Regarding the number of proposed starlink satellites: The constellation is proposed to be approximately 10,000 satellites. I wondered how this compares to the

Regarding the number of proposed starlink satellites: The constellation is proposed to be approximately 10,000 satellites. I wondered how this compares to the number of US commercial flights per year. The FAA claims it handles 45,000 flights per day [1]. If we assume each aircraft has 5 flights per day and spends half it's time on the ground, then we might guess there are approximately 4,500 aircraft flying above the USA at any given instant. The USA is only a portion of the globe, let's say it's 1/50 of the global surface area, and let's assume starlink satellites are distributed evenly across the sky. From this we can guess, there will be approximately 200 starlink satellites above the CONUS at any instant. So the starlink constellation will be about 5% of the problem that commercial air traffic is. [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/ https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/