[Starlink] 69,000 Users
David Lang
david at lang.hm
Wed Jun 30 20:20:28 EDT 2021
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> If that is the case, it doesn't help much that the average life span is a bit
> more than 5 years. When a train of satellite starts to degrade, they may just
> deorbit the entire train, even if some of the satellites in the train could
> still operate for a while.
>
> Or am I getting that wrong?
My point is that a train is already a variable number, so it's not line 1 train
== 1 orbit of satellites
They have had a number of failures and a few deliberate deorbits for testing.
the sateelites they have already launched are sufficient to provide global
coverage (except at the poles), but they plan to launch a LOT more, including
more into the current shell.
So I think it's going to be more a matter of graceful degredation and then
launching a new set to fill gaps than killing an entire train at a time.
If they are going to launch 400 or so on a single starship launch, there has to
be enough delta-v for them to not only space themselves out along one orbit, but
to shift the orbit east/west as well, which gives them a lot more flexibility
than you are assuming.
David Lang
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