this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
183 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
60112 readers
2132 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Okay but at least they have their dishes out there for 20+ years. While musk has his starlink for 4 years before self destructing in the atmosphere. Why not fine him for wasting resources and have his dishes last 15-20years
End-of-life satellites must either be deorbited or moved to a graveyard orbit. The issue isn't about wasted resources - it's having inert, untrackable debris in an orbit that could be used by others, rendering it useless and dangerous. It's not an issue for Starlink because they encounter a much greater atmospheric drag compared to most telecommunication satellites, so that issue is fixed with time.
Great clarification.
Adding onto what the other commenter said, LEO satellites (the orbit Starlink uses) just don't have the same operational lifespan as geostationary satellite (the orbit of this Dish Network satellite). They experience a ton more drag because they sit under 1k km, while geostationary are up at 36k km and as such LEO satellites require way more fuel to stay in orbit.
This is not to say 4 years is not on the lower end of LEO satellites which are usually expected to last 7 years, but geostationary satellites are over double the expected life span at 15-20 years. Finally, even though Starlink is more wasteful, their satellites will fall out of orbit pretty damn fast (within a couple years) compared to geostationary satellites (30+ years).
Source: Google and KSP