[krisroadruck]

It would be incredibly unlikely for there to be enough competition at a grand enough scale for it to become a problem. Space is just very big. Earth's surface is ~197 million sq miles. If you move up to a LEO shell at around 550 miles up, the surface area of that sphere is 34% larger than that.

If you were to distribute 100,000 satellites across that shell, each one would have 2,600 square miles to itself. That's like having a single car in the entire state of Delaware. Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane. You can now multiply your 265 million sq miles by 100x.

The issue isn't space, it's traffic management. Satellites zipping around at 17,000 MPH would make one hell of a debris field if even one pair of them collide. That's the Kessler Syndrome boogie man everyone is worried about.

[joezydeco]

The Crash Clock is currently at 5.5 days.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/kessler-syndrome-crash-clock

[wolvoleo]

> Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane. You can now multiply your 265 million sq miles by 100x.

Yes but don't forget that orbits decline and only satellites with onboard propulsion have the ability to boost them back up. Everything else like cubesats and random debris doesn't and thus doesn't "stay in their lane".

[AshleyGrant]

> Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane.

Sure, but satellites in a higher plane will need to navigate satellites below them during de-orbit. Conversely, satellites in a lower plane will likely need to avoid non-functional satellites that are uncontrolled as their orbit decays.

[krisroadruck]

How much mental bandwidth do you put into not hitting a car that's in a different city? Even if all 100 layers collapsed to one, that's still only 100 satellites in 2600 square miles. NYC is ~300 sq miles. There are about 2.2 million cars there. I feel like you still aren't grasping how much space we are talking about.

[zwily]

But Starlink satellites are low enough that we don’t worry too much about Kessler Syndrome at that altitude, right?

[wolvoleo]

Orbital collisions are very energetic and definitely do launch debris into higher orbits with much longer decay times

[anvuong]

But crashing in LEO is not as disastrous as GEO or higher. It's an unstable orbit so eventually everything will deorbit, crash, and burn. May take a while though.