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Comment by pulisse | Hacker News Reader

> Personally, I think the benefit of truly global broadband internet from space is worth the cost of an hour of observing time per night.

SpaceX isn't the going to be the last company or nation state to put up a network of satellites like this.

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Do you have any reason to believe that additional satellites would alter the geometry of the Earth so that they would be visible for longer after sunset?

would larger objects, or ones at a larger orbit be visible longer?

admittedly, i dont know much about space stuffs. :)

at a higher orbit their brightness will be less, but they will be illuminated longer and visible from more of the planet. Assuming a constant average reflectivity, larger objects will be more visible.

Satellites at higher orbit will be visible longer after sunset, both because they'll be in sunlight for a larger part of their orbit and because they'll be visible (above the horizon) to observers further away. The train is currently at about half of the satellites' intended final altitude.

This is what concerns me - either a tragedy of the commons as multiple companies and countries rush to be players in this market, or a monopoly for the first mover.

I would prefer some sort of global co-operative effort with standards and oversight so satellites are interchangeable, and supplied/deployed under a contract which shares the revenue.

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