Washington emergency responders first to use SpaceX's Starlink internet in the field: 'It's amazing'

[NNadir]

14. Thank you for the press release. However...

...it is just that, a press release filled with optimist horseshit that amounts to a marketing claim that this approach will actually be viable for thousands of satellites. Again, I invite the use of Google Scholar for some real science. One can learn for instance that the collision of just four satellites in two events, one in 2007 (Fengyun/ASat) and 2009 Cosmos/Iridium created 4500 of the 9000 cataloged low earth orbit debris objects not to mention thousands of projectiles traveling thousands of meters per second that are too small to track. At these velocities a small bolt can have energies comparable to a bundle of dynamite.

Now Musk is claiming his thousands of satellites will all magically avoid this existing debris and offers a press release to make us feel warm and fuzzy about the case where his magic satellites are not shattered in a microsecond. If just five or ten of his thousands of satellites collide in space every decade, low earth orbits will enter a point where every damn Rocket will risk a run creating away chain reaction involving many or most or all low earth orbital satellites.

From my perspective this nonsense, the press release, is beneath contempt.