Re: "Accurate [..] predictions are essential for understanding the hazard they pose to spacecraft"
Check my maths.
The radius of the earth (average) is 6371000000m
The Starlnk satellites will be orbiting at approx 350000m altitude.
Each satellite is approx 2mx2m
There will be 20k satellites.
These will cover 80000sq m
According to google, there were about 800 satellites in LEO before Starlink which cover 3200 sq m. w/o accounting for their solar arrays which could increase this number by a significant amount.
Google also says there are 670,000 pieces of junk larger than 1cm in LEO and 29,000 larger than 10cm. This is 357sq m worth of junk.
If we add those together, we get 3557 sq m
The area of the 350k orbital sphere is 510,120,515,692,197,533,116. sq. m
The area covered by 20800 satellites plus junk will be 83,557 sq m or 0.000000000000001638% of that sphere.
Also, the statement about not being able to do in orbit what we do on the ground is a easy to dispute by explaining that the earth moves. Its position in space is affected by the moon and the planets (and their moons), its also in orbit around the sun which is itself orbiting the center of the galaxy which is moving. It simply requires an additional vector in their calculations.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
