Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 9 months agoYeah, if they want to make satellites last longer, they could go a bit higher in their orbits. The option is there.
But they specifically don’t want to do that because ensuring a 5 year service life means you are required to continue buying more satellites from them every 5 years. Literally burning resources into nothingness just to pursue a predatory subscription model.
It also helps their case that LEO has much lower latency than mid or high orbit but I refuse to believe that that is their primary driving concern behind this and not the former.
LEO does offer legitimate advantages not just to latency but also for minimizing the abandoned space junk left in orbit. The satellites will deorbit fairly quickly after running out of fuel.
Though I’m sure you’re correct about the main reason for the choice.
Who’s buying satellites?
SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and user…
Isn’t that part of the grift?
At the time it looked like one of the main reasons to launch Starlink was to provide SpaceX with a new market, much larger than the usual space launching stuff. Also this meant Felon could get subsidies through 2 different companies.
Isn’t that part of the grift?
Isn’t what?
I mean the reason for starlink was that they could, and they could do it for cheaper than anyone else because they would be launching at cost.
Also, falcon doesn’t really get subsidies for launching. SpaceX got a grant for the rural broadband infrastructure thing, but that’s like a one time thing, it doesn’t really pay for ongoing launches.
Venator@lemmy.nz 9 months ago
That would also make latency worse and the signal weaker.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Well you wouldn’t want to put them much higher, but if you raised their orbit by say 40%, they’d be getting significantly less atmospheric drag. It could probably extend their life by 15 years. And yeah, they’re be 40% further away, so slightly more latency. Perhaps going from 70 ms ping to 100 ms ping. Not awesome, but definitely not a huge problem.