Yay for even more trash in the fucking sky.
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
44 points (100.0% liked)
Futurology
3617 readers
161 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I mean what are we gonna do? stand up to billion person nations and billionaire owned corpos? lol
that's actually why starlink uses very low orbits ... in case they fail, they de-orbit automatically within 5 years due to atmospheric friction, so the orbit is "self-cleaning"
"radio frequency bands and orbital slots in low Earth orbit are limited, and first movers for those resources can gain priority."
LEO is about to get very crowded. Also, consider the fact most of the world distrusts both China & America, and will want their own "sovereign" capabilities. How many will have the capability to achieve this though? Europe is already perusing this with its IRIS² program, and lately has even less reason to make itself vulnerable by relying on US technology.
It has all the makings of one of those slow-moving global commons issues that could get really bad, like with climate change. Hopefully the international agreements and organisations can manage things even as we move into what looks like a new Cold War. Nobody wants Kessler syndrome.
China is working on quantum satellites. Other countries will use those for secure communication. Especially if compatible Chinese phones are sold in those countries. Even more so in countries that don't want to spend money setting up cell phone towers.
Hello Kessler Syndrome!