> Except for choosing an orbit that degrades relatively quickly. You answered your own question. More specifically, a Kessler syndrome is the problem that occ

> Except for choosing an orbit that degrades relatively quickly. You answered your own question. More specifically, a Kessler syndrome is the problem that occurs when satellites collide and shatter into clouds of sand-sized particles, and then the sand-sized particles impact more satellites and shatter them, leading to a cascade that clears the whole orbit. Because small things deorbit faster than large things (square-cube scaling), this simply cannot happen at orbits that are low enough, at the Starlink deployment orbits if there was a catastrophic collision, most of the material would be out of orbit in a matter of days. At the even lower orbits of V2 constellation, most of the material will be out of orbit in a matter of hours. The reason Kessler syndrome gets mentioned with Starlink is that the original system design had the early sats at 1100km and most of the constellation at ~800km. This would have been really bad, because that's about the worst possible orbit for collisions, as it's just high enough not to be swept clean by the atmosphere, but low enough that orbital velocities are very high and collisions are more likely. After the concerns were raised, SpaceX modified their design to be not dangerous.