Comment by tidepod12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tidepod12 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I don't see how this addresses any of the concerns brought up in the article. This entire spat is because SpaceX got approval from the FCC to deploy their system in a specific way, and Amazon acknowledged that and designed their system in a way to not interfere with SpaceX. Now SpaceX is coming and saying they want to change their system in a way to interfere with Amazon.

Forget the names of the companies and their leaders for a second. We have a shared public resource, like a pond. Company A showed up and says "I am going to set up shop on this side of the pond, and we will leave the rest of the pond open for other people to use." Company B then says "okay, we are going to set up shop on the other side of the pond so we don't interfere with each other." Company A then says "no, we actually want to use that side of the pond, too. too bad for you".

In what universe is Company A in the right here, and why does it matter who gets there first? It's clearly anti-competitive practice on the part of Company A trying to shut out Company B, and the only people who will suffer from it are the general public.

Secondary comment: SpaceX's behavior in this instance is not unlike every other ISP in America engaging in anti-competitive behavior to keep newcomers out. Remember when Google Fiber was rolling out and tried to use fiber/utility poles in a way that allowed ISPs to share public utility poles? But then ATT pitched a fit [1, 2] saying "actually we don't want Google Fiber to do that because it could possibly harm our business in some unspecified and vague way", basically killing the expansion of Fiber [3]? And who suffered? All of us unlucky Americans who are now stuck with exorbitant prices for ridiculous internet plans from ATT because we don't have any other options.

We already have an absolutely terrible oligopoly of wired ISPs, do we really want to start down this path of allowing the same to happen for space-based internet, too?

1: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160923/06590635601/att-s...

2: https://www.slashgear.com/att-files-lawsuit-to-hinder-google...

3: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215743/google-fiber-leav...

And then there is the little detail that this is being decided for the whole world but actually just benefits one, possibly two companies from the United States. Space belongs to all of us, not just to the USA.

Yeah, it's not clear to me why the FCC (and not ITU or some multinational body) has jurisdiction here. What remedy would Musk have if Russia decided to launch CosmosNet or whatever that was interfering?

The ITU does have jurisdiction. Since SpaceX (and Amazon) are US companies, they work with the FCC, who then works with the ITU on behalf of SpaceX/Amazon.

This is tangential, but you seem like you know a lot about this :).

How come I can't easily find a registry of the UP/DL/Beacon transmission frequencies for every satellite. Am I just not looking in the right place? I can find various hobbyist's catalogs, but nothing that looks remotely official. Any satellite with downlinks between 30 MHz and 1.2 GHz is potentially useful for helping to calibrate one or more of the radio neutrino experiments I work on.

For partially historic and partially current reasons, detailed satellite catalogs are considered militarily sensitive to some degree... not to a huge extent, but to such an extent that it's prevented the formation of an open, international coordinating system for satellites, keeping most of the coordination work done behind closed doors. The closest thing to an "official" international satellite catalog would probably be that maintained by USSTRATCOM but it's post-facto. UN Space Affairs facilitates coordination and has a catalog but it does not pretend to be complete and has only limited information.

A good source of downlink information is the FCC International Bureau records of satellite ground stations in the US.

Yeah I can find TLE catalogs easily enough (celestrack and space-track) and it seems NORAD IDs are an almost standard. The FCC ground station list that I can find has some of them, but lacks a lot of notable ones (NOAA satellites, MUOS, Gonets...).

It is available on the ITU website. You will have satellite names (which should be similar to what you'll see in space-track, most of the time). I believe you need to pay to have access to those, but when you have a direct link to a specific satellite anybody can read it.

Also note that this shows licences, not actual use. You can have a satellite licenced to a particular frequency but not using it.

This

How long is an appropriate window for Amazon to lock down orbital slots without a solid plan to use it?

I can understand a year or two, especially if they have orbital capacity ready. But six years?

The space could provisionally be granted to SpaceX with a 15 year renewal period or something. Locking down options for a decade on wishful thinking does not seem particularly competitive for me.

In 2017 SpaceX was granted a window to "lock down" its proposed slots for 9 years to prevent others from taking those slots, and that was years before they even had a single satellite flying. I don't see why Amazon shouldn't be given the same treatment.

SpaceX was launching large batches of satellites by 2019, two years later! And even in 2017, they had proven mass launch capacity.

Yes, sure, give Amazon the same treatment. Start orbiting large numbers of satellites in 2022 or you lose it.

It's six years to deploy half of the planned satellites, which would assuredly imply the first satellites go significantly before that.

Also, it's not like the FCC should be allowed to take it back, even if 6 years is unreasonable.

Six years is not that long. You need to have the frequency to finalize the design of your payload, if not your satellite. And for big constellations you need the frequency to talk seriously with your investors. So 6 years to design a platform, a ground segment and launch half your constellation is not an easy task.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com