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One of the coolest things about Iridium was that they demonstrated it was possible, today, to manufacture satellites in an assembly line fashion at enormous per
by InclinedPlane 12y ago
One of the coolest things about Iridium was that they demonstrated it was possible, today, to manufacture satellites in an assembly line fashion at enormous per satellite cost reductions. If orbital launch gets cheaper, which seems very likely, that will become highly relevant, and shows that we can take advantage of cheap access to space, even today.
- DeanCollinsNY 12y agoSure but at what "potential catastrophe cost"? When something "goes wrong" with one of these satellites and wipes out the latest CIA satellite etc or wipes out a pay tv satellite....who is liable and to what ends?
- InclinedPlane 12y agoThe cheaper it is to launch, the easier it is to clean up orbital debris. The risk from debris in orbit isn't from too many satellites, space is pretty damned empty, the risk comes from thousands upon thousands of fragments, some of them created intentionally. Moreover, as it gets cheaper to launch satellites it also becomes more and more possible to add extra weight to them, to put in backup systems which deorbit the satellites if they become inoperable.