Op-ed | Is there enough room in space for tens of billions of satellites, as Elon Musk suggests? We don’t think so.

As researchers interested in orbital capacity, it’s surreal to wake up and find Elon Musk commenting on the question that has been central to your work: how many satellites can we fit in low Earth orbit (LEO)? According to a recent interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Musk’s stance is that tens of billions of satellites can coexist in LEO. While we agree this is an important question to ask, especially for someone planning on launching thousands of his own satellites in the near future, his estimation is overly optimistic. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams (and Mr. Musk himself), space is big. But LEO is not big enough to safely accommodate this kind of orbital demand. More

(Source: SpaceNews - Jan 5)