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I would love to see some mock-ups of orbital patterns for a moon based starlink-like network. How does the relative lack of an atmosphere affect things? How l
by ortusdux 6y ago
I would love to see some mock-ups of orbital patterns for a moon based starlink-like network. How does the relative lack of an atmosphere affect things? How large of a constellation do you need when the orbital body is 1/4 the size of earth?
- nickik 6y agoI would not be very hard to do. The principle problem is just that the moons gravity is unstable so low flying objects would need quite a bit of fuel to stay in the correctorbit. However, since the distance to earth anyway is the limiting factor you don't need low flying sats at all. A handful of sats could do a pretty good job with global coverage.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kibwen 6y ago> the moons gravity is unstable How so? Even if, say, its mass were very unevenly distributed, there should still be a center of gravity around which to orbit, yeah?
- _Microft 6y agoYou can read about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_concentration_(astronomy)#Effect_of_lunar_mascons_on_satellite_orbits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_concentration_(astronomy)...
- api 6y agoIt would be way, way easier on the Moon because there's no atmosphere to attenuate signal. You would need fewer satellites and lower power. Since you could build enormously tall towers in 1/6 gravity satellites might not even be economical compared with a few big towers.