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1) Space is huge. This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls. 2) Present internet satell

1) Space is huge. This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls. 2) Present internet satellites are all in mostly geostationary orbits that are much further away then the proposed leo's. Realistically the ones we have now introduce a whopping 650ms. This will be a huge improvement.

hackuser 9y ago
> Present internet satellites are all in mostly geostationary orbits that are much further away then the proposed leo What about the LEO systems such as Iridium, etc. (I forget which is owned by whom and what their statuses are)?
- hughes 9y ago
  Iridium is in LEO, but the comms hardware itself is pretty slow (1 to 2+ seconds latency). The throughput is also very low (2 to 4 kbit/s). Iridium is a great low-cost, low-bandwidth network though.
alkonaut 9y ago
> This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls. I'd be pretty nervous about throing 10k pingpong balls into the atlantic IF the collision of two pingpong balls was disastrous :) Obviously these satellites will be carefully placed NOT to collied - but the effect of a collision is pretty bad. The problem is that any one of them might collide with some tiny piece of junk, turning it 1000 pieces of junk (which is now 1000x more likely to collide with something, and impossible to control). These satellites won't tip the scales, but it's a nightmare scenario that comes ever closer with every satellite launched.
- path411 9y ago
  Remember that space is 3d. Not only do you have the surface area of the entire earth + the area from where LEO starts. You can then stack layers on top of that.
pogo 9y ago
No, collisions are a very real risk. In fact, they've already happened. In 2009, an Iridium satellite accidentally collided with a Russian satellite. Space-X is talking about quadrupling the number of existing satellites, so collisions will be more likely and the resulting debris increases the chances of subsequent collisions much more. This escalating effect is know as Kessler Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome).

hackuser 9y ago

> Present internet satellites are all in mostly geostationary orbits that are much further away then the proposed leo What about the LEO systems such as Iridium, etc. (I forget which is owned by whom and what their statuses are)?

hughes 9y ago
Iridium is in LEO, but the comms hardware itself is pretty slow (1 to 2+ seconds latency). The throughput is also very low (2 to 4 kbit/s). Iridium is a great low-cost, low-bandwidth network though.

alkonaut 9y ago

> This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls. I'd be pretty nervous about throing 10k pingpong balls into the atlantic IF the collision of two pingpong balls was disastrous :) Obviously these satellites will be carefully placed NOT to collied - but the effect of a collision is pretty bad. The problem is that any one of them might collide with some tiny piece of junk, turning it 1000 pieces of junk (which is now 1000x more likely to collide with something, and impossible to control). These satellites won't tip the scales, but it's a nightmare scenario that comes ever closer with every satellite launched.

path411 9y ago
Remember that space is 3d. Not only do you have the surface area of the entire earth + the area from where LEO starts. You can then stack layers on top of that.

pogo 9y ago

No, collisions are a very real risk. In fact, they've already happened. In 2009, an Iridium satellite accidentally collided with a Russian satellite. Space-X is talking about quadrupling the number of existing satellites, so collisions will be more likely and the resulting debris increases the chances of subsequent collisions much more. This escalating effect is know as Kessler Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome).