Orbital debris reentry

i have set the magnetic shields over our house, but only have 6 hours worth of power left

 

I also saw those two different locations a few hours ago. But they are not necessarily in conflict. From the displayed charts, they appear to be on the same orbital ground track. Remember that there is a very considerable distance from where incandescent ablation begins, to where the large pieces plop or spash down. We are still waiting for more detail information.

Do remember that several weeks ago, Musk missed a Washington State home by about 50 feet, quite far downrange from the many meteor cluster videos:



SpaceX rocket junk streaked spectacularly across the Pacific Northwest sky. Here’s the science behind the extraordinary show | The Seattle Times

After fireballs streaked across sky, space-junk sleuths got busy — and hit the jackpot in Washington | The Seattle Times

 

i had to go to skylab wiki, was quite a sensation in australia

 

In Texas, the call it "derbris."

 

i was aiming for mirror lego

 

Another year? Good. I completely missed this one, have got to build a better net with a longer handle.

 

Big as a 10 story bldg?
.

 

What goes up.....

 

Human beings manage to muck up EVERYTHING that they touch eventually.

The current obsession with Internet service has resulted in one company putting what I think will eventually be near to ONE THOUSAND small satellites just to relay Internet signals.......or at least that is what they say.

This doesn't seem like a really good thing to me.

Is there any central agency who TELLS people doing this what orbit they can occupy to keep from running into each other ?
I highly doubt it........and it seems like just a matter of time until it turns into a disaster.

And all just so that the native tribes in Africa can get their daily Twitter fix.

 

Space is pretty big.....hence the name....but yeah...humans have to have cheap, low latency internet so that they can play all of those first person shooter games.

Musk isn't the only person looking to put lotsa satellites into LEO....and the number of satellites that Starlink wants to loft is closer to 40,000.....and no....that's not a typo.
I've heard of numbers as high as 42,000.
Starlink currently has a regulatory OK from the FCC to operate something like 2800 satellites in various polar (birdcage) orbits, and the ITU also got some kind of say.
I'm sure that the FAA is involved as well, but only for the first 300,000 feet or so, and then only in issuing and enforcing NOTAMs and keeping quadcopter operators at bay.

Fun Fact: Starlink is reportedly named after the novel "The Fault in Our Stars" which I can report was only slightly better than the movie.....meaning that the movie was actually pretty good - ESPECIALLY by modern standards.

Musk can give the FCC the middle finger when it comes to orbiting satellites, but somehow the FCC got the weird idea that they have regulatory grunt when it comes to the stuff emitting FROM the satellites, which may or may not be true in real life.
HOWEVER (comma!) internet is a two way sorta thing and the FCC DOES have regulatory power over terrestrial ground stations, so it pays to play nice with them....ESPECIALLY if you haven't yet been forced into the Apple model of offshoring and outsourcing.

One might normally be tempted to think that there should be an international body regulating these sorts of activities but....2020 informs us that this might not be the most effective approach either....and besides, the US is probably the most frequent violator of orbital littering besides maybe the Rooskies, who, literally....slimed Canada one time with radioactive debris from one of their school-bus sized intel satellites.

Fun times...

 

that's why we needed trumps space patrol...

 

The bars on the birdcage DO tend to get a little further apart the further south you get - but if Elon gets all of the launches he wants then I have little doubt that he will solve the riddle for cost and coverage.
His $100/month is reportedly for cash flow and to fund other spacey things once the company goes cash positive....and folks in the lower latitudes will probably get a price break.

Elon wants a dynamic de-orbiting option and seems to also want to coat his birds to reduce reflectivity - because even as big as space gets 'out there' 42,000 extra twinkles is lots of them.
The tech in me wonders what kind of thermal cost (benefit?) will arise in the sun/shade.

So....when the soda cans are empty Starlink wants to incinerate them promptly rather than waiting for them to decay naturally or go 'bump' in the night....which seems to be a wise business strategery, since he's lifting squishier and more expensive junk into space than just internet nodes.
500 km is something like 20 years for a mostly circular orbit (swagging here) which is....close enough to worry about.

We'll see.
The satellites I worry the MOST about are all up a little bit higher, and they face a more imminent threat than getting holed by space litter.