this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, they actually design them with reentry in mind to maximize the burn-up and ensure no pieces hit the ground. I recall they had a bit of difficulty when they first introduced laser data links to the design because the lenses the satellites used were large pieces of glass that would make it to the ground on reentry, they had to redesign them to fragment more easily.

[–] mech@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then read the article. They found debris from starlink satellites on the ground, which is horrifying if you consider they want to increase the number of satellites by a factor of 100x and make them much bigger to build datacenters in space.
That plan would lead to one re-entry every three minutes, depositing insane amounts of plastics and metals in the atmosphere even if they would burn up completely.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Is anyone really planning on building data centers in space? I assume everyone who knows how physics works is aware that cooling will be nearly impossible with today's tech.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

How big do you think these are going to be? A lot of people seem to have this concept of these massive things in space and that's not what it's going to be.

Starlink v3 already need to radiate 20kw of heat away, these are going to be 100kw.

They aren't huge, they are many.

Well, the heat generating datacenter part isn't anyway... the solar panels and radiators will be quite large once unfolded.

Edit: Clarity above, but also here's an image which they say is to scale.

See how small the actually data center portion is? Those solar panels are super thin and will fold up super tiny, and so will the radiator. Even if the radiator size is wrong, the main point is these things are small, and not what you should think of when you think data center. I think someone else likened the size to a server rack or two.

[–] Karmanopoly@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

What if they make them a full pickup size

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Well damn, those solar panels would probably be at least a dozen Eiffel towers tall then.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

It's not as impossible as you think. Scott Manley did an analysis of the heat budget recently and it's quite reasonable.