[Starlink] Re: AI IN SPACE: Post from Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

[Kenneth Porter <shiva@sewingwitch.com>]

It's all geometry. Recall that the Earth is 8000 miles in diameter. LEO 
is just a few hundred  miles above the surface, so you'll spend half 
your orbit in shadow. If you put the satellite much higher and in a 
tilted orbit, it spends much less time in shadow. Much like how the 
Earth and Moon rarely eclipse each other.

Lagrange points L4 and L5 are advantageous because the orbits are 
stable, compared to the other Lagrange points. The downside is that 
they're 250,000 miles away, in the same orbit as the moon. One leads the 
moon by 60 degrees while the other lags it. They'd be good if you used 
lunar material to build your satellites, but bad if you raise the 
material from the Earth. A geosync orbit is about 22,000 miles above sea 
level (26,000 radius) but do you need to maintain position over the same 
point on the surface?

A medium Earth orbit (MEO) is probably a good compromise for 
Earth-sourced materials.

Low Earth orbit is crowded but cheap and suffers the shadow problem. 
Probably not a good place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Earth_orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit