# SpaceX Satellites Fall From Sky



## oobymach (Sep 16, 2022)

Courtesy of https://spaceweather.com/


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## R-T-B (Sep 16, 2022)

The low flying orbits are problematic for several reasons, but FYI, public safety isn't one of them.  The SpaceX starlink sats are too small to get down to ground without disintegrating.  The larger concern here is the longterm viability of the starlink service.


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## Space Lynx (Sep 22, 2022)

R-T-B said:


> The low flying orbits are problematic for several reasons, but FYI, public safety isn't one of them.  The SpaceX starlink sats are too small to get down to ground without disintegrating.  The larger concern here is the longterm viability of the starlink service.



Surely Elon Musk already knows how long each Starlink satellite is estimated to stay in its proper orbit before its natural descent? I am sure they ran the calculations before running this company, it must be long enough to turn a decent profit. 

I think the idea is really stupid personally. We should of instead had a competent government investing in fiber optics for everyone. Some small governments in Colorado have town run fiber optics. Seems like the smart idea to me.


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## dragontamer5788 (Sep 22, 2022)

R-T-B said:


> The larger concern here is the longterm viability of the starlink service.



I've discussed this before, but I think the orbit that SpaceX chose was too low, and that it degrades too quickly.

Events like this shows that Starlink is far more expensive than originally claimed. They're living off of cheap investor money right now, but come 5 to 10 year from now when more of these satellites fall out of the sky, they're gonna have to raise prices and launch thousands more satellites to replace them.



CallandorWoT said:


> Surely Elon Musk already knows how long each Starlink satellite is estimated to stay in its proper orbit before its natural descent?



Sure. So he takes investor money and pays himself. He's here to make money, not for others, but himself. The question is if the investors are smart enough to run the numbers.



> I am sure they ran the calculations before running this company, it must be long enough to turn a decent profit.



Why would any of Elon Musk's companies have to create a profit? Investors are in love with him and pay him handsome amounts of money even without any proofs of profits. As long as free money is coming in, there's no incentive for him to try to make a sustainable or profitable business.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 22, 2022)

R-T-B said:


> The low flying orbits are problematic for several reasons, but FYI, public safety isn't one of them.  The SpaceX starlink sats are too small to get down to ground without disintegrating.  The larger concern here is the longterm viability of the starlink service.


SpaceX has over 2300 3000 Starlink satellites in orbit currently, and more are going up. 38 is less than 2%. That network is generating a lot of money for SpaceX and replacing units that are rendered inoperable is part of the business model and was factored into the costs. They went into operations knowing full well this was going to be a thing.

EDIT; As someone pointed out below, there are many more than I last read about.


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## R-T-B (Sep 22, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> SpaceX has over 2300 Starlink satellites in orbit currently, and more are going up. 38 is less than 2%. That network is generating a lot of money for SpaceX and replacing units that are rendered inoperable is part of the business model and was factored into the costs. They went into operations knowing full well this was going to be a thing.


Yes, but I've seen some analysis of their launch costs vs predicted deorbiting metric.  tl;dr without outside cash infusion or massively reduced launch costs, present pricing is unsustainable long term.



dragontamer5788 said:


> Investors are in love with him


I think the luster is wearing thin as of the latest events, but I get what you are saying.


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## Shrek (Sep 22, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I think the idea is really stupid personally. We should of instead had a competent government investing in fiber optics for everyone. Some small governments in Colorado have town run fiber optics. Seems like the smart idea to me.



I'm in one of those Colorado towns, but fiber will not reach the boonies; interestingly I will not be moving to fiber as I get 500 Mbps on cable and it's cheaper than fiber.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 22, 2022)

R-T-B said:


> Yes, but I've seen some analysis of their launch costs vs predicted deorbiting metric. tl;dr without outside cash infusion or massively reduced launch costs, present pricing is unsustainable long term.


I think the full scope of the plan SpaceX has is being overlooked. As detailed by Space . com in the following article;








						Starlink satellites: Everything you need to know about the controversial internet megaconstellation
					

Are Starlink satellites a grand innovation or an astronomical menace?




					www.space.com
				



SpaceX has permission for 12,000 vehicles to go up already and is seeking approval for 30,000 more which they will likely get either in part or in full. Given the high level of adoption and the scope of potential world-wide availability, this is not something SpaceX will just drop. Long term viability is the goal and they seem to be edging close to that goal. Also remember, each launch put's 60 vehicles in orbit. So you divide the launch costs by 60. Then you have to examine the revenue generated by each vehicle. Each satellite can sustain approximately 2200 data connections. That's more than $240,000 per month, per satellite. And they are near 100% capacity. That's $14million per month, per launch vehicle. Those rocket launches pay for themselves quickly and when you factor in that SpaceX is making more money from the network than it is spending, it easy to see how sustainable it already is.


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## InVasMani (Sep 22, 2022)

So they need better AI to herd their sheep a bit better for low orbit got it.


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## Kissamies (Sep 22, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> SpaceX has over 2300 Starlink satellites in orbit currently, and more are going up. 38 is less than 2%. That network is generating a lot of money for SpaceX and replacing units that are rendered inoperable is part of the business model and was factored into the costs. They went into operations knowing full well this was going to be a thing.


Oh they have that many? Then that small failure rate is understandable IMO.


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## dragontamer5788 (Sep 22, 2022)

Lenne said:


> Oh they have that many? Then that small failure rate is understandable IMO.








						Jonathan's Space Report | Space Statistics
					

Jonathan McDowell's new homepage



					planet4589.org
				




EDIT: Had another link, it went to this other link. Might as well link the direct stats.

3347 total satellites, 3029 working, so roughly 10% have fallen or otherwise gone defunct. Maybe 50 were tests, so that's fine, but... that's a growing and bigger error rate.

------

These are prototype / higher orbits too. Later orbits will be even lower and will fail / fall out of the sky more often.


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## caroline! (Sep 22, 2022)

Man, the amount of trash orbiting our planet is insane.


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## Totally (Sep 22, 2022)

dragontamer5788 said:


> Why would any of Elon Musk's companies have to create a profit? Investors are in love with him and pay him handsome amounts of money even without any proofs of profits. As long as free money is coming in, there's no incentive for him to try to make a sustainable or profitable business.



Because he's going to have to pay those investors back at some point.


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## Kissamies (Sep 22, 2022)

caroline! said:


> Man, the amount of trash orbiting our planet is insane.


Hey, but it's not our problem  let the aliens deal with that.


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## dragontamer5788 (Sep 22, 2022)

Totally said:


> Because he's going to have to pay those investors back at some point.



That's not how equity works yo.

Bonds/debt must be paid back. Equity (aka stocks) does not. Equity is simply a promised cut of future profits (aka: the dividend, whenever it occurs). If those profits never occur, the company goes bankrupt and all the shareholders are stuck with $0 / share.

Moviepass never paid back diddly squat to its shareholders. Nor Pets.com, or any other of the famous IPOs of the Tech Bubble / other failures over the years. Bondholders get some of their money back (even in bankruptcy), shareholders are way lower priority and often get nothing if the company fails.

That's why stocks are considered risky. If it works, you get a share of the profits. If it fails, you get back nothing.


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## R-T-B (Sep 22, 2022)

caroline! said:


> Man, the amount of trash orbiting our planet is insane.


Doubtful this will contribute to that problem much as they orbit so low that complete disintegration is pretty certain.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 22, 2022)

dragontamer5788 said:


> 3347 total satellites, 3029 working, so roughly 10% have fallen or otherwise gone defunct. Maybe 50 were tests, so that's fine, but... that's a growing and bigger error rate.
> 
> ------


Ah nice find! Even with those numbers, 3029 x 2200 x $110 = $733,018,000 approx. That's per month world-wide. Even assuming only 90% global network utilization, that's still $659,000,000 per month. With waiting lists still a thing in some area's, we can safely conclude that customer sell through and network satuation is above 95%. Launch vehicles, the cost of the satellites and ground operations might account for 25% to 30% of that per launch. So yeah that's not shabby. Very sustainable right now even with 10% vehicle losses. With the Gen2 satellites nearing deployment status, the user connection capacity will only go up(rumored to be about 3800 connections) and thus a greater level of revenue.


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## The King (Sep 22, 2022)

Not sure if some of those satellites went back to the future or the past!


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## mb194dc (Sep 22, 2022)

It's an interesting idea. Certainly bringing open Internet to very remote areas, war zones etc. Can you get $100  a month out of customers in a lot of these places? 

My guess is the cost will simply be too much for anywhere with cell coverage. 4g seems to provide similar speeds / 5g is much superior.


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## Mussels (Sep 22, 2022)

caroline! said:


> Man, the amount of trash orbiting our planet is insane.


Which is why these have a high failure rate, they deliberately deploy low so they crash rather than have orbiting junk

If nothing else, that approach is respectable - they're taking a fiancial hit to reduce orbital junk which will bite every country in the ass, later



mb194dc said:


> It's an interesting idea. Certainly bringing open Internet to very remote areas, war zones etc. Can you get $100  a month out of customers in a lot of these places?
> 
> My guess is the cost will simply be too much for anywhere with cell coverage. 4g seems to provide similar speeds / 5g is much superior.


A 100Mb connection for $100USD is the sort of thing that's massively cheaper than cellular/mobile network alternatives, and something an entire community could rally around.


You could run an entire town off 100Mb and share that cost, if it's used for infrastructure level features - plenty of americans are on <5Mb DSL right now and happy, so you could split that between 50 people and with decent QoS have it work just fine


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 22, 2022)

Mussels said:


> A 100Mb connection for $100USD is the sort of thing that's massively cheaper than cellular/mobile network alternatives, and something an entire community could rally around.


And there are no data caps or limits.


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## Bomby569 (Sep 22, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Which is why these have a high failure rate, they deliberately deploy low so they crash rather than have orbiting junk



Just because the orbit is low doesn't mean you have intention to crash them, they can orbit low "forever".  It matters more the type of orbit, and all sorts of other conditions.

Just assuming stuff, but i think the low orbit was to avoid the space junk, as they were so many it's hard to account for it.


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## mb194dc (Sep 22, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Which is why these have a high failure rate, they deliberately deploy low so they crash rather than have orbiting junk
> 
> If nothing else, that approach is respectable - they're taking a fiancial hit to reduce orbital junk which will bite every country in the ass, later
> 
> ...



It really isn't, not in the UK anyway. You can get 5g unlimited internet here for £50 a month (Vodafone Gigabcube), get 150-300Mb down and 10-40 up. I'm testing it myself at the moment. Even on the 4g Network you can get 70Mb odd and that's a cheaper package I think than the 5g.


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## Bomby569 (Sep 22, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> You can get 5g unlimited internet here for £50 a month



we can get it for 34.99€ here, that's not amazing at all. You're being robbed.


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## P4-630 (Sep 22, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> You can get 5g unlimited internet here for £50 a month


Here unlimited isn't really unlimited imo, depends what you pay but plans starting around 20GB "unlimited" at full speed and after that either the speed will slow down massively or you have to send a text message and you get 1GB and so on you will stay texting to get 1 more GB everytime until the next month.... That's not what I call "unlimited" ....


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## r9 (Sep 22, 2022)

You got to love the scientists they know to explain the shit out of everything after the facts just don't ask them to predict anything.


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## Easy Rhino (Sep 22, 2022)

Wow 1200 Gigwatts? Imagine a technology that could capture even a fraction of that and store it for later use!


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## Denver (Sep 22, 2022)

Who will pay if space junk kills someone?


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## Mussels (Sep 22, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> It really isn't, not in the UK anyway. You can get 5g unlimited internet here for £50 a month (Vodafone Gigabcube), get 150-300Mb down and 10-40 up. I'm testing it myself at the moment. Even on the 4g Network you can get 70Mb odd and that's a cheaper package I think than the 5g.


Not sure about the UK, but here in Au 4G and 5G do not have public IP addresses, they're all CGNAT. You cant use them for a lot of gaming or advanced things because without incoming traffic working, shit just breaks.
No remote management, no home VPN, no logging into your NAS, no game servers, blah blah etc.


And then uhh... LTE and 5G just suck horribly for load pings. seriously. They're unusuable when they're actually downloading or uploading.


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## Bomby569 (Sep 22, 2022)

Denver said:


> Who will pay if space junk kills someone?



stuff like this will burn on re-entry, not big enough.

Space insurance


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## bug (Sep 22, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> Surely Elon Musk already knows how long each Starlink satellite is estimated to stay in its proper orbit before its natural descent? I am sure they ran the calculations before running this company, it must be long enough to turn a decent profit.
> 
> *I think the idea is really stupid personally. *We should of instead had a competent government investing in fiber optics for everyone. Some small governments in Colorado have town run fiber optics. Seems like the smart idea to me.


The defenders at Azovstal would disagree.


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## Denver (Sep 22, 2022)

Bomby569 said:


> stuff like this will burn on re-entry, not big enough.
> 
> Space insurance


This is not quite true, the SpaceX junk crashed on a farm in Brazil, it only didn't kill anyone because it happened to fall in an uninhabited area:









						Lixo espacial encontrado no Paraná pode ser da SpaceX
					

A Agência Espacial Brasileira (AEB) confirmou que o objeto metálico de cerca de 4 metros encontrado no dia 16 de março é um pedaço de lixo espacial




					www.istoedinheiro.com.br
				




And also in Australia: https://aventurasnahistoria.uol.com...cobre-lixo-espacial-em-pasto-de-ovelhas.phtml


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## mb194dc (Sep 22, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Not sure about the UK, but here in Au 4G and 5G do not have public IP addresses, they're all CGNAT. You cant use them for a lot of gaming or advanced things because without incoming traffic working, shit just breaks.
> No remote management, no home VPN, no logging into your NAS, no game servers, blah blah etc.
> 
> 
> And then uhh... LTE and 5G just suck horribly for load pings. seriously. They're unusuable when they're actually downloading or uploading.



Yes, true. Though I think Star Link will be similar for ping. In my case it's for work and we're going to use our own VPN which is data-centre based (already existed before the new site) connection to get a static external IP like that. I think some UK providers mobile do provide an external IP but vodafone don't. Vodafone bandwidth is far better than the others though.


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## Bomby569 (Sep 22, 2022)

Denver said:


> This is not quite true, the SpaceX junk crashed on a farm in Brazil, it only didn't kill anyone because it happened to fall in an uninhabited area:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



space-x, not these satellites


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## caroline! (Sep 22, 2022)

The idea is good though $100 for the service is simply too much in a country where $85 is the monthly wage. Perhaps when there are more sats the price will go down but I doubt that's gonna happen, this was made with first world countries in mind, sadly.
I wonder why though, these countries already have a more than decent network infrastructure so this kind of seems like a waste.

About "having connection in a warzone" I want to believe _The Agency_ equips their mercenaries with decent tech already, and they have their own satellites, so... no need for starlink for their guys.


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## R-T-B (Sep 22, 2022)

Denver said:


> Who will pay if space junk kills someone?


No one cause it won't.



Denver said:


> This is not quite true, the SpaceX junk crashed on a farm in Brazil,


SpaceX junk != starlink sat.  That was likely part of a heavy mission booster.  Those do come back from time to time, though everyone tries to avoid it.



caroline! said:


> About "having connection in a warzone" I want to believe _The Agency_ equips their mercenaries with decent tech already, and they have their own satellites, so... no need for starlink for their guys.


On the other hand starlink is supporting major ISPs in Ukraine right now from being cutoff, so...


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## P4-630 (Sep 22, 2022)

caroline! said:


> About "having connection in a warzone" I want to believe _The Agency_ equips their mercenaries with decent tech already, and they have their own satellites, so... no need for starlink for their guys.


You don't watch/read the world news about Ukraine and such?....


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## caroline! (Sep 22, 2022)

P4-630 said:


> You don't watch/read the world news about Ukraine and such?....


I'd be lying if I said yes.


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## Count von Schwalbe (Sep 22, 2022)

One thing it seems many have not noticed:





They cruise at 600 km, not 210. This issue only affected the units being launched - so this could destroy up to 59 each time. A mere drop in the bucket, especially if SpaceX gets better at predicting them. 

One thing about Starlink is that they do not offer service in urban areas - because these areas have decent infrastructure already. They are focusing on areas too sparsely populated for decent speeds. Also areas like Ukraine, where infrastructure is destroyed/cut off, both military and (just as importantly) civilians can have decent internet available. An article I read said that their contact (an Ukrainian artilleryman) said that his unit could play CoD mobile using it - it can't be that bad. 



caroline! said:


> I'd be lying if I said yes.


Read up on this - most interesting. 








						UkraineX: How Elon Musk’s space satellites changed the war on the ground
					

From artillery strikes to Zoom calls, the tech billionaire’s internet service has become a lifeline in the fight against Russia.




					www.politico.eu


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