An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions · HackerPapers discussions

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions — mentioned by defrost

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:29:25 GMT

Not so much Ukraine using drones that use starlink, more the sheer number of starlink sats up and planned, the numbers in the proposed other constellations going up and planned, and the ongoing propensity of Chinese rockets to fragment after use rather than safely de orbit. For interest: An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions (2025) Our calculations show the CRASH Clock is currently 5.5 days, which suggests there is limited time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm. This is in stark contrast to the pre-megaconstellation era…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions — mentioned by wiml

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:03:45 GMT

LEO is crowded enough (mostly with Starlink) that satellites have to actively maneuver to avoid collisions [1]. There's research [2] arguing that we're probably already in runaway territory in some orbits — that is, debris from 1 collision likely produces more than one secondary collision — we're just way over on the left of the hockey stick curve. A bit of bad luck, or two megaconstellations that don't perfectly coordinate their operations with each other, could move us to the right pretty quickly. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643 [2]…

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An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions — mentioned by JumpCrisscross

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:23:03 GMT

> According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b66ZZ05wKC0 this might end very badly very soon The paper they cite [1] estimates "the no-manoeuvre collision time" for various orbits. It has no alarming results. That paper cites another paper [2], which raises the possibility of runaway conditions. It, in turn, runs a model developed in this paper [3]. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09643 [2] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3... [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234449150_Critical_...

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An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions — mentioned by thot_experiment

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:06:24 GMT

great move, we're continually about 2 days away from kessler if we lost maneuvering control on a constellation like starlink (ofc that's vanishingly unlikely, but it's important to understand that continual maneuvering is what keeps space accessible to humanity) anything we can do to lower that risk is a good move, and dropping 70km of elevation for the largest satellite constellation is definitely going to make a dent in the risk profile https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09643 i hope to see progress with air breathing ion engine satellites in the coming years to further lower the minimum altitudes…

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An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Satellite Close Conjunctions — HN submission

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:01:44 GMT

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions

90 points; 46 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.