this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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And they're planning to do that with expendable launch vehicles? 14,000 / 18 = ~777 launches
Expendable launch vehicles that have a known orbital debris problem and can partially survive rentry and cause damage on the ground? Those expendable launch vehicles?
i mean falcon 9 is also expendable if you're looking at the orbital insertion stage
the problem here isn't the expendability it's how little they care about debris (both in orbit and on the ground)
Right, F9 can operate as reusable or expendable depending on mission profile. But for the Starlink constellation, they're landing the rockets and re-using them.
Long March 6 are fully expendable, though, and would require a dedicated launch vehicle for every 18 satellites that go up (maybe more than 18 if they reduce the payload mass on later satellite models, etc).
Not to say they'll launch the whole constellation on LM6; they could have a reusable booster in the works and switch over to that in later phases.
I thought you were referring to the orbital insertion stage? what else do you mean by this?
That was referring to the space debris point of the post. I just merged my two points (orbital debris and launching a megaconstellation on an expendable launch platform) poorly, lol.
The first link was for the orbital debris issue, and the second was for the launch vehicle. But upon closer reading, the second is about the LM 2C and not the 6(A). That's my bad.