China launches first satellites of constellation to rival Starlink
China launches first satellites of constellation to rival Starlink
Musk will happily trigger Kessler syndrome to prevent competition.
China will be blamed, of course.
We won't get Kessler syndrome from a bunch of low flying satellites as they can't stay in orbit for very long and we know where they're all at.
That would be funny given that US is the most reliant on space based tech militarily.
Great, pretty soon every regional power will launch thousands of satellites to pretend to build their own satellite internet.
Fun fact: The aluminium from satellite parts burning up in the atmosphere kills the ozone layer.@yogthos And then the upper stage blew up, creating a debris field of more than 700 objects that now threatens satellites in the same orbit:
reuters.com/technology/space/c…China has a really bad track record with their stages. They have launch sites where they drop the first stages on land - sometimes hitting or almost hitting villages (which is really bad as many of these stages use toxic propellants). Their upper stages re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled way (most other rocket launchers do this in a controlled way and let them re-enter at "Point Nemo").
It looks like they haven't launched any yet? It'll be interesting to see if they can since they don't have a cheap launch vehicle.