> Starlink was profitable in 2024

Those are revenue figures.

> This hits everyone. And it’s not a serious cost issue.

That it affects everyone just makes the problem worse. If China or the EU does commit to a starlink competitor, there's even more crowding in orbit. Even more collision avoidance required.

> Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to be due to obselescence

That's the point. These things are not staying up long, and they're staying up shorter and shorter.

The constellation is both expensive to build and to maintain. That makes it a lot of trouble compared to running a bunch of fiber once and having only occasional maintenance trouble when some idiot drags a backhoe through it.

> Infrastructure gets blown up and shut off. Hence the military interest.

The military interest is real, but it remains to be seen how much money they're willing to put up for it. Higher latency more conventional satellite internet will have significant cost savings in comparison.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Those are revenue figures

And also net income.

> just makes the problem worse

Did you skip the part where it’s not a serious cost issue? None of these birds are even close to being propellant restricted.

> These things are not staying up long, and they're staying up shorter and shorter

Because they’re being intentionally deorbited to make room for better birds. They don’t have to be deorbited as quickly as they are. But overwhelming demand makes it a profitable bet.

> it remains to be seen how much money they're willing to put up for it

$70mm per year for 22 birds [1].

[1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starshield-space-force-contract

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toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What would the cost be to deny these orbital altitudes?

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SlinkyOnStairs an hour ago | parent [-]

Incalculable.

The cost isn't in paying someone to not use the orbit, it's that the busier a part of space gets, the more expensive it becomes to do collision avoidance and station keeping.

What makes this impossible to calculate is that there's an unknown exponential involved. The more satellites, the more collisions that need avoiding. And the higher the chance that one avoidance will create new future collisions.

At some point the space is simply so busy that collisions can no longer be avoided.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> * What makes this impossible to calculate* It’s really not impossible to calculate, particularly if you’re trying to cause damage. The answer is it’s cheaper to shoot down individual satellites than try to create a localized cascade. Kessler cascades propagate too slowly, and degrade too quickly in low orbits, to be useful as a military tactic. In high orbit one could feasibly e.g. deny use of a geostationary band. But again, it’s cheaper to just shoot down each satellite.
	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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