fraud about Musk is his talk, his actions more than demonstrate the ability to get real things done that are changing the course of civilization in a meaningful way. While he does ask, conjole, or scheme ways of getting money, he has more than enough to do what he is doing. Maybe not enough to do what he wants to do, but enough to succeed. The only thing green about him is the color of his money.


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## Justin Swanton (Apr 3, 2022)

I've posed this elsewhere, but what is Musk really accomplishing in the space tech department? Thus far, all he can do is launch satellites and humans into LEO and reuse the launchers. Launching into LEO is decades-old technology. The reusability hasn't brought the cost down to any significant degree. The point of reusing launchers isn't to get cool videos of them landing at Cape Canaveral, but to make spaceflight exponentially cheaper, and he hasn't done that. His Dragon flight costs far more per astronaut than the old Russian Soyuz, bumped into orbit by the 70 year old Proton, did before Russia started charging the US exorbitant fees. In the early 2000s it originally charged about $23 million per seat on the Soyuz, compared to Musk's $60-67 million per seat on the Dragon.

Looking at Starship, I keep asking myself, what is it *for? *You don't need something that size to land men on the Moon and it's not fit for a Mars trip. Common Sense Skeptic breaks down its design and points out two major flaws (among others): no shielding and no artificial gravity, both essential for a two-year round voyage. Musk isn't going to build a million man city on Mars, sorry. Just getting a handful of astronauts there will cost something in the region of a trillion dollars, and there's no way the US government has the political will to hand over that kind of money.

The big problem with manned spaceflight is that there's nowhere to go. And building a habitation anywhere in space or on any planet that can keep a reasonable number of people alive indefinitely is way, way past what any government or group of governments can afford. There isn't any return for all that vast outlay and once the glamour wears off, which is pretty quick, the bottom line will be economics. Nobody is going to sign trillion-dollar cheques just to keep a few dozen or hundred people alive on the Moon or on Mars.

Once LEO is filled with satellites (needing regular replacements, sure) all you will be left with are probes and telescopes to cross a few more t's and dot a few more i's. One day the penny will drop...


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## Christine Wheelwright (Apr 3, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> I've posed this elsewhere, but what is Musk really accomplishing in the space tech department? Thus far, all he can do is launch satellites and humans into LEO and reuse the launchers. Launching into LEO is decades-old technology. The reusability hasn't brought the cost down to any significant degree. The point of reusing launchers isn't to get cool videos of them landing at Cape Canaveral, but to make spaceflight exponentially cheaper, and he hasn't done that. His Dragon flight costs far more per astronaut than the old Russian Soyuz, bumped into orbit by the 70 year old Proton, did before Russia started charging the US exorbitant fees. In the early 2000s it originally charged about $23 million per seat on the Soyuz, compared to Musk's $60-67 million per seat on the Dragon.
> 
> Looking at Starship, I keep asking myself, what is it *for? *You don't need something that size to land men on the Moon and it's not fit for a Mars trip. Common Sense Skeptic breaks down its design and points out two major flaws (among others): no shielding and no artificial gravity, both essential for a two-year round voyage. Musk isn't going to build a million man city on Mars, sorry. Just getting a handful of astronauts there will cost something in the region of a trillion dollars, and there's no way the US government has the political will to hand over that kind of money.
> 
> ...



Justin, we may have disagreed over More, but I am 100% aligned with you on Musk.


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## Justin Swanton (Apr 4, 2022)

Christine Wheelwright said:


> Justin, we may have disagreed over More, but I am 100% aligned with you on Musk.


The problem with Musk is that he doesn't have a precise mission profile to dictate the design of the Starship. The Apollo mission (like every other space mission) had a very precise objective: get two men on the Moon for a few hours and then get them back to Earth. Everything was designed round that precise objective and they did their job, albeit at enormous expense. But the Starship isn't designed around anything. It's big and glamorous and can land on the ground (more or less) but what's its mission profile?

 More, yes...I see I need to do more work...


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## Justin Swanton (Apr 6, 2022)

It's becoming increasingly clear that this is the big deal-breaker in manned spaceflight: if the Solar System had a habitable planet or moon, governments would pay astronomical amounts of money to set up viable self-sustaining colonies on it that would eventually be able to pay back the investment in terms of raw resources or even manufactured products. But there's nowhere habitable, so Earth will have to create and maintain at enormous cost viable habitats for - necessarily - small numbers of people who could never hope to produce anything that could repay a fraction of the debt. It's a non-starter.


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## Harpo (Apr 6, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> It's becoming increasingly clear that this is the big deal-breaker in manned spaceflight: if the Solar System had a habitable planet or moon, governments would pay astronomical amounts of money to set up viable self-sustaining colonies on it that would eventually be able to pay back the investment in terms of raw resources or even manufactured products. But there's nowhere habitable, so Earth will have to create and maintain at enormous cost viable habitats for - necessarily - small numbers of people who could never hope to produce anything that could repay a fraction of the debt. It's a non-starter.



Probably our nearest current equivalent (though at a much smaller scale, and more local etc etc) is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. The first buildings were used for about twenty years, then they moved to a dome for about thirty years until they moved again a decade or so ago.
I don’t know how much it costs to keep a few scientists alive in a very hostile environment, but they’ve already been doing so at the South Pole for over sixty years.
It’s just an example


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## Christine Wheelwright (Apr 6, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> It's becoming increasingly clear that this is the big deal-breaker in manned spaceflight: if the Solar System had a habitable planet or moon, governments would pay astronomical amounts of money to set up viable self-sustaining colonies on it that would eventually be able to pay back the investment in terms of raw resources or even manufactured products. But there's nowhere habitable, so Earth will have to create and maintain at enormous cost viable habitats for - necessarily - small numbers of people who could never hope to produce anything that could repay a fraction of the debt. It's a non-starter.



I agree.  The nations of the World have generally adopted a form of loosely restrained capitalism.  This is the system of choice going forward.  Fair enough.  But we need to understand the limitations of such a system when it comes to solving our huge environmental problems.  And as for space travel (I mean proper space travel....lets say to another planet), it aint going to happen under this current system.  I think the next few decades will be dominated by a growth in profitable space tourism outfits (offering joy rides to 100km initially and then into orbit within a couple of decades).  This, of course, does nothing to solve the very real problems faced by the planet.  Quite the opposite actually.


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## Justin Swanton (Apr 6, 2022)

Harpo said:


> Probably our nearest current equivalent (though at a much smaller scale, and more local etc etc) is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. The first buildings were used for about twenty years, then they moved to a dome for about thirty years until they moved again a decade or so ago.
> I don’t know how much it costs to keep a few scientists alive in a very hostile environment, but they’ve already been doing so at the South Pole for over sixty years.
> It’s just an example



A very good example. The new station was built in 2008 at a cost of $147 million - which includes the cost of flying all of the 40 000 tons of construction materials to the South Pole. This is piddling compared to the cost of getting manned habitats into orbit. The station can accommodate about 200 people at the most. Once the station was built maintenance costs were relatively low - bringing in supplies (there is now an overland route), repairing equipment and clearing snow from the building. The station serves a practical purpose. There are very few tourists and no 'settlers' there, just scientists who study weather patterns and the Antarctic ice inasmuch as they impact on the rest of the planet. Despite the fact that the South Pole is a human paradise compared to, say, the Moon or Mars (water, oxygen, correct gravity, adequate protection against Cosmic Rays and Solar Flares), there has been no push to colonise it, even though the cost of doing would be a fraction of the cost of colonising anywhere off-Earth. Why is that, I wonder?*


*Of course we know damn well why. Because photos of shivering scientists aren't nearly as romantic as artists' impressions of happy colonists in spacesuits bounding over the Valles Marineris.


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## StilLearning (Apr 8, 2022)

Justin Swanton said:


> A very good example. The new station was built in 2008 at a cost of $147 million - which includes the cost of flying all of the 40 000 tons of construction materials to the South Pole. This is piddling compared to the cost of getting manned habitats into orbit. The station can accommodate about 200 people at the most. Once the station was built maintenance costs were relatively low - bringing in supplies (there is now an overland route), repairing equipment and clearing snow from the building. The station serves a practical purpose. There are very few tourists and no 'settlers' there, just scientists who study weather patterns and the Antarctic ice inasmuch as they impact on the rest of the planet. Despite the fact that the South Pole is a human paradise compared to, say, the Moon or Mars (water, oxygen, correct gravity, adequate protection against Cosmic Rays and Solar Flares), there has been no push to colonise it, even though the cost of doing would be a fraction of the cost of colonising anywhere off-Earth. Why is that, I wonder?*
> 
> 
> *Of course we know damn well why. Because photos of shivering scientists aren't nearly as romantic as artists' impressions of happy colonists in spacesuits bounding over the Valles Marineris.


If I might put that comparison in context: Antarctica has a population of around 4-5000 in the summer (IIRC), and around 1000 over winter - mostly scientists on research bases (doing environment, weather, geology etc research), but there is also tourism: In the 2009-2010 season 37,000 people visited Antarctica, mostly on sea cruises. These often include a helicopter trip to briefly visit the mainland. Sightseeing flights go regularly from Australia and New Zealand. There's some hiking, skiing and mountaineering etc. McMurdo station, the biggest settlement has a population of about 1000 in summer, and about 250 in winter.

Over time the general trend for both scientific population and tourism is upwards - the main restrictions are from treaties, which often are designed (partly) with protecting the Antarctic wilderness in mind. EDIT: I had look for numbers on what Antarctica's economy is worth, but it's hard to figure as the continent is divided between different nations END EDIT

The International Space Station houses a standard crew of 6 or 7, with maybe 10 when a crew transfer is taking place, and has a maximum capacity of 12 (again, IIRC). China's Tiangong space station has a maximum crew of 6. Their time is divided between looking after the station itself and running the various experiments there, which range from materials science and biology tests using micro-g as a tool to measuring space radiation, observations of  Earth and launching nano-satellites from the station. The research is partly government, and partly commercial. The ISS will probably end up lasting for about 30 years, and costing something like $300 billion (including crew and resupply flights) to build and then run (so about half of that, $150 billion, was spent to build it in the first place, the rests spreads over its lifespan as about $5 billion a year running costs).
The most people ever in space all at once was 13 - I think? And there are now 'scenic flight' space tourism companies that fly you up there for maybe 5 minutes, a few fully private flights to the ISS happening, and a few private space stations tentatively planned. The Moon briefly had a population of 2 (+ 1 in orbit) for a few days, over the course of 3 years, decades ago.

There are thousands more space vehicles and platforms between Earth and the Moon, mostly doing practical jobs related to things here on earth - and they are all robotic (or junk). EDIT: The commercial space industry is worth about $150 billion to $400 billion a year (depending on whether you include all activities that use it, only those that are reliant on it, or only those activities taking place in space) [ Topic: Space industry worldwide ] END EDIT

I think we _might_ see a big % increase in space and lunar population over the next few decades, but even if it's in the 500% - 1000% mark there will still be less than 1/5 the population there than of Antarctica during the winter.


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## Harpo (Apr 8, 2022)

But that’s the entire continent. I have friends who have been to Antarctica as tourists. Tourists don’t go to the South Pole Station.


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## StilLearning (Apr 8, 2022)

Most space tourists don't go to the ISS - they go on Virgin Orbit or Blue Origin's 5 minute 'scenic' flights. And all of manned spaceflight is vastly outnumbered by, and wrapped up with, the unmanned space industry. So, to me,  it doesn't make sense to do a comparison between the south pole base and any manned  space station, without also comparing the rest of human presence in Antarctica and off world.
Doing that I wonder if a better comparison to our current use of the space between the Earth and Moon might be with off-shore industry in parts of the North Sea - industrial and economic potential, scope for 'daytrip' style tourism (e.g Boat Tours From Kylesku North Coast 500 - North Coast Sea Tours ), but little for colonisation and demanding much greater reliance on automation ( they use a lot of Normally Unmanned Installations )? [sorry, edited for clarity]


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