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Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

I think OP is suggesting US concede to sharing 500km orbits that SpaceX has disproportionately squatted rights to, since current international law is first come first serve. Where concede is to rejigger international law to increase density of 500km so others wouldn't have to go higher, i.e. PRC mega constellations going ~800 because ~500 mostly taken. Or in ops suggestion, free for all. This is more costly for US since it saves entrants from going extra 300km, but imo proximity also greatly enhances chance for friction... i.e. if everyone chilling around same plane, and it's going to get magnitude more croweded, expect a lot more overt/hidden space war assets there to trigger kessler.

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Others would use theblower orbits - but it is just not viable for them, as their rockets suck (eq. are not reusable) and thus they need to put their few expensive satellites with meager propulsion capabilities higher to last longer. Not to mention spot beams being wide enough with so few satellites.

>others would use theblower orbits

Orbital slots are managed by ITU United Nations International Telecommunication Union who manages availability / congestion. SpaceX reserved substantial % of sub 500 km slots. Hence PRC announching their megacontestallations to reserve 500km+ slots, specifically because there isn't enough room in sub 500km for another mega constellation so they're grabbing next best ones.

PRC megaconstellation is targetting 500km+, they're not going to put up 10,000s of mega constellation without economic reusable, hence many options under development. They're choosing orbits based on assumed reusables not current launch costs / vehicles, which btw LM5 is $3000/kg, or ballpark enough to F9/kg for disposable megaconstellation launches despite cost. But bottleneck is resusable vehicles can sustain the required tempo for megaconstellation that disposable can't.

No; rather, that commenter's argument was

"The most tempting orbits are the ones in upper LEO that permit them to launch fewer satellites."

Higher altitude => wider coverage => fewer satellites

We're talking about megaconstellations for communications, you want lower for latency, stronger signal (denser/less distance for beamforming) for better data through put -> less satellites for more coverage, and costs is cheaper since less energy. Realistically starlink has combination of 340km-1200km satellites working together, but the critical point is SpaceX reserved a lot of the sub 500km orbit slots with ITU (UN agency who manages orbits), so PRC competitors have no space real estate to try to throw up another mega constellation that can mimic spaceX economics due to location, location, location. Hence PRC registering Thousand Sails at 800km, Guowang at 500km-1200km orbits, etc, which according to OP is exponentially bad for Kessler (I have no idea). So either ITU opens much more 400km slots, or all the megaconstellations going forward going to satuate >500km LEO. Part of the reason PRC rushed to announce their megaconstellations before they even had reusable was to reserve the next closest available orbit slots that they can.

There is no such thing as international law. There are only voluntary agreements.

Sure, issue is, if OP math checks out, currently everyone already voluntarily agrees to international law - ITU coordinating LEO orbits that extends to 2000km, meaning hard to clean >400km orbits is going to be filled with 100,000+ megaconstation hardware in next decades, substantially increasing chance of kessler. Op propose limiting >400km orbits... which means US is going to be unhappy sharing space with PRC megaconstellations. PRC not going to accept limiting >400km orbits without openning more <400km orbits because it means ceding advantage to US who locked in high% of <400km orbits since US grabbed megaconstellation spots earlier. So either everyone shares / free for alls <400km orbits, or everyone suffers Kessler, in which case whoever has the most space hardware might end up losing the most.

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