In its S-1, SpaceX flagged that a single debris-generating collision could cascade into unusable orbits and hit the business hard - while Starlink already holds two-thirds of active satellites and crash-clock margins have collapsed from months to days.

With two-thirds of active satellites already Starlink, a crash clock measured in days, and filings for up to a million more craft, the company’s own IPO risk language says a debris cascade could wipe out the shell that runs the internet.

The third-generation, non-geostationary system would spread up to 100,000 satellites across two very-low-orbit shells packed with beamforming and optical inter-satellite links to multiply capacity, but the entire plan hinges on regulators clearing spectrum and Starship becoming routine enough to fly