Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble.
Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to be pretty tough competition.
> Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble.
The dotcom bubble was the start of a cambrian explosion.
Those two events are part of the same process, not wholly separate entities in which case one is bad and the other is good. They require eachother and cannot be unlinked. The dotcom bubble was not a bad thing, it was a necessary process of chaotic, sometimes idiotic, experimentation. It was an extraordinary good. The total sum of all capital destroyed during the dotcom bubble (which lasted less than four years) would fit into a corner of Amazon's present market value.
Unless you want to pretend that humans are all-knowing gods. In which case we require no experimentation, there are no foolish mistakes possible, no errors of judgment possible, no irrationalism or over-excitement is possible, no emotion is possible, no idiots and malevolent actors (eg con-artists) are possible. And so on.
We should all be hopeful - giddy in fact - if we're about to see a space-focused dotcom style bubble. Bring on the space bubble, do it right now, let's get moving with that. That will be truly extraordinary, it will signal what comes after: a real, massive, sustainable expansion.
The global Internet is beyond a magnitude more valuable - in every way you can measure it, whether in business transacted, value of tech companies, or how valuable it is to end users - today than it was at the peak of the dotcom bubble in 2000.
The naysaying is hilarious and pathetic. Like, let's not throw our best and brightest at solving these problems. No. That's a waste of money. I KNOW! LET'S THROW IT ALL AT CRYPTOCURRENCY AND ADVERTISING AGENCIES!! BEST IDEA EVER!
Most of the funding raised by smallsat and small launch companies is a rounding error compared to the amount of money tossed at bullshit companies useless crap.
Do any of those constellations require only one satellite per orbit, though? Because if you need 5 satellites in that orbit, you're your own rideshare partner...
But smallsat launchers only make sense if they have a lower cost/kg (unlikely vs the F9) or if they're being used for an orbit/launch time that doesn't have enough demand for a rideshare. And if the space launch market gets big enough to support 100 smallsat launchers, a F9 rideshare into that special orbit will probably have enough takers to make it cheaper than the smallsat launcher would have.
Smaller diameter rockets have a much worse fuel ratio (because of fuel tank geometry issues), so there’s no way they’ll ever be cheaper than larger rockets. They fundamentally must use more fuel per kg of payload than large rockets because fuel tank wet mass to dry mass ratio increases linearly with diameter.
Right, and that's why smallsat launchers are only really viable for orbits/launches that can't be served by rideshares. Better to pay $5mil for an Electron to launch your smallsat than to book an entire Falcon 9, even if the $/kg is far higher.
I have to say, 5 km/s delta v is more than I was expecting from a tug like that. Still, I really wouldn't be surprised if adding one of those to your smallsat would cost more than $5m.
By launched volume, it seems like. By diversity of launch platforms ... maybe not. SpaceX seems poised to dominate everything with Starship, even small launch.
Low earth orbit satellites decay very quickly. Without extra boost most satellites launched by these rockets will reenter within a year or two.
On a wider note, I find the dramatic pessimism of our times rather unfortunate. It seems every technical advance is now met with some prediction of doom. I miss when technical forums were optimistic.
I havent researched the orbital dynamics much here, but wouldnt it be possible for the satellite fragments resulting from a collision at orbital speeds to have much greater speeds, possibly ending up in elliptical orbits with lower total drag? Seems like just waiting for orbits to decay after a Kessler syndrome like event wouldnt be feasible.
An elliptical orbit would require the perigee to be even closer to the earth further increasing drag.
It is possible for small fragments to potentially be moved to higher orbits (with counter balancing mass being moved lower) But the conservation of momentum prevents the vast majority of fragments from suffering this fate.
Baring exceptionally bad luck a collision in LEO would usually decrease the time before the orbit decays. Remember a debris field has more surface area than an intact satellite.
Yes, it is possible. If you get an explosion, many fragments will be in an elliptical orbit where they can stay longer than on LEO. But there is a trade-off here, the time during what a fragment is dangerous is exactly the same time it is in a high drag region, so if it's not feasible to wait for it to fall down, it is also not really dangerous either.
