China's Guowang Megaconstellation Is More Than Another Version of Starlink

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

rbanffy

62 points

28 comments

arstechnica.comTechstory

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MegaconstellationStarlinkSpace Technology

Key topics

Megaconstellation

Starlink

Space Technology

China's Guowang megaconstellation project is gaining attention as a potential competitor to Starlink, with discussions highlighting concerns about space debris, military applications, and the future of satellite technology.

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01Story posted
Aug 24, 2025 at 1:43 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Aug 26, 2025 at 9:55 PM EDT
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Aug 28, 2025 at 6:34 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (28 comments)

Showing 28 comments

SilverElfin

4 months ago

4 replies

The big problem is debris. These higher satellites will take hundreds of years to fall out of orbit if they end up malfunctioning.

dottjt

4 months ago

Nothing is a problem on a short enough timeline.

motorest

4 months ago

> The big problem is debris. These higher satellites will take hundreds of years to fall out of orbit if they end up malfunctioning.

Malfunctioning is a risk, but if they are the backbone of a rival military power then this means they are also a high-value target. If the world enters a major conflict, there will be a huge volume of space debris for sure.

karunamurti

4 months ago

There are a couple dozens of companies trying to do space cleaning. Let's see if some can succeed.

wkat4242

4 months ago

Yeah they'd better have some kind of deorbit engine. A starlink is only around for 10 years or so.

dash2

4 months ago

7 replies

I guess my children will never see the night sky without tens of satellites flying through it. Irrespective of who wins the space war, I’m sad about that.

0_____0

4 months ago

1 reply

I don't use the damn satellites and I miss the version of the sky I did use. The sats are so damn distracting when you're just stargazing. Space used to be the last place we could (mostly) gaze beyond the reach of man. From here on out it's the human circus, 24/7.

gpm

4 months ago

2 replies

There's been visible satellites in the sky literally my entire life. And airplanes. The newer generation of satellites (whether Starlink or Iridium's replacement satellites) are significantly less bright and less disruptive, not more, though they are still swamped by airplanes in less remote places.

0_____0

4 months ago

I want to take you outside and show you. I'm not bitching about nothing. We're not just making this up. There weren't Iridium flares every 20 seconds. You can't even go somewhere remote like New Zealand to avoid getting overflown by them. You see them basically everywhere on Earth now. Maybe you can wait until they're fully in Earth's shadow, but that's not even a guarantee.

They're bright, they move quickly, and there are loads of them. It's like having one of the last peaceful things you can do plastered with the equivalent of full-motion banner ads for Earth bullshit.

bigbadfeline

4 months ago

>There's been visible satellites in the sky literally my entire life.

I didn't know 3 years olds were on HN :)

Seriously though, there is a difference between a satellite or an asteroid showing up every 15 minutes and a sky with a few satellites at all times.

ninkendo

4 months ago

1 reply

You only see satellites when the sun has recently set, when a few hundred kilometers up is still in sunlight. The rest of the night you don’t see satellites at all.

It’s not great that there are satellites visible for an hour or so after sunset, but it’s not like you’ll never see the night sky again.

seatac76

4 months ago

1 reply

You do get to see them as white fast moving dots at night though. It doesn’t bother be personally but I can see people having issues with that.

ninkendo

4 months ago

You only see them if they’re high up enough to be in sunlight. (This is true no matter what: satellites don’t emit their own significant light, they’re reflecting the sun’s.)

The later it gets, the higher the satellite would have to be to still be in the sun. The vast, vast majority of them are low enough that this is not significantly long after sunset. The rest are so high up that you won’t really see them anyway (and don’t move significantly fast across the sky, because orbit is slower the higher you go.)

You essentially don’t see satellites at all in the middle of the night.

agnosticmantis

4 months ago

1 reply

And the ads haven’t even showed up in the night sky yet!

It’s going to be much sadder once we start seeing McDonald’s ads wherever and whenever we look up.

4gotunameagain

4 months ago

1 reply

Do not frame this as inevitable, I refuse to accept that.

It will be what pushes me over the edge to create a rogue space program just to bring that atrocity down.

malux85

4 months ago

That sounds fun, count me in!

SapporoChris

4 months ago

1 reply

I'm sad my grandparents never got to see the sky without a bunch of satellites flying through it. Even more sad they never experienced the benefits.

_mlbt

4 months ago

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there are actually a lot of benefits that different satellites provide us. Just off the top of my head they provide communications, weather, navigation, the Hubble space telescope, scientific instruments, and military spy satellites, which unfortunately are a necessary evil to keep us safe from our enemies.

weregiraffe

4 months ago

1 reply

Your children will fly to space and see the sky above the satellites, how about that?

dash2

4 months ago

Or maybe they’ll just watch one minute videos via satellite connection…

Avicebron

4 months ago

"It was us that scorched the sky" :/

im3w1l

4 months ago

Satellites are cool though, so I don't see the issue.

msuniverse2026

4 months ago

1 reply

USA really beefed it by throwing out the spirit of the space weapons treaty with starlink. Everyone knows its a dual use military technology.

alexey-salmin

4 months ago

1 reply

This doesn't make sense, the treaty never applied to military communication satellites. Unless you claim that the dual purpose of starlink is to fall on earth at the right moment.

msuniverse2026

4 months ago

1 reply

They can also be used as interceptors for ICBMs just like brilliant pebbles.

alexey-salmin

4 months ago

1 reply

I think that would require a lot of delta-v, the space is very big even for tens of thousands of satellites.

But even if true this doesn't really count as dual use military technology that "everyone knows" about. Everyone knows about the communications part.

msuniverse2026

4 months ago

True, I should've been more specific. I just happened to know that China considers it a threat due to this paper put out by the CSIS thinktank.

https://interpret.csis.org/translations/starlink-militarizat...

Maybe I should submit it as an article.

metalman

4 months ago

Chinas new sattelite based data net will defintly give china a world wide all weather secure capability, but there bandwidth will be orders of magnitude less than what the next(current) gen starlink and starship/falcon can fly, and that means making money and having influence on top of the basic tactical utility. Keep in mind that if starship were configured for a max payload to leo in full disposable mode, they could put themselves years ahead of the competition, in days.

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ID: 45006128Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:46:44 PM

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