Oh, please say it isn’t so…

[ekilgus]

It has been stated that regardless of a Dish/Direct merger, both these company's satellites are nearing the end of their useful service with no new satellite launches planned. What happens then?

By the way, what is the expected service length for these Starlink satellites? Also, it seems that the more satellites the more potential for failure.

 

[ethanlerma]

It has been stated that regardless of a Dish/Direct merger, both these company's satellites are nearing the end of their useful service with no new satellite launches planned. What happens then?

By the way, what is the expected service length for these Starlink satellites? Also, it seems that the more satellites the more potential for failure.

More also means more redundancy, and they are small enough to where 60~ can fit on one of Elon's reusable rockets. Also, the satellites are not geostationary. They are constantly on the move (you can google starlink tracker to get an idea), so even if one were to suddenly implode, you would lose service (as well as everyone around you for like a 50 mile radius) for anything between 1 second to 3 minutes until another satellite overpasses. I would go as far to say that an uplink center would be a worse point of failure. And not a bad one at that, since the satellites have communication links between themselves so getting rerouted to a different uplink center with the consequence of increased latency would be an option if one were to be down.

 

[ekilgus]

More also means more redundancy, and they are small enough to where 60~ can fit on one of Elon's reusable rockets. Also, the satellites are not geostationary. They are constantly on the move (you can google starlink tracker to get an idea), so even if one were to suddenly implode, you would lose service (as well as everyone around you for like a 50 mile radius) for anything between 1 second to 3 minutes until another satellite overpasses. I would go as far to say that an uplink center would be a worse point of failure. And not a bad one at that, since the satellites have communication links between themselves so getting rerouted to a different uplink center with the consequence of increased latency would be an option if one were to be down.

No answer to the first part of my post. What does happen when the Dish/Direct satellites reach the end of their useful life? Do these companies just go away or will they attempt to join the ever crowded streaming services?

 

[NYDutch]

I don't know what DTV's satellite situation is with all the recent ownership lashups, but Dish has several owned and leased sats that are not nearing their design life yet. I don't know if any of the nine Echostar owned and leased sats are usable by Dish if needed, but that might be another option along with additional leases. Keep in mind as well, it's not unusual for sats to continue working beyond their design life.

 

[Bruce]

I don't know what DTV's satellite situation is with all the recent ownership lashups, but Dish has several owned and leased sats that are not nearing their design life yet. I don't know if any of the nine Echostar owned and leased sats are usable by Dish if needed, but that might be another option along with additional leases. Keep in mind as well, it's not unusual for sats to continue working beyond their design life.

here you go-

DirecTV satellite fleet - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Dish Network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

DirecTV actually has newer birds in orbit, last one launched in 2019, Dish on the other hand has not launched one since 2010, neither of them has any new Satellites on order or even planned.

 

[NYDutch]

DirecTV actually has newer birds in orbit, last one launched in 2019, Dish on the other hand has not launched one since 2010, neither of them has any new Satellites on order or even planned.

I'm curious how you know what their planning/engineering departments are doing? Do you know if either entity is negotiating with other sat companies to launch new sats that will be fully leased?

 

[ekilgus]

I'm curious how you know what their planning/engineering departments are doing? Do you know if either entity is negotiating with other sat companies to launch new sats that will be fully leased?

I did read not too long ago that Direct announced they won't be launching any new satellites. I've never read anything about Dish's plans.

 

[Radioguy41]

They are constantly on the move (you can google starlink tracker to get an idea), so even if one were to suddenly implode, you would lose service (as well as everyone around you for like a 50 mile radius) for anything between 1 second to 3 minutes until another satellite overpasses.

You mean until the next one comes along and crashes into the debris? And the next one, and the next one, and the next one, ......................................

 

[patmurphey]

Starlink has redundancy and the ability to hop to a different satellite. In the extremely unlikely event that an outage would be an "explosion" the debris would continue in orbit. if it slowed it would have a decaying orbit. The scenarios are nonsense.

 

[navychop]

Space is BIG.

 

[NYDutch]

You mean until the next one comes along and crashes into the debris? And the next one, and the next one, and the next one, ......................................

The Starlink sats are equipped with collision avoidance technology.