Comment by oconnor663
1 year ago
No, they burn up. You can think of how much work goes into the heat shields on spacecraft that are supposed to survive reentry. Satellites have none of that.
1 year ago
No, they burn up. You can think of how much work goes into the heat shields on spacecraft that are supposed to survive reentry. Satellites have none of that.
Starlinks are actually built so that nothing sizeable remains at all after reentry. This even delayed the laser coms a bit, as the original laser mirrors were too sturdy & so pieces of them could theoretically make it through.
I also think a screw at terminal velocity might not be particularly dangerous, similar to the popular "will a penny dropped off the empire skyscraper kill you?" question.
...which I suppose is closely related. The deorbiting satellite burns up because all that potential energy goes into heat because of the ~friction~ [edit: compression, thanks for the correction] that limits it to that low terminal velocity.
Heat is Not because of friction but compression of air