How are there so many people in this thread talking with such confidence and yet know absolutely nothing? SpaceX is the reason NASA doesn’t need to rely on Russia to get astronauts to and from the ISS, so that’s one huge benefit. And Starlink is in such a low orbit that their orbits are constantly decaying and will burn up in the atmosphere without any orbit corrections. So there will never be a chain reaction crash.
What do you mean little to show for it?
It’s not meant to be comforting, it’s supposed to be tongue in cheek.
If you understand gravity wells, think of L1/L2/L3 as the shape of a saddle. If you’re right in the middle of the saddle it’s a pretty stable orbit, but if you get too close to any of the edges you fall right out of it. L4 and L5 are like the peaks of a mountain.
Also worth pointing out that only L4 and L5 are stable, L1/L2/L3 are only metastable where they require a bit of maintenance to stay there.
Another fun fact about Legrange Points: There’s a group of asteroids called the Trojan Asteroids. There’s technically two groups of these since they’re stuck in L4 and L5 in the Sun/Jupiter system.
This. There’s 5 Legrange Points for every 2 body system. They’re specific points around the 2 bodys where the gravity “cancels out”. In this case the 2 body system is the Earth and the Sun. JWST is sitting a million miles from Earth at L2.
Maybe older models were a lot less efficient with always on display, but I just checked for my Pixel 8 Pro and the ambient display was <1% battery usage.
It’s also frustrating that people keep saying SpaceX “relies on taxpayer money” as if we’re just giving them money for no reason. It’s all contracts! SpaceX only gets money for providing some kind of service. They’re not being bailed out or anything. The Musk hate is justified but so misdirected.