Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

There are two different explanations that I've read over the last few months for why we didn't see laser links on previous rounds of Starlink satelites.

First, that the unit pricing was too high. SpaceX is targeting an extremely (absurdly) low price of $250,000 BOM per satelite, and it was theorized that the laser links were blowing the budget. Estimated that it would cost ~$100k for the lasers, targeting, and electrical systems to add the links.

Second, I've read that they had issues guaranteeing that all the components of the laser system would fully burn up in the atmosphere. One of the conditions of launching low-orbit satellites is that they will fully burn up on re-entry (therefore not posing any risk when they fall back down to earth). Apparently some of the optics components had a chance of survival and ultimately possible land-impact.

I'm not sure if we can say that this launch indicates that the cost issue has been solved. It could be worth blowing out the BOM to get some operational experience having a few birds with the lasers, so perhaps they haven't fully solved the pricing issue unless we start seeing lasers on every subsequent launch.

TFA has a great animation of a polar orbit. It's basically a longitudinal orbit, so it will absolutely pass over land for a lot of the time, so clearly they must have at least solved the burn-up issue, if in fact that actually was ever an issue in the first place.

Also, FYI, there was a scheduled attempt to launch SN9 today, but it just got scrubbed a minute ago due to winds. They will be trying again tomorrow! reddit.com/r/spacex is a good place to watch for updates: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/krllbt/starship_sn9...

There are multiple reasons, from demisablility to BOM cost and also just that the tech wasn’t quite ready at first and they wanted to launch ASAP to get that minimum viable product up and running (besides their FCC licenses have a time limit for deployment... if they don’t deploy their network fast enough, they can lose access to the spectrum they want to use). They also wanted to be able to bid for broadband subsidies, etc.

Lots of good reasons they just launched before the laser links were ready. Also, they don’t necessarily need them except for really, REALLY remote customers (ie a minority), so they can sprinkle in lasers into their constellation as they become available.

It's probably the BOM cost.

I've seen the "burn up in the atmosphere" constraint before, and it struck me as a bit crazy for Shoot First and Ask Questions Later SpaceX to care about this

Demisability is a significant regulatory concern... but I suspect it wasn't flying before mostly because they didn't have it working yet.

That requirement could have come from the government. It's not a crazy thing to ask for when you're launching literally hundreds of satellites into LEO.

Plus, the last thing SpaceX wants is a news story about killer satellites raining debris on innocent citizens. Remember that each satellite launched has to be deorbited eventually, so if they're launching dozens of sats per month they'll eventually be deorbiting dozens of sats per month. If they don't fully burn up each one will have a chance of hitting someone. Sure the chance may be very small, but when you're rolling the dice dozens or hundreds of times per month eventually you're going to land on snake eyes.

They are explicitly pursuing a demisable sat design.

Note - despite other posters claims, this is not a requirement and there are other approaches as well for the safety side here. The most common is to deorbit into the ocean (the sats are maneuverable) with a failure rate and part hazard rate low enough that remaining risk is minimized. I would expect they would deorbit into ocean / near non-populated areas for other reasons as well.

> I've seen the "burn up in the atmosphere" constraint before, and it struck me as a bit crazy for Shoot First and Ask Questions Later SpaceX to care about this

SpaceX has never been even a little careless about following laws, regulations and staying within the lines of their FCC/FAA authorizations. There is this reputation surrounding them, probably because of their visible and often explosive development practices, an because Tesla absolutely does play fast and loose with regulations, but for SpaceX it is not just entirely baseless, it's sort of the exact opposite of the truth.

When FCC tells SpaceX to jump, SpaceX asks how high on the way up. Demisability standards were among the constraints of their license, so SpaceX made sure to not just meet the requirements, but well exceed them, which is what they always do.

Why Musk likes to flout all rules at Tesla and yet follows rules strictly at SpaceX probably as a lot to do with how the regulators are generally pretty toothless about doing anything to Tesla, while either the FCC or the FAA could pretty much shut SpaceX down for as long as they like should SpaceX try to play cute with them. Enforcers with actual ability to enforce rules tend to be respected more.

SpaceX absolutely does not follow fcc guidelines. There have been numerous occasions, including changing all their satellites to 550km altitude without getting proper approval where they do it and ask for forgiveness later.

> SpaceX absolutely does not follow fcc guidelines. There have been numerous occasions, including changing all their satellites to 550km altitude without getting proper approval where they do it and ask for forgiveness later.

No. You have been misinformed, they have always asked for the authorization first. For the orbit modification to 550km, they asked on 2018-11-08, were granted permission on 2019-04-26, and started launching a month after that. [0][1]

[0]: https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20181108-00083 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Launches

No, the point is you aren't allowed to do that. The initial filing for their satellites in the frequencies that they were requesting were for a certain altitudes. Without a brand new filing (not an amendment). They didn't do that.

This is an argument that has been forwarded by Starlink competitors. FCC vehemently disagrees with it.

I would rather go with FCC's interpretation on this, rather than competing commercial entities who have a vested interest in one outcome. If FCC didn't like the amendment, they could have just said no.

Everyone else had to play by the same rules until SpaceX doesn't. You say it's fair, but certainly if you were in that industry as a competitor it appears as favoritism. They also lie to push things through, like rate of decay, speeds offered, latency.

> Everyone else had to play by the same rules until SpaceX doesn't.

> You say it's fair, but certainly if you were in that industry as a competitor it appears as favoritism.

No they didn't. When this was publicly said by a competitor when the challenge to the amendment was filed, and exasperated FCC official literally said publicly that anyone is, and has always been, able to do things the way that SpaceX is doing, and in fact FCC prefers it. The only reason most companies have not been doing it this way in the past is that SpaceX ends up paying a lot more in filing fees. The argument that SpaceX doing this is somehow favoritism is harebrained. What exactly is stopping the competitors from doing the same?

Whether it's fair or not is also entirely beside the point. That was not what I was arguing at all.

> They also lie to push things through, like rate of decay, speeds offered, latency.

No, they don't. The rate of decay calculations in SpaceX filings have been based on the models FCC expects licensees to use. Yes, they do not perfectly model reality, but they are what FCC wants, and what everyone else uses too. As for speeds offered and latency, well, actual latency as realized in the beta seems well in line with what SpaceX has promised, and while they so far only offer a single speed grade to beta testers, they have demonstrated speeds in line with their original claims to the air force, and presumably will also offer those to customers (at a much higher price point) some point in the future. This is also entirely beside the point.

To be frank, right now you sound like you have read too many dishonest SpaceX hitpieces, synthesized the idea that SpaceX is ran by cowboys who habitually ignore the rules, and are grasping at straws to support it, including quite a bit of moving the goalposts.

I have made a single, factual claim: SpaceX meticulously follows the rulings given out by FCC and FAA. I spend quite a lot of time spelunking FCC filings looking for information about satellites, and I honestly believe it to be true. Can you point to a single actual counterexample? Not "competitor is angry about FCC ruling and claims FCC shouldn't have done something", but an actual FCC ruling or regulation on the books, that SpaceX proceeded to break. Because I do not know of a single example, and that is actually rare for a company in the industry. If you believe such an example to exist, please post it, preferably with a link to the actual ruling they are breaking.

I'm not sure what world you're living in, but the failure rate so far has been much higher than what Musk has said. Is it bad? They said 1%, it's 5-6%. Should we count the early satellites? Why not? The newer ones haven't been up long enough to tell how reliable they'll be. He also said they want latency < 20ms on Starlink. Again, not going to happen because of physics, but that didn't stop people from repeating it over and over despite the service being 40ms+ on average. Sure, you CAN hit 20ms if you are next to a POP and your endpoint is a single satellite hop, but that's not the norm.

To be frank, it sounds like you don't understand the industry very well, and that's ok. But not everyone forgets what was said in 2015 when the project was launching. Since you asked, here's one non-truth:

https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...

>High capacity: Each satellite in the SpaceX System provides aggregate downlink capacity to users ranging from 17 to 23 Gbps, depending on the gain of the user terminal involved. Assuming an average of 20 Gbps, the 1600 satellites in the Initial Deployment would have a total aggregate capacity of 32 Tbps. SpaceX will periodically improve the satellites over the course of the multi-year deployment of the system, which may further increase capacity.

This ignores A) competitors who have first priority on the spectrum, B) 80% of the satellites are over water and completely unusable during that time, and C) more recently we know that the user terminal at best would perform lower than the 17Gbps low end they cite due to cost-cutting on the scan and G/T of the antenna.

If you believe it's okay to lie in FCC filings so that you win awards and change policies, then that's a valid opinion to hold.

> Since you asked, here's one non-truth:

No I didn't. I specifically asked for an FCC or FAA reg that SpaceX has broken. This is a very different thing.

> If you believe it's okay to lie in FCC filings so that you win awards and change policies, then that's a valid opinion to hold.

That's not an opinion I have, and I don't actually believe your claims about them lying are correct here (you seem to assume that FCC is composed of idiots), but regardless, it's completely irrelevant to the point. Even if they do that, my point that once FCC or FAA puts something official on paper, SpaceX treats the words as holy, remains.

Look back at the beginning of this thread. Someone made a statement that can be boiled down to "SpaceX ignores FCC regs". They do not do that. My entire, and only, point here was that they do not do that. You apparently seemed to take that as a "SpaceX is good" statement, and have argued against it with essentially entirely random "SpaceX is bad" statements. How the f is the failure rate of SpaceX satellites even remotely connected to anything here? Or did you just jump to it because you wanted to say something negative about SpaceX.

So I ask again: Do you know of a single case where SpaceX broke or ignored FCC regs? Not things where they did something you think as bad, but where there was a rule, and they broke it. That's a simple question.

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/13547774376541798...

And here is the order and authorization from FCC that gave them permission to do that launch, including deploying 10 Starlink satellites at 560km:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-21-34A1.pdf

Note that SpaceX asked for more, but FCC decided to only grant 10 satellites for now. So, SpaceX did as they always do and followed the order to the letter, and only deployed 10.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Free_Space/status/135660340017197...

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