China applies to put 200K satellites in space after calling Starlink crash risk
scmp.com139 points by nkurz 2 days ago
139 points by nkurz 2 days ago
https://archive.is/zPsmq
For the predictable reasons, the article overemphasizes "number of satellites" and under-emphasizes "height of satellites" and "inclination of satellites." The CTC-1 constellation proposes to be at 510 km altitude and 97.4 degrees inclination[0], which is already a heavily-populated orbit[1] due to being in a Sun-synchronous orbit. Since the collision risk scales as the object density squared, this is an especially foolhardy decision from the perspective of space debris and space sustainability. Remember that most of the satellite collisions occur in a "halo" around the North and South poles where the SSO orbits all pile up. Avoiding these orbital slots (and in fact, removing defunct objects from these valuable orbits) is the best thing we could do for Kessler syndrome. China is doing literally the exact opposite. It also doesn't help that China just abandons their upper stages in orbit, rather than doing proper deorbit burns.[2] Since each Chinese rocket also can only launch a handful of satellites (vs almost 50 per SpaceX launch), the number of abandoned debris upper stages is truly massive, and again they're all being carelessly discarded in pretty much the worst possible orbit. [0] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;... [1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44021.0 [2] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/everyone-but-china-has... >perspective of space debris and space sustainability PRC are being careless in 800km orbit, which is actually much worse, but historically that's where US / USSR abandoned debris, PRC still small %, either way it's just stopgap for reusables, they obviously can't hit 200k mega constellation without reusable tempo. In meantime no point reengineering end of life vehicles since reusable replacement likely going to be done by then, especially at risk of missing delivery/capability to keep ITU filings, or worse, lose them to competitors (US). Lets be real, space is being soft weaponized post SpaceX/Starshield, space debris/sustainability can wait, launch is realpolitik now. Much more important to be competitive = reserving prime orbits ITU has available in limited quantities, first file first serve. Starlink's done their own orbit squatting, PRC simply making sure strategic LEO isn't monopolized by US mega constellations. This is a misidentification: > "The CTC-1 constellation proposes to be at 510 km altitude and 97.4 degrees inclination[0]" That's an unrelated "CTC-1"; your reference [0] describes American CubeSats. This isn't the Chinese megaconstellation that was just announced; it's a name collision. The CTC-1 in your link is identified as a trio of CubeSats assigned to the SpaceX rideshare mission Transporter 15. Cross-referencing, SpaceX does show of trio of small satellites by the name "CTC-1" (a,b,c) launched on Transporter 15, on Nov. 28, 2025, https://www.spacex.com/launches/transporter-15 ("Transporter-15 Mission") Thanks, I didn't see that. It looks like the satellites may actually be at 800 km, which is worse. At that altitude the natural decay lifespan is ~300 years.[0] [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_Debris_Lifet... Why choose to put them on a heavily populated orbit? Is it cheaper or something? It’s possible this is less about comms or cost, and more about occupying an orbit with high utility. I think of it as just an extension of PRC’s “rape the oceans” policy. It has a really good balance of engineering constraints. High enough that atmospheric drag doesn't require constant propulsion to maintain orbit. Low enough to get some radiation shielding. Lower orbits better for communication latency and imaging resolution. Also sun-synchronous orbits are in this zone. Good balance for coverage vs number of satellites. There are a lot of strategic reasons why this altitude is ideal. Sun-synchronous orbits are great for spy satellites. One might wonder if this is a dual-use constellation. Of course the US is doing something similar with Starshield. They're internet broadband satellites, they want low latency connectivity, as does SpaceX and everybody else launching them there. It does also cost more to reach higher orbits, and more to stay in much lower orbits for any length of time due to propellant requirements. What I have previously heard, is that the current generation of Chinese rockets cannot place these tiny satellites precisely into a lower orbit. And so they are choosing to go into some of these more traditional orbits, where not only is there more density of spacecraft, but also objects take a lot longer to naturally decay their orbit and fall back to earth. The consequence here is that a space debris problem may last hundreds of years. Already it’s getting hard to avoid noticing satellite trains when stargazing with the naked eye. If mega-constellations really scale into the hundreds of thousands, it feels like we’re on track to permanently degrade the night sky, even in places without much light pollution. With mega-constellation launches accelerating, the sci‑fi premise of imprisoning ourselves behind a debris field feels less fictional. This is essentially the collision-cascade risk described by Kessler Syndrome Kurzgesagt has a good explainer. Hopefully we never trigger it. In summer I was lying on a beach in Thailand and used an app on my phone to look at things in the sky. Pretty much every moving glistening object I could see was a Starlink satellite. I know nothing about how their constellation works but I wonder why so many are needed. Surely you only need one or two in line of sight for it to work? I was seeing many more than that. They're in LEO which means approximately 15 minutes of visibility (horizon-to-horizon). The specific time will vary based on the orbital elements but 15 minutes is a good rule of thumb. To maintain coverage you need there to be some overlap in their visibility for a location. There's also a limit to how many connections each satellite can support. Not all the satellites that you can see will be "looking" in your direction for a signal. They support some number of cells (specific, small, geographic regions on the ground). No one satellite can cover the entire ground visible to it while overhead so more satellites are needed. And to add to the above, Starlink is using laser crosslinks to connect their satellites to each other for routing. This crosslink network is improved with more satellites visible to each other. That would still only require a couple dozens or few hundreds of satellites. For example, Iridium has 60-70, and Globalstar has less than 50 or so. The actual reason for these new megaconstellations having so many is spatial frequency reuse through directional transmission/reception beams: More satellites means less users competing for each satellite's spectrum-limited bandwidth. Iridium offers lower bandwidth and much larger cells than Starlink. But yes, the number of customers within a cell is also key to why there are so many Starlink satellites. Suburban (let alone urban) population density can easily consume the bandwidth available through one satellite. > I wonder why so many are needed. Surely you only need one or two in line of sight for it to work? Only if you're not bandwidth limited. Having more satellites per steradian of sky allows reusing the same frequency via (physically or electronically) aiming at a particular satellite. > the sci‑fi premise of imprisoning ourselves behind a debris field feels less fictional Yeah, no, the numbers don't work for this. The Kessler syndrome is bad, and worth avoiding, but you aren't trapped. The trick is that you're not staying. Suppose a comms satellite in LEO would, as a result of a hypothetical cascade like this, be destroyed on average in six months but your space vehicle to somewhere else passes through the debris field in like 5 minutes. So your risk is like one in 50 000. That's not good but it wouldn't stop us from leaving. The reason humans won't leave is more boring and less SF, there is nowhere to go. Nowhere else is anywhere close to habitable, this damp rock is where we were born and it's where we will die, we should take better care of it. yeah, all this about inhabiting mars, even when earths ecology and economies crash as they're looking to do it will still be orders of magnitude more survivable than mars lol I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that Mars will be more habitable than Earth. The argument is about the possibility of humans on Earth being wiped out due to freak events like a huge asteroid impact or global thermonuclear war. Earth would still be more habitable than Mars, but the probability that human survivors would be equipped with Mars-level survival tools is tiny, and any facility equipped like this would have to be hardened against desperate survivors trying to take it over and bringing it over capacity. Meanwhile if we had a self-sufficient Mars colony they could resettle any Earth that is more habitable than Mars. Now I'm not saying it's necessarily a smart allocation of resources. But it does follow the popular IT saying "one is none, two is one. If you care about something make sure you have a backup" A Mars colony would simply die when it's no longer being supported by earth. Maybe they'll survive a year but not much more. Hence "if we had a self-sufficient Mars colony". Any initial mars colony would not be self-sufficient, but even just by economics alone that would change as the colony grows. Even if we get stuck in the "initial colony" stage (which is not the plan of any Mars-colonization proponent) with precautions comparable to the ISS you'd still have a colony capable of surviving a minimum of four years (two launch windows, in case one delivery goes wrong) and the capability to return to Earth. Yeah a future where Mars is more inhabitable than earth is unbelievably depressing. I wasn't aware how far along some of these Chinese satellite networks were. There are several, and the number of satellites planned for them is astonishing. This article seems like a good intro to them, with comparisons to Starlink: https://archive.is/zPsmq Do take that article with a grain of salt as it is South China morning post. While in this article they do call out that recently the CCP was ridiculing Elon for taking up too much space, in space. So I can give them some credit on that. As for the state of these networks, G60/Qianfan had a plan of ~650 sattelites by the end of 2025, but currently sits at 108. They hope for ~1200 by the end of '27 Just before the end of the year the GuoWang constellation hit 136 of their planned 13,000. For reference starlink has launched over 10k satellites to date with ~9,400 in active service. Im sure the constellations will grow, but they have been experiencing the pains of scaling, especially with 1 use rockets. SCMP loves to pump up these crazy plans and massive numbers as a national pride win, even when they are not feasible or still really far off. For reference, we have two internet sat providers based in USA (starlink and kuiper), and both have more than 100-200 satellites that you state for Chinese providers. If you add in EU providers, depending in how you count then, there's at least 2 or 3 providers who have more than 100 LEO satellites active. >Under ITU rules established in 2019, satellite systems have to be operating – or have at least one satellite launched and operated for a period of time – within seven years of initial filing, after which they have to deploy 10 per cent of their constellations within two years, half within five years and all within seven years. 1. regulatory squatting on good mega constellation orbits. 2. if i'm reading this right PRC needs to hit 9k in 9 years, 100k in 14 years. Seems doable on PRC speed. If it's half, i.e. 100k with 5 years of filing, then no way target will be hit. Filing an ITU submission is one thing, now they need to make reliable, reusable heavy-lift spacecraft. Probably 5-10 years out tbh. They're just squatting on approvals. > On April 18, 2000, the BeiDou and Galileo systems were simultaneously declared. According to ITU rules, navigation satellites must be launched within 7 years and the corresponding frequency signals must be successfully transmitted and received in order to obtain the orbital position and frequency resources, otherwise they cannot obtain legal status. > At 4:11 a.m. on April 14, 2007, the BeiDou satellite, which was tasked with carrying out an important mission, took off and sent back a signal at around 8 p.m. on April 17. At this point, there were less than four hours left before the ITU's "seven-year deadline." And that is a good thing, because china will reign in its junior partner who threatened to blow starlink up to get access to it in the ukrainewar. Starlink was sold to investors as being politically neutral and almost immediately became a US military asset. It was just a matter of time before China wanted their own version. No doubt some other countries will want their own systems free of American or Chinese control, though obviously it's going to be more difficult for them to do something as complete. It's going to be an interesting choice for ESA/the EU to decide if they want their own thing too instead of relying on the US to be a fair broker of access. And of those countries who would like to have a system free of influence from other countries, well, if they can't afford to build one out, they might be able to orbit a bunch of chaff to even the playing field again. It makes me think that if it is cheaper to develop methods to destroy satellites than it is to make your own mega constellation, then this is the only option for other countries. They will need to possess the means to clear orbit, in order to be sure of being allowed future access to the technology. It will be the new MAD We need a ComStar- a neutral organisation that keeps the lights on while the great houses slaughter eachother. Eutelsat OneWeb it's mostly owned by Eutelsat and the UK government. Eutelsat Oneweb is a subsidiary of Eutelsat group which after the bankruptcy, merger and capital raises currently composed of - French state(29%), - Bharti Airtel -Indian telecom group (17%), - UK government (10%), - SoftBank (10%) -Japanese bank - CMA CGM(7.5%) french shipping company - a consortium of French insurance companies with 5% . Till recently a South Korean conglomerate Hanwha also had 5% stake . there is a significant concentration of holding by national governments,
UK do have a golden share protecting their strategic needs , but their investment is now a small minority. it is mostly French company today with diversified direct interests from 4-5 major countries. The current star link system only provides access to 9 million people. Sure this is important but what is more important is 8 billion people having and keeping their access to space. I’d (un-)intuitively thought it would be way more than that. I know 3 people with subscriptions, and assumed that would scale! FYI, Seven years ago, China discussed banning killer robots at the United Nations, but the effort failed. The rest of the story is as you can see. - https://press.un.org/en/2019/gadis3635.doc.htm - https://web.archive.org/web/20201028152258/https://www.stopk... [flagged] Currently it is controlled by thugs in the USA. Same difference? > Currently it is controlled by thugs in the USA. Same difference? I hate to make such a prosaic answer, but, independent of there being thugs in the USA or not ... two wrongs don't make a right. Having the options between internet controlled by the USA and internet controlled by China is almost certainly better than only having one of those two options. Competition keeps any of the two from degrading service too much, and if you are ideologically or politically unaligned with one chances are you are at least somewhat aligned with the other So go fix your wrongs, make the world better. Until then it is just pot calling kettle black > In light of Iran's mullah regime internet shutdown being completely bypassed by starlink portable units Completely bypassed? Only very few people in Iran have Starlink dishes. Yes, some video material makes it out of Iran, but it's like a few dozen videos and journalists interviewing local sources despite the whole country protesting. I wish them all the best and hopefully the mullahs finally get the boot - but Starlink is not a panacea for protests. > Only very few people in Iran have Starlink dishes. Couple of sources I read talk about 40k+ dishes in Iran Granted, that's not much at the scale of a country of 90M+ people, but still, if the numbers are correct, that's not nothing and that's why we're getting videos of the riots outside of Iran. The sad thing is Starlink dishes (mobile or even worse, fixed) are super easy to radio-triangulate and are quickly being taken down. [EDIT]: and the mullahs have just officially announced that anyone caught using one will be jailed (which was obvious, but not yet official). Weird jingoist tone... Sort sounds like you think their ruling class are thugs but ours are fine? Would you prefer an internationally run mega-constellation for rural internet access? I certainly would! > Sort sounds like you think their ruling class are thugs but ours are fine? I see Whataboutism on the menu today. What about rewording the `flagged' post that is no longer available for reading. Reading between the lines, a group took grudge and downvoted it to nothing. I mean they're the ones that randomly brought up "their" thugs, maybe deal with you own thugs before immediately worrying about everyone else's? You could just say "the ruling class" or some other catch-all `Might makes right' until Jeffrey Epstein donor backers install Bill Clinton and POTUSs after. Ah yes, competing with the U.S. makes them thugs. Right. > Ah yes, competing with the U.S. makes them thugs. Right. So the great firewall is just a myth ? Because if it isn't, then ... thugs sounds about right to me.
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I just asked Google AI about this and it says: "There is no evidence in the search results that Starlink was explicitly sold to investors as being politically neutral." Also, SpaceX is a private company. The number of investors is tiny, and they are incredibly sophisticated and well-advised. Any half-wit could see that a global constellation of communication satellites would be immediately useful to the world's best funded military and the NATO alliance. > Starlink was sold to investors as being politically neutral and almost immediately became a US military asset.
Yes, just like GPS before it, Russia, China, EU, and even Japan built their own. I can see the same happening for Starlink (at least for the military side) for those same regions. > And of those countries who would like to have a system free of influence from other countries
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