In article ,
says...

On 2019-06-07 06:24, Jeff Findley wrote:

Not any more than flying thousands of aircraft creates a "conflict" in
the air.

In flight, aircraft are assigned non conflicting flight paths, just like
satellites. The difference is that a plane that is following another
one on same path can be told to slow down to maintain its distance.

Exactly how far apart are Starlink satellite? Certainly you can do the
math given their orbital altitude and the number of satellites SpaceX
just launched into a single orbital plane.

And the bigger difference is that a plane can be told to circle airport
until the plath to ;land is clear, planes on the ground can be held to
create openings for planes to land.

Again, look at the distances involved. Starlink satellites will already
be spaced very far apart. This really is a non-issue since they're all
tracked and their orbits are all known.

Musk can't just tell its satellites to hold on so some spaceship can
re-enter.

Because he doesn't have to.

If a re-entering spaceship slows down or accelerates to avoid one
satellite during de-orbit, it now has to deal with other satellites that
may be in conflict.

That's not how this works. The reentry burn will be timed such that it
avoids all tracked objects below the reentering vehicle. This isn't
that hard.

If you're landing anywhere in the Pacific, it is easier to dodge
satellites below. But if you are tarketing an X on a landing pad, unless
you are given lots of cross range like the Shuttle, you have 2 orbit
opportunities per day. What happens when both have conflicts?

There really is no dodging. Just proper timing.

These contellations are meant to provide coverage 24/7 in every area of
covered continents. And because they are verlo low orbit, each satellite
has small footprint, which means neighouring satelites need to be
nearby. So is re-enty really that easy and without concern?

Again, do the math. How far is one satellite away from the other?

Commercial aircraft have limits on how close they can be to each other
when at same altitude.

And how many thousands of aircraft are in the air around the entire
planet at the same time? Now compare that to how many Starlink
satellites are planned. If we can manage aircraft that land and take
off at relatively few locations (which is where ATC is busiest), we can
manage Starlink satellites which are evenly spaced and tracked.

How close to a Starlink/Oneweb/other satellite would NASA allow a
re-entering spaceship pass as it descends through their altitudes?

Are we talking a minimum of 1m% 100m? 1km? 100km?

This isn't really done by distance. It's done by calculating the chance
of debris hitting something like the ISS. See he

https://phys.org/news/2012-10-space-station-debris.html

Distance would vary based on the confidence in the path of the debris.

Jeff
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