I missed reading Starlink's latest conjunction report when it came out a bit over a month ago.
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@sundogplanets Collisions at all will be terrible, but at what point do we reach critical mass for a runaway chain reaction?
@swordgeek Oh we're beyond the limit. Some parts of orbit are already in Kessler Syndrome, but the early stages are slow.
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@Rin3d @sundogplanets Do you understand that the person you answer is a specialist of the topic, and if I remember correctly has been investigating actual debris from Starlink satellites that fell on the ground (see https://thenarwhal.ca/space-junk-falling-50th-parallel/, even with a photo of her with space debris)?
I cannot be sure you are a man, but your message looks like a strong contender for the worst mansplaining of the year.@BrKloeckner Thank you.
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Oh gosh I just did the math on the maneuver rate, which I couldn't bring myself to do earlier. More than 207,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 6 months.
That means that somewhere in the Starlink megaconstellation, a satellite is performing a collision avoidance maneuver EVERY 1.25 MINUTES (EVERY 75 SECONDS)
AAAHHHH I'M SURE THAT'S FINE.
And now I find myself reading about asteroid collisional cascades. For no particular reason...
Small meteors hit the earth all the time, iirc? Now imagine a not-so-tiny one sideswiping the atmosphere and taking out a whole swathe of satellites, sending them careening in every direction...
On the upside, gps tracking of people's cars and phones will no longer be possible.
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@BrKloeckner Thank you.
@sundogplanets You're welcome. Sorry you have to put up with that, I assumed you should not also have to carry the weight of letting such people know it is not ok.
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@sundogplanets You're welcome. Sorry you have to put up with that, I assumed you should not also have to carry the weight of letting such people know it is not ok.
@BrKloeckner I started to write a response and deleted it. Thanks for writing a good one for me!
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@swordgeek Oh we're beyond the limit. Some parts of orbit are already in Kessler Syndrome, but the early stages are slow.
@sundogplanets @swordgeek wait wait what?? That's a lede you have to tell us about!
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Oh gosh I just did the math on the maneuver rate, which I couldn't bring myself to do earlier. More than 207,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 6 months.
That means that somewhere in the Starlink megaconstellation, a satellite is performing a collision avoidance maneuver EVERY 1.25 MINUTES (EVERY 75 SECONDS)
AAAHHHH I'M SURE THAT'S FINE.
And now I find myself reading about asteroid collisional cascades. For no particular reason...
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@sundogplanets @swordgeek wait wait what?? That's a lede you have to tell us about!
@fiigvam @swordgeek We're beyond the runaway limit. If there's a collision in altitudes beyond the runaway limit, that means that debris pieces will continue causing more collisions. But the timescale for those secondary collisions could be years. But the rate will continue to increase...
Here's a recent paper by Hugh Lewis and Donald Kessler (yes, that Kessler) that's super dense but talks about it. Figure 16. https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/305/SDC9-paper305.pdf
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@sundogplanets Are you aware of any organizations working to reduce the chances of Kessler syndrome happening above us?
@LeDiva @sundogplanets Kessler syndrome is a fair thing to worry about at higher orbits but at the low orbit that Starlink satellites live at, it would only be an issue for 1 to 5 years. Not that it wouldn't be a *massive* impact to be unable to get into space for 1 to 5 years... but it would not be an end to spacetravel for the rest of human history kind of event.
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@davidtheeviloverlord @sundogplanets They are in so low orbits they de-orbit themselves if they ran out of fuel, or for some other reason couldn't safe themselves
@falken @davidtheeviloverlord @sundogplanets In 1 to 5 years they will self-deorbit. Causing a collision cascade for 1 to 5 years essentially would shut off access to space for 1 to 5 years. That... would not be fun.
They're also supposed to be de-orbited if they are running out of maneuvering fuel, using the last of that fuel. That's great in theory until it doesn't work.
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They also list 4 "disposal failures" which are satellites that died before SpaceX purposefully chucked them into the atmosphere. This includes Starlink 34343 which either exploded or got hit by debris a couple months ago. https://keeptrack.space/deep-dive/starlink-34343
4 out of thousands of launched satellites is pretty good. But when you have nearly 11,000 satellites, you have to operate COMPLETELY PERFECTLY every minute of every day, forever.
Please don't fuck up more than you already have, SpaceX.
With the constant hailstones of Starlink debris striking populated areas, the likelihood of someone capturing CPU modules that contains private keys for the whole operation increases...
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@sundogplanets say it does happen with a couple of these star link satellites? It'll be a cascading event, but how long will it last for? Months? Years? Decades?
Depends on how high the debris are orbiting. This page suggests that 600km high would take decades, past 800km would take centuries, and anything past 1000km is effectively up there for good. Starlink satellites orbit at about 550km. space.com said something about SpaceX having to lower them down to 480km. -
Oh gosh I just did the math on the maneuver rate, which I couldn't bring myself to do earlier. More than 207,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 6 months.
That means that somewhere in the Starlink megaconstellation, a satellite is performing a collision avoidance maneuver EVERY 1.25 MINUTES (EVERY 75 SECONDS)
AAAHHHH I'M SURE THAT'S FINE.
And now I find myself reading about asteroid collisional cascades. For no particular reason...
@sundogplanets Do you know https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/ ?
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@sundogplanets Do you know https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/ ?
@jesterchen Yes, I helped make that.
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@LeDiva @sundogplanets Kessler syndrome is a fair thing to worry about at higher orbits but at the low orbit that Starlink satellites live at, it would only be an issue for 1 to 5 years. Not that it wouldn't be a *massive* impact to be unable to get into space for 1 to 5 years... but it would not be an end to spacetravel for the rest of human history kind of event.
@badtux That still sounds pretty bad though?
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@jesterchen Yes, I helped make that.
@sundogplanets Oops.
️Thanks for that.
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@badtux That still sounds pretty bad though?
@LeDiva Pretty bad. But not an end to spacetravel for the rest of human history kind of bad.
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@fiigvam @swordgeek We're beyond the runaway limit. If there's a collision in altitudes beyond the runaway limit, that means that debris pieces will continue causing more collisions. But the timescale for those secondary collisions could be years. But the rate will continue to increase...
Here's a recent paper by Hugh Lewis and Donald Kessler (yes, that Kessler) that's super dense but talks about it. Figure 16. https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/305/SDC9-paper305.pdf
@sundogplanets @swordgeek oh interesting! So regardless of the in orbit maneuvers that starlink is actively performing, there is at least some patch of orbit that is in slow but increasing cascade Kessler syndrome?
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I missed reading Starlink's latest conjunction report when it came out a bit over a month ago. I just skimmed through it and I think I need to go lay down for a while. It's terrifying how close we are to major collisions in orbit all the time... (I especially love the note about how space-track.org being offline briefly caused them to miss a potential collision... SO FRAGILE AAUGH)
Article summarizing the report here: https://ca.pcmag.com/networking/16653/260-starlink-satellites-burn-up-in-earths-atmosphere-as-more-head-for-fiery-ends
Full report here: https://www.scribd.com/document/1057502572/SpaceX-Gen1-Gen2-Semi-Annual-Report-7-1-26
@sundogplanets It's because of the potential for collision that SpaceX programmed their satellites to deorbit and burn up at the end of their useful lives rather than move into the usual 'parking' orbit.
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