> What that means for our planet isn't entirely clear
100 tons of meteors hit Earth every day[1], so it seems fairly clear the 800kg Starlink v2 mini satellites[2] don't amount to much. Maybe once a dozen providers are deorbiting a similar amount of mass daily, we might notice. But even then I'm not sure there would be any negative effects. This seems like clickbait scare mongering at the moment.
1: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/astronomybc/chapter/14-1-m...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_dust
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X2...
(in batches, obviously)
They also contain other siderophilic metals, including cobalt, chromium, gold, platinum, iridium, and tungsten. The high concentration of these metals, especially precious metals like gold and platinum, is due to their affinity for sinking to the core of early planets and asteroids, which are remnants of the primordial solar system.
Estimates I've seen are that the amount of Al in the upper atmosphere will be dominated by satellite demise. And we don't know how that will affect things.
The history of CFC and the ozone layer suggests caution.
> The total mass of meteoric material entering Earth’s atmosphere is estimated to be about 100 tons per day
On average, something like 17 meteors large enough to strike the ground hit earth daily.
One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45493143 - 6 Oct 2025 (336 comments)
This is misleading, they're already in a very low orbit and would deorbit on their own in a just few years. They can manoeuver to explicitly deorbit on command, but they need active stationkeeping to stay up there for extended periods.
Cost of building + launch, per satellite, any ideas?
How much is Elon _actually_ burning here? Is Starlink going to have a positive ROI at some point?
And that's if they only have 10m customers - which I suspect is a lot more considering it's a worldwide service.
For example: Near the top of the article is the sentence: "Kessler syndrome is bad; atmospheric incineration may be worse, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell"
So, I searched for "kessler syndrome". Here's the hyperlink for reference: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=kessler+syndrome&ia=web
Now here is the cool part. I found a Wikipedia article about "kessler syndrome" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome and it explained why this matters!
The earth's atmosphere is pretty big, and sattelites are just made out of aluminum and crap. I don't think it is a big deal.
I could search this topic on google scholar for hours, but I can already tell the result is that I would probably find nothing of substance.
edit: removed my own snark. sorry for that.
