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SpaceX Wins FCC Approval To Deploy 7,518 Satellites (bloomberg.com)
SpaceX won permission to deploy more than 7,000 satellites, far more than all operating spacecraft currently aloft, from U.S. regulators who also moved to reduce a growing risk from space debris as skies grow more crowded. From a report: Space Exploration Technologies has two test satellites aloft, and it earlier won permission for a separate set of 4,425 satellites -- which like the 7,518 satellites authorized Thursday are designed to provide broadband communications. It has said it plans to begin launches next year. Space companies riding innovations that include smaller and cheaper satellites -- with some just 4 inches long and weighing only 3 pounds -- are planning fleets that will fly fast and low, offering communications now commonly handled by larger, more expensive satellites. Right now there are fewer than 2,000 operating satellites, and the planned additional space traffic demands vigilance, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said before the agency voted Thursday on a variety of space-related matters including SpaceX's application, debris rules, and other space matters.
America doesn't own space. What right do they have to give permission anyway? Space belongs to all of us.
We regulate access to common spaces so idiots like you don't ruin it for everyone else. Please go study the concept of tragedy of the commons. You want to launch a rocket from US territory? Then the US government is going to have a few questions on the behalf of the citizens of the US. You can launch from somewhere else if you have the means but don't be surprised when other governments have similar questions.
I mean "USians" of course, not America, because America is a continent, not a country.
Please recall what the "A" in USA stands for. You see any other countries with that word in the name of their country? Were you confused at all about what someone is saying when they say "American"? No you were not so take your trolling elsewhere.
It's all about probabilities. The satellites all have to have a mechanism to deorbit them at end-of-life. So if you can get some given estimate of reliability out of the satellites remaining operational through deorbit and the deorbit function working, you can estimate the number of failures you will have, and model the significance of these failures (including how errors in your reliability estimates might affect the outcomes).
Smaller satellites means less potential for debris in the case of a collision, and faster natural deorbit times. For a satellite, the crosssection of thermosphere/exosphere that they pass through is proportional to their radius squared, but their mass is proportional to their radius cubed, so the smaller you make a satellite, the quicker it tends to reenter. Just the fact that we're talking LEO satellites makes any failure modes less significant; GEO failures are more problematic, as the debris persists for much longer, orbits are much more shared, and it's much harder to track GEO debris.
The most recent 7518 satellites are going to be particularly short-lived without reboost, orbiting at only 340km. That's quite close; they're going to need very frequent reboosts. Without reboosts I'd expect them to reenter after only 1-3 months. Remember that ISS (~330km) needs reboosts several times per year, and that's obviously a far higher kg/m^2 object than a Starlink satellite.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
It's Interesting that the approval by a bureaucratic agency in a single nation is all that's required to make significant use of the finite orbit of all the World.
Actually, the FCC is simply approving the frequencies the satellites use while over US territory. They don't care about how many satellites or what orbits these satellites use. They will require additional approvals from the governments from other countries to operate over their territory.
This is basically a green light for frequency coordination, that Space X has the right to transmit from space on a set of frequencies, while flying over the USA.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Current number of ALL satellites in orbit is 4857, BTW, and the number of _working_ ones is less than half of that.
Just so you know the scale of what they're trying to do here.
The FCC is also the treaty designated US government regulatory body that makes sure the satellites won't cause other troubles. See for example this story of a company that didn't listen to the FCC's no and went to India. Last I checked, it wasn't going well for their future plans.