These aren’t gigantic things spreading litter everywhere, the pollution concern is minimal as they would have an entry trajectory that causes them to burn up on re-entry.
Wasteful is debatable. I’m not familiar enough with the satellites themselves to say what resources are truly being lost. But if we are being honest, there’s likely more resources lost to improperly sorted trash in a single day, than years worth of these satellites burning up.
As to why, I believe it’s a side effect of aiming for low latency in the connections. Internet becomes more and more frustrating to use the higher the latency. And when people are paying over $100 a month, they aren’t going to be satisfied with high latency connections.
These aren’t gigantic things spreading litter everywhere, the pollution concern is minimal as they would have an entry trajectory that causes them to burn up on re-entry.
Wasteful is debatable. I’m not familiar enough with the satellites themselves to say what resources are truly being lost. But if we are being honest, there’s likely more resources lost to improperly sorted trash in a single day, than years worth of these satellites burning up.
As to why, I believe it’s a side effect of aiming for low latency in the connections. Internet becomes more and more frustrating to use the higher the latency. And when people are paying over $100 a month, they aren’t going to be satisfied with high latency connections.
They cause a lot of light pollution of the night sky, and when they burn up they pollute the atmosphere.