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by superkuh 263 days ago
Short lifetime and quick re-entry is a great feature of vLEO constellations. No long term space junk. Compare that to MEO or GEO where sats are there pretty much forever (hundreds to thousands of years). Or even high LEO with many tens of years.
2 comments
randyrand 262 days ago
It’s weird to hear the term “forever” to refer to thousands of years in the context of space.
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whazor 263 days ago
Yes, it is much better to error on the side of losing satellites, versus making future space travel impossible.
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JumpCrisscross 263 days ago
> versus making future space travel impossible

Not a real thing. (It was proposed as a possibility. We searched the parameter space. Mostly in the context of militaries trying to figure out how to deny orbits to an adversary. It's really difficult, to the point that even if one were intentionally trying to cause Kessler cascades, they wouldn't deny an adversary access to orbit.)

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MikeNotThePope 263 days ago
Although it could become risky enough that the cost mitigation becomes untenable. For example, I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood so dangerous that I have to pay to cover my house in thick armor plating just to avoid being collateral damage of the violence shenanigans outside my front door.
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JumpCrisscross 263 days ago
> it could become risky enough that the cost mitigation becomes untenable

What cost mitigation are you referring to?

> thick armor plating

It makes about as much sense to armor a satellite as it does a plane. (Much less, actually, given the fuel costs are higher, energies in orbit are higher and densities orders of magnitude lower--to approximate the global density of airplanes in LEO, we'd need something like 4mm satellites up there. To approximate the density of controlled airspaces in LEO, we need about 10x that.)

> violence shenanigans outside my front door

Where the closest object to your front door is 10+ miles away.

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tshaddox 263 days ago
I’m not sure you’re describing a different scenario, since I don’t think anyone was ever only concerned about a future where there’s a 100% chance of a launch being prevented by debris.
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