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How does this increase the cost of sattelites in geostationary orbit (mentioned in the article)? Geo orbit is 36,000 KM up. Low earth orbit (LEO), I can understand. I would also be surprised if the rapid dissambley was anything other than a strike - why else would it disintegrate (wether it was natural or not).

Generally satellites destined for GEO are initially launched into LEO, then (once everything is checked out) moved to a transfer orbit before finally ending up in its GEO slot. A GEO satellite can spend up to 2 weeks in LEO, sometimes longer if there is a problem, hence the increased risk.

Actually GEO satellites are delivered to a GTO, an elliptical orbit roughly between LEO and GEO. They then expend fuel at the top of the orbit to raise and circularise this (expecting the satellite to raise from a circular LEO orbit would be too expensive in fuel). Once on station they use a small amount of fuel per year to hold position, before using their remaining fuel to boost them up to a graveyard orbit at end-of-life. If there’s an issue with the satellite during the GTO phase then all it needs to do is alter its orbit so that it grazes the atmosphere each time. It should then burn up by itself.

The problem with this case is that the launch vehicle was empty of fuel once the satellite was in GTO. You need a larger, more expensive rocket which has enough capacity to deliver the satellite payload to GTO, then dispose of its self by changing orbit to either burn up or park out of the way of anything else in a graveyard orbit.

Recently saw several of his swarms fly by. Quite apart from being annoying to astronomers, crowding LEO with loads of little satellites make the issues of space debris much worse, as the likelihood of collisions increases rapidly. Fewer, bigger satellites are much easier to manage (also not trivial) than swarms of little ones. Space may be big (you might think it's a long way to the chemist, but that's peanuts to space), but we only have a little speck of it, surrounding our pale blue dot, at our disposal.

Let’s educate you a little, or try

Starlink sits in very low earth orbit, below the operational height of almost all other sats.

Due to this low orbit, sats fall back to earth within 5 year max for the high test ones and with 3 months at launch orbits even if they lose all power. This is also the reason nobody else is using these orbits, the atmospheric drag is large at this altitude.

As for observations, when starship flys it will be cheaper to Launch a telescope into orbit than to ship it up a remote mountain. Telescopes should be in space and not below 100km of atmosphere.

Telescope should be put where the cost/performance tradeoffs work out best - and space is an incredibly expensive and difficult place to put things. It's instructive to compare the history of the James Webb with the current slew of ground based adaptive optics giant telescopes (see e.g. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.2875). As with many things, there is no simple answer to space-vs-ground telescopes.

The point is that if Starship works out (which it probably will, as Musk seems to have the money and determination to do it), it will drastically change the cost of putting things into orbit. And also make it easier to launch larger items - a lot of the problems with the JWST are to do with having to fold it up into a small fairing for launch and then get it to unfold itself.

To recapitulate:

a) any existing observatories should be abandoned and millions spent on moving that infrastructure into orbit - because, as we all know, science is not criminally undervalued in modern times anywhere in the world and always receives adequate funding;

b) all scientists should now rely on His Muskyness and other US-based launcher companies, regardless of not only their budgets, but availability, subject to trade and technology embargoes (maybe this is news to you, but not all people in countries the US has embargoes on are evil) ;

c) similarly, enthusiasts should either crowdsource money for their own space telescopes or just live with Elon's space grafitti. Because there is no value in the sense of wonder produced by tangibly observing space at one's convenience, and definitely not in inspiring the next generation of scientists.

Techbroism is rare here on El Reg forums, but when it shows, oh boy how does it show.

wtf is Techbroism?

Irrational belief that you, and people like you (all male), should be allowed to do precisely what you want because you know what is best for everybody else due to your enormous intelligence and brass balls.

I am not pointing any fingers, just offering a definition.

"when starship flys"

Providing it can get through the litter layer unscathed.

As someone working on remote sensing imaging I am well aware of the different orbits. Despite this, crowding lower orbits with tens of thousands of satellites (not just the starlink swarm) will add to risks

"as Musk seems to have the money and determination to do it"

.

"As Musk seems to have the money, arrogance and utter disregard for others to do it"

Tftfy

None of this is good. The main "could be worse" factor is that the perigee is quite low, so the orbit should decay reasonably fast. With a perigee of 800km instead of 400km, the junk would have stayed in orbit for decades rather than years.

It's already been up for nine years and it spends most of its time much higher than 400. These fragments are going to be around for a while.

Why was this useless thing still up there since 2011? With an apogee of 3,606 km and perigee of 422 km it wouldn't have taken much oomph to de-orbit itself, if someone had given it the capability. That's pretty crappy design.

with less mass to each piece, wont its orbit just decay all the faster?

On an idle pondering, has anybody ever experimented with laser beams on space objects using a satellite in orbit rather than a ground borne lase (like those boffins of an Antipodean nature)?

Seems like we could do with a few space lasers at a very high altitude to give objects the nudge they need to get out of the way or even de-orbit quicker.

Paris - because of Space (will LOHAN ever happen?)

But how will you provide the (obligatory) sharks with a supply of oxygen?

in principle, possibly. I think it is one of those "surface area that presents for air resistance vs. mass" things. But when in orbit there is the variable density with height issue too. So I think everything can get very non-linear so not much change in distance from the earth can lead to radically different lifetimes. Furthermore, if it was an explosion (residual fuel? pressure tank?) then some bits might be moved into orbits that will decay quicker and other lumps the opposite.

But the perigee at least seems fairly low (422 km) and the ISS orbit (~350 km) requires periodic boosts due to atmospheric drag so, notwithstanding the non-linearity at least it seems the pieces are in the ballpark range to get some drag every orbit...

To give it the oomph you wanted, the rocket would have had to carry more fuel. That would require a bigger rocket, which would require even more fuel. That might require an even bigger rocket, and more fuel, etc. etc. Or what you're wanting to launch would have to be lighter. Naturally, the people behind Spekt-R went with the heavier satelllite, and no extra fuel.

Until there are some agreed international rules, that say, hey you need to bring your rocket/satellite at end of life back down or else, then people wont do it because it costs a shite load. Every kg you want to carry up, whether that's extra fuel for the way down or extra satellite mass, costs you about 10kg of fuel, which affects your rocket and ups your cost massively. Naturally, you carry as little as possible. Unless the rules get into place INTERNATIONALLY, this isnt going to change...

So Russia is parking its tanks on the USA's lawn?

Same shit, different year...

Is LEO US property?