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Does anyone know how many satellites before things get too crowded? 100,000? 1 million?
by binkHN 3y ago
Does anyone know how many satellites before things get too crowded? 100,000? 1 million?
- asynchronous 3y agoSpace is really, really big. And, orbits can happen at different distances from the Earth. As long as we don’t overcommit LEO satellites we can keep putting things in GEO orbit for probably a very long time.
- Retric 3y agoDepends on execution, we could have billions of satellites without huge problems. But Kessler syndrome could happen even just with the amount of satellites already in orbit if people had been actively malicious. So, the “limits” are mostly just a question of what assumptions you’re making.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Kessler syndrome could happen even just with the amount of satellite Kessler as in a catastrophic loss of satellites. In LEO, it wouldn’t be a denial of space programme, nor even a systemic issue—there aren’t high enough orbital energies.
- Retric 3y agoKessler syndrome is both loss of satellites but also rendering orbits unavailable. My comment was presupposing malicious actors so the hypothetical orbits aren’t going to be identical to what we currently have. It doesn’t take that much material orbiting in the opposite direction to render geosynchronous orbit untenable for example.
- paxys 3y agoThere are 1.5 billion cars in the world, and they all drive on a single plane on a very small percentage of the surface. Now increase the circumference by a lot and add a whole new dimension. I think we'll be fine.
- tasn 3y agoNot disagreeing with the conclusion, but cars are almost always stationary (parked) and when they do move they are many orders of magnitude slower than satellites. Which means it's not an obvious 1:1 comparison.
- ericpauley 3y agoCars also collide constantly despite best efforts to proactively avoid that. Not the sort of thing that’s desirable for satellites.
- albert_e 3y agoAnd cars are very maneuverable -- can stop, start, and turn in seconds; and can safely pass within inches of each other. (Most) cars also have one human each paying full attention to where it is going and controlling its path. Satellites don't have so many degrees of freedom. A bad way to extend the cars analogy is to compare with people. There are 8 billion of us and we walk around all the time but almost never get damaged by running into each other.
- martyvis 3y agoSatellites follow a extremely well known path and are tracked by the operators to a ridiculous level of precision. I can't imagine us needing more than 10 providers of 100K sats each at an upper limit. You could fit them all in a few (10 say) large football stadiums if you piled them up (a sat is probably 5m³ at most, a stadium is 100x100x50m so 500000m³)
- MegaDeKay 3y agoThere have already been six "Unintentional high-speed collisions between active satellites and orbital debris" [0], the most recent of which was in 2021. There is more to worry about than just tracking satellites following "extremely well known paths". You could have a situation like Intelsat 29e [1] where a satellite is torn to pieces, creating a debris field with parts too small to track. You can't avoid what you can't see. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/new-video-of-intelsat-29e-satellite-reveals-dramatic-anomaly/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/new-video-of-intelsa...
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIf there are 500 billion satellites evenly distributed under an altitude of 1200km, each satellite would have 1km3 of space.
- zdragnar 3y agoGiven that low earth orbit satellites supposedly travel around 17,000 miles per hour, that is a frighteningly small amount of space. If we're voting, I say let's not get that crowded.
- signatoremo 3y agoThat means the satellites should be aware of each other positions, just like aircrafts. It’d take care of collision. The majority of satellites will be commercial, not military. There will be space control for them. Also may be not 500 billions, but how about 100 millions? So 5000 times fewer.
- zdragnar 3y agoI was thinking more if we needed to get through them in a rocket than if they crashed into each other
- acover 3y agoAren't they traveling much slower versus their orbital plane - basically how much drag they experience? For example, we travel 1600kmph due to the Earth's rotation.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThat's much better than cars doing 80mph a few feet apart on the freeway.
- zdragnar 3y agoRocket ships don't have to cross the plane cars travel perpendicular to the direction of their travel. That's a very big distinction.
- supercanuck 3y agoStarlink satellites are designed to manuever and burn up in the atmosphere once they have reached the end of their lifespan.
- taylorportman 3y agoWhat becomes of the satellite powder, do they seed clouds, reflect sunlight, etc. Especially to consider the question of maximum capacity.
- sbierwagen 3y agoStarlink satellites mass 300 kg each. There's about 5000 of them in orbit, so that's 1,500,000 kg. The Earth has about 5.15x10^18 kg of atmosphere. 5,130,000,000,000,000,000 kg of gas. If each satellite aerosolized completely (which it wouldn't, metals would rapidly precipitate out of the air) then they would make up a couple parts per trillion of the atmosphere. Way lower concentrations than cloud seeding. In contrast, routine operations of Air Force One emit around 41,000,000 kg of CO2 per year. (They fly not just the president, but his security detail, and the presidential limo to every foreign visit)
- ChatGTP 3y agoI don't know but maybe we'll start to see the earth cool a little :)
- jonbaer 3y agoEnough to eventually block out the sun :-) https://satellitetracker3d.com https://satellitetracker3d.com