SpaceX files for new 29,988-satellite W-band network
spaceintelreport.com
spaceintelreport.com
That's only stuff at least 10cm in diameter, which is about the smallest object that can be tracked. There are several orders of magnitude more objects smaller than that.
So this plan would more than quadruple the number of active satellites in orbit. Not quadruple Starlink's satellites, but quadruple the total number of all satellites in operation. Ruining our view of the night sky -- as bad a problem as that is -- is nothing compared to Kessler Syndrome [2]. But we'll probably have to learn that the hard way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris
The fact that the one man who controls it is a billionaire demagogue (yes, by now Musk is a political leader) with his own media company just makes it worse.
Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga. There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Also known as a lifetime.
Star Trek economy for all!
This is such a pretentious, bad faith line that you’ve heard from someone else and are repeating. Yeah I heard it in philosophy class freshman year too. You gloss over the possibility that maybe other people just aren’t as hateful and jealous as you and believe that capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system. That doesn’t equate to those people believing they will one day create that much value and profit for it. Maybe stop projecting your mindset on others.
This comes across as a saddeningly extreme armchair psychological evaluation and extrapolation to just attack my entire character.
Then let's try it in a different way, "less hateful and jealous"...
What is the net benefit to society of one individual having a net worth approaching $220,000,000,000? Or of ten individuals having a net worth of $1,200,000,000,000?
Explain the "efficiencies" of that with respect to the economic system as a whole.
If Musk stops using his wealth to grow the economy and sells his shares then he gets taxed. His sales of Tesla shares to buy twitter were taxed at California rates and he paid 10 billion in tax.
If the government could replicate that record of growth and efficient allocation of capital I would be the first one in line to say tax successful capital allocators, but in this case you'd be giving up 10x the economic growth. The US government is incredibly inefficient and poor at doing their job. Just reforming the health care system to be in line with other western countries would free up >1 trillion annually and it wouldn't hamstring the country's growth. You don't see huge threads about that twice a week though. I wonder why.
Some people get money in other ways (e.g. working in government and being extremely lucky in the stock market) but that seems different.
You are constantly told about "billionaires" as though they actually have billions. They don't. They have shareholdings, which if they all sold at today's share price would equate to billions. In reality that will never happen, because the price would instantly start dipping.
Just because you don't have access to 100% of your net worth in liquid cash today doesn't mean it's not worth anything/as much.
We should tax billionaires to pay for everything
But they don't have billions - they have equity!
Well they can take out loans!
So... what're we going to tax?
the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work. we know now through economics that this is nonsense, and more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
there is easily going to be plenty of benefit for the future of this, you're trying to view it through the lens of "how does this benefit me or some rando on another continent right now". and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit, but for some reason you've mistaken it as that.
That's sounds like trickle down economics to me - it benefits people in rich countries so it's fine, eventually it will make everyone better, right? A person in a country with no Starlink offering now cannot take clear pictures of the night sky because an American billionare wants to make even more money, but it's fine because "overall benefit to humanity" might be there?
>>more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
I don't see how that applies here at all. I wouldn't have any problem with Starlink(or similar constellations) if they were limited in their impact only to countries they are offered in - but for obvious reasons that's not possible, they impact everyone on Earth equally even if not everyone on Earth can access the service.
>>and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit
Oh but I have an answer - but I don't think the benefits outweight the disadvantages.
If you want to entertain a thought exercise for a second - imagine if an American corporation decided to use technology to increase rainfall everywhere on earth, so that they can increase harvests in US. Only they get the profit from it, but it impacts everyone on Earth. Sure you could argue that it's great, there is more food, there are more jobs being created, surely everyone will benefit at some point, right? But if I live in a country that is impacted by it, then I really don't care about this argument - your benefit doesn't balance itself against the negatives for me.
i think a better argument you made was that satellites in general act to interfere with astronomical work on earth. and i hadn't heard of this before (its not my realm) so i looked into it.
the number of satellites in 2022 was ~8k, and about half are active. so the number musk is putting up there is definitely record breaking, and poses new levels of problems. he admits the trouble it might cause to astronomers and is trying to work on solutions such as a paint coating as well as data-level techniques to mitigate the problems. there are also a regulatory body, the ITU, that's looking to limit the frequency/bandwidths of what's used in satellites to help astronomers. none of this is perfect, but its acknowledged and with more technological development will likely come better compromises.
links on where i got this info:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223962-spacexs-starlin...
https://earthsky.org/space/how-satellites-harm-astronomy-wha...
even despite that, i think people gain more from having internet than viewing the stars. and for organizations that seriously study the stars the best way around this seems to be to collect multiple shots when these satellites move. for amateur astronomers in their back yard, its probably not that important but they can use the same techniques.
the rain example is an interesting thought experiment, i don't think most people would disagree that causing this kind of effect is a serious misuse of technology. and surely something like that would run into regulation or agreements? Of which it has. The groups trying to green the sahara receive compensation from the brazilian government to not green the entire sahara. why? because the minerals that blow across the atlantic, from the sahara, help fertilize the amazon rainforest. So there's functional examples of this kind of problem that have already been solved, I haven't lost faith in humanity over this.
This is news to me. Could you give at least an example?
https://www.quora.com/Who-was-the-Roman-emperor-who-was-show...
question: Who was the Roman emperor who was shown an invention and had the inventor executed?
answer from andrew kirk:
"I think you are thinking of Vespasian. An inventor came to him with a way to transport columns to the Capitol at a low cost—that is, he offered a labor-saving device. Vespasian turned him down, saying, “How will I feed my people?”
It highlights that the point of government works was to create jobs and distribute money; efficiency was not a priority. Vespasian thought it would just throw people out of work and create civil unrest.
This may be the main reason the Roman Empire never industrialized; they had plenty of inventions, but they didn’t put them into practice except in rare cases. The emperor was more interested in being the ultimate patron than advancing the economy, which was not really a concept anyway. You get money by taxing conquered lands, not by increasing efficiency.
By the way, he rewarded the inventor—hint, hint, give out money, show gratitude, etc. to be the best and greatest patron. He didn’t kill him."
so i was wrong about the killing part afaik
A man invented a new kind of glass that wouldn't shatter. He brought a challace made of this glass to the emperor for a demonstration, and threw it to the ground. Instead of shattering, it merely bent. Then he hammered it back into shape. The emperor was very impressed and asked if he had told anybody else the secret to making this glass. The inventor said he had not. Then the emperor ordered him killed on the spot.
Pliny the Elder tells this story. He says he doesn't believe it actually happened, but that it was a popular story in Rome.
10 DirectTV satellites pose a higher risk of causing Kessler than 30,000 satellites at a 300 mile orbit.
That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches hopefully without putting too much of a damper on innovation and progress while also protecting lives.
The US is the Land of Middlemen. Government are capable of doing so (see 'medical care in much of the rest of the world'). That doesn't specifically change that it is generally better for the "common good" that large infrastructure projects are often better in the hands of an entity that is not corporate profit-seeking at all costs.
> That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches
SpaceX is using Tonga as a 'flag of convenience' for these launches, likely because Tonga has a far more lax regulatory oversight system - it's certainly not because of SpaceX's heavy connection to the Pacific island nation.
They do have some connection: last year Starlink were there helping restore internet access after the volcano[0].
[0] https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/138575/spacexs-starlink-work...
No, they weren't. Musk, et al, always have no shortage of people willing to pat them on the back for promises of future potentiality.
"SpaceX plans to establish a gateway ground station on Fiji".
"Last month, CEO Elon Musk mentioned the possibility of supplying Tonga residents with Starlink, if needed. Once a ground station is established in the South Pacific region"
"There’s no word on how long it’ll take for the company to get the ground station up and running. But the other obstacle is delivering Starlink dishes to residents in Tonga."
"In the meantime, the country still has access to other satellite internet providers"
That's a little "reaching" for 'being on the ground helping restore internet access'.
Even if that WAS the case, trying to connect that as "so now it makes perfect sense for us to apply for orbit slots from Tonga for eight times the volume of current Starling satellites as we currently have in orbit".
I know this because I was part of an org that sent equipment to Fiji schools
If you think there is something wrong with the American government specifically, which doesn't effect enlightened progressive European governments, then I direct your attention to France and Arianespace's own failure to innovate.
>>If someone else did this would it be fine?
No it wouldn't, I would be equally upset at any other constellations like this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-st...
Moreover these institutions are set up to make it very difficult for one single person to make a unilateral decision. Which is a good thing.
Which describes some voters but certainly not all. You'll notice power changes quite often in the US, clearly some voters are changing their minds.
In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?
But not on individual issues like this, unless they are extremely important to many voters, and highly party-aligned (e.g. abortion). You vote for one party or the other, each of which having 1000s of positions like this.
> In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?
The endpoint is not thinking that democracy as it stands can reign a lot of things in, unless they become the issue for an election. Not every issue can become the battleground of an election, but there are alternatives to fighting.
It's certainly no silver bullet - bad actors have historically taken charge of companies, industries, governments, even entire countries and carried out insane and/or malicious policies with terrible results; a process which is demonstrably ongoing in huge chunks of the world right now.
But having at least some checks and balances on power generally works out better than having none at all.
It is for anything to get done.
I mean come on... This is giving the world access to the internet. They have worked on "Cloaking" the devices to ensure they are not interfering with astronomy, have utilized materials that are sure to burn up in the atmosphere, have contributed code to NASA to be able to track these objects.
What happened to people that they are so cynical nowadays? Is it just me, or does everyone just hate everything nowadays? Any kind of technological advances/ Space fairing adventure is met with criticism like this.
To the OP's comment, "How can one man controls so much?" Because without that man, this wouldn't exist for another 10-15 years. Also, "Control" here is "We don't want our satellites used for offensive operations and WAR...." This is the exact kind of man i would like to be in control of such resources.
Britain's first-past-the-post voting system is designed to create strong governments that can get things done. They certainly got things done: after parting ways with their biggest trading partner, a decade of mismanagement by increasingly brazen kleptocrats has completely tanked the economy. Might things have turned out differently if extremists couldn't unilaterally make enormous changes to a population's way of life?
Meanwhile, well, Trump. Aren’t we glad the system checked him from turning the most hare-brained of his ideas into reality?
Perhaps this is unfair; examples from politics are like shooting fish in a barrel. Let's look at super intelligent businessmen.
Just recently, a maverick who thought he was smarter than everyone else built a super innovative submarine. Might that story have had a different outcome if he'd had some sanity checks from someone whose opinion he actually respected?
Another one founded a cryptocurrency exchange and a trading firm, and decided he was smarter than everyone else and so it was fine for him to just quietly make huge bets using other people's money. Might that have had a different outcome if he wasn't given unconditional access to a $65bn credit line with no oversight? He's still claiming he did nothing wrong and is an effective altruist to boot. It's for the courts now.
Musk himself hasn't the best track record here; just look at Twitter. Musk's other holdings have teams of people whose full time job is to interact with Musk, translating his proclamations into sensible things; with Twitter, however, we get to see the man unfiltered. It's quite a sight.
There’s risk/reward to consider here. Experiments are good; change is risk, and no change for the better can happen without risking change for the worse. But if your experiment is of globally significant scale with potentially global consequences, maybe running it by some people willing to honestly speak their mind first isn’t such a terrible plan?
Someone posted this on Tumblr about a person who's a notorious micromanager.
It doesn't make any sense to me but it does to people who want to believe.
See this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859707 comment denying something that I know about first hand.
Side note: How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?
The US military doesn't build their own hardware, they contract that out to companies. If the US government were buying a very large number of satellites, they'd be buying it from a company like SpaceX.
(Spoilers: they are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities)
I think both of those labels are way too generalistic. "I think people should cap out at a billion dollars" isn't anti-capitalistic. It's anti unrestrained capitalism.
Similarly, "we should aid Ukraine in defending itself against an invasion" isn't "pro-war". It's accepting of reality, i.e. there is a war no matter your feelings on it. And letting an aggressor do whatever they want is likely to lead to more war.
Ukraine has always had access to Starlink. Musk proactively offered it for free when competitors' infrastructure was bricked by the Russians and basic communications were disrupted. He only decided "whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not" when it came to military operations, and rightfully so-- SpaceX would have become a military target itself. He's allowed to not want to declare SpaceX an enemy combatant without being labelled a despot. Russia started with a cyberattack and eventually started physically shelling ground stations. Being on the receiving end of a Howitzer is bad for business.
In no universe would doing otherwise have made sense in any goddamn context. Having his shit wrecked too would not have helped anybody. What he did allowed him to play the Red Cross card of neutrality, so SpaceX could continue operating in the area unmolested.
Musk sucks, but at least vilify him for things he's actually done and not invent made-up narratives.
That's entirely the result of Ukraine getting the service pro-bono and not signing any kind of contract with SpaceX. The US government has signed contracts with SpaceX and it's perfectly fine like that. All of the hemming and hawing about Starlink's somehow ability to go outside of US law is rather silly and not endorsed by reality.
30,000 pieces of junk to you, a life changing technology for lots of people all over the world. Check your privilege.
the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis
the political parties in control are also holding hands with media companies, and have no regulation on their own actions either personal or public, they can trade whatever stocks they want and move onto whatever job with a conflicting interest that they want afterwards.
musk has nothing compared to politicians, and much more oversight than any of them because he's spending his own money. it didn't fall from the sky, he has it because he's successful. unlike the politicians who print as much money as they want and retire with $100m+ and zero accountability for all of their failed and inefficient projects
Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?
Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.
And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.
and i'd love to know how much bezos could afford if you could provide that link, it sounds interesting. because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k. that adds to my original point that the government spends way more. any "power" a billionaire has is truly just a drop in massive bucket.
This trope is old, and was never really accurate.
He was living in a $50M mansion at the time, mostly by himself. Flying back and forth between California and Texas almost daily, private.
That the world's second or third richest person "doesn't even own a house" is something that beggars belief, made for a good soundbite. I'm sure he doesn't. I'm sure Elon Holdings VIII Inc. or similar owns plenty of property. Just like he "did everything possible to anonymize his private jet, so it was doxxing him to show its location"... when in reality it is registered to a company with a SpaceX-related name, whose company office is at 1 Space Drive in a city in California, whose address, when you enter it into Google says "Businesses associated with this address: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company". Very anonymous indeed.
> because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k.
I don't want to diminish Tacoma - I lived there once, but it is a city of 62 square miles and I really struggle to fathom the grandiosity you envision. What would be impressive to you? Seattle? Austin? Phoenix? Chicago?
Presumably he wouldn't be broke, because being the landlord of all those structures would provide rather significant income, no?
I got the data a few years ago, just from the City of Tacoma's tax records and assessed property values.
and i think a city of a million would be impressive, i've lived in cities of 100k, 200k, ~6m, 30k, and 350k. even at a million, that's still only ~0.003% of the US population.
while the example makes for a nice way of measuring wealth-to-power, so kudos on that, realistically it makes for a bad investment. you'd get a lot in rent but you'd get crushed in repair fees, insurance, and property tax. plus if someone else really wants to buy that property (or they dislike whoever bought it), its probably cheaper for them to sponsor state-level politicians to raise property tax in some obscure way on only people who own 100+ properties. forcing you to dump everything at once, thereby decreasing prices in the area.
It sucks that propaganda is producing people who are anti-science and anti-progress. As they say "Rocket man bad".
Think of starlink as a far smaller network of planes that are a bit higher but are also slowly falling down to earth.
First of all, its not even remotely junk. These are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they will in almost all cases not be junk. Its standard regulation that all sats deorbit themselves at end of live.
And even in the very few cases where the sat fails Starlink sats are low enough orbit they will only be junk for a very small amount of time.
> Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga.
Completely irrelevant statistics. Why don't you compare it to the Vatican City? Or you the local lemonade stand? Or to Apple?
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Except of course the tons of regulation that Starlink and SpaceX in general have to agree to in order to be allowed to operate.
Before you are allowed to launch you need to actually tell the regulator where you are gone deploy, what your end of life policy is. Of course lots of regulation about spectrum and so on.
Please try to follow the rules of this site... Calling operational satellites "junk" is not conducive to any kind of intelligent discussion.
> a company controlled by one man is allowed
We live in a country that (thank God) still allows (for now at least) people to run their own businesses and create products to sell to people. It'll be a sad day if that were to ever change.
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Getting the ITU license through Tonga does not suddenly make all regulation in the US disappear. They'll still be covered by the FCC, just like any other operator in the US.
> In terms of communications capability, W band offers high data rate throughput when used at high altitudes and in space. (The 71–76 GHz / 81–86 GHz segment of the W band is allocated by the International Telecommunication Union to satellite services.) Because of increasing spectrum and orbit congestion at lower frequencies, W-band satellite allocations are of increasing interest to commercial satellite operators, although no commercial project has yet been implemented in these bands.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_band
Certain frequencies in the band seem to be used for near-distance radar:
> However, W-band radar, a relative newcomer in maritime navigation and operating at 76-77GHz, provides the most impressive imagery and accuracy, which is becoming increasingly crucial in the ever more cluttered environs of offshore, nearshore, and inland waterways. It has a range of 500m and is resistant to adverse weather conditions.
* https://www.ship-technology.com/comment/why-w-band-radar-is-...
Automotive applications too:
* https://www.mtu.edu/mtri/research/project-areas/transportati...
Ka-band (18-30 GHz) used to be the new frontier for satcom - it was what everyone was excited about the last time I worked in the industry (2014). The advances in mm-wave devices over the last decade are mind boggling.
Longer article: https://ts2.space/en/spacex-plans-to-deploy-thousands-of-sat...
[1] - https://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Starlink-Sc...
Why did SpaceX do this? What's significant about Tonga?
"Southern Cross Cable reported that the eruption may have broken the Tonga Cable System, which connects Tonga to Southern Cross's trans-Pacific cable in Fiji.[196] Southern Cross cited a fault in the international cable 37 km (23 mi) from Nukuʻalofa, and a further fault in a domestic cable 47 km (29 mi) from Nukuʻalofa.[197] New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern had earlier stated that an undersea cable serving Tonga was affected, probably due to power cuts, and authorities were urgently attempting to restore communications.[198] The chair of the Tonga Cable System, Samiuela Fonua, stated that repair crews would not be cleared to access the site of the faults before volcanic activity ceased at Hunga Tonga; with additional preparation time necessary for the repairs, internet services could be unavailable for over two weeks after the eruption."
"Tongasat is the licensed agent of the Kingdom of Tonga responsible for making and coordinating Tonga's satellite filings to the International Telecommunication Union and then licensing those satellite filings to international satellite operators for their commercial use, in effect a flag of convenience for space. Tonga was the sixth-largest claimant of orbital slots due to Tongasat's efforts.[1] In 2002, Tongasat launched the Esiafi 1 satellite; as of 2015, a satellite in its spot was still in operation."
Starlink named this constellation ESIAFI II.
Starlink provided free internet services to Tonga last year after a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/musks-starlink-co...
https://web.archive.org/web/20231012142827/https://re.public...
https://connectivity.esa.int/news/first-wband-transmission-s...
https://www.space.com/spacex-starshield-satellite-internet-m...
Edit: it might be worse for signal propagation through the atmosphere though...
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...
Probably a bit like 2.4 GHz vs 5GHz WiFi.
> Arianespace, Astra, Axiom Space, Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin, Equatorial Space Systems, Firefly Aerospace, Galactic Energy, i-Space, Northrop Grumman, Redwire, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, United Launch Alliance, Virgin Galactic
Most of these have accomplished little and are destined to be forgotten (or never known by most people in the first place.) If SpaceX had fewer competitors, maybe engineer resources wouldn't be spread so thin and some of their competitors could actually compete in a meaningful sense.
But it's not just a problem of resources. Some of these companies have backers with deep pockets, and had every opportunity to accomplish what SpaceX has. Arianespace is backed by the French government; they've been in business for 20 years longer than SpaceX. They've built and flown hundreds of rockets. With that 20 year head start, extensive experience and backing of a powerful government, have they innovated? Nope. Ariane 6, still not flying, won't be reusable. Ariane Next should be, but they only started development on that a few years ago (2019-2021-ish) If it doesn't get delayed, Ariane Next will be a Falcon 9 competitor 20 years too late. Arianespace are so far behind SpaceX it physically pains me as a francophile.
Or Blue Origin. They were founded by Jeff Bezos in America two years before SpaceX was founded. They're a private company operating in the US backed by a billionaire with insanely deep pockets, just like SpaceX. They hired and have been hiring tons of great engineers with proven track records in the space industry. So what have they accomplished? They've put nothing put into orbit, ever. Not a single orbital test let alone fulfilled contract. They won a contract to sell engines to ULA for Vulcan, and subsequently caused Vulcan to be delayed for many years by their failure to deliver those engines on time. They may actually end up killing ULA like this; Atlas V and Delta IV / Heavy are end of life.. ULA needs Vulcan to continue fulfilling new contracts.
And why is ULA on the precipice? How could Blue Origin's failure do this to ULA? ULA were founded a few years after SpaceX, but as a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed and inherited their technology and engineering talent from those companies. They're a darling of the American military-industrial complex, the favored launcher of the Pentagon's most advanced and expensive satellites. So why haven't they innovated? Instead of innovating, they've wasted their time and money building the same old rockets they inherited. Instead of developing their own new engines, they decided to buy engines from the likes of Russia(!!!) and Blue Origin. ULA had all the opportunity in the world but they squandered it because of poor leadership.
Why does SpaceX succeed where the others flounder and fail? It's not because SpaceX had more time, money, or experience; they have several competitors with all of those in spades. It's not because of the regulatory environment SpaceX operates in, because they share that with at least some of the others as well. It's because SpaceX has more visionary leadership. I know a lot of you hate Elon Musk so you will hate this conclusion, but I challenge you to explain it any other way. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin each could have done what SpaceX is doing, but didn't because they have ineffective leadership with no vision for the future. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin wanted to plod along selling antique rockets at the speed of government molasses so they got blindsided by the company that's actually trying.
The culture seems very pedal to the metal but otherwise good, as in engineers are empowered to do engineering rather than bogged down in minutia. To me that is the recipe for success, attracting the good engineers and then letting them do engineering.
Do you also worry Supervolcano anytime anybody digs a hole?
> Do you also worry Supervolcano anytime anybody digs a hole?
No. The risk is not remotely comparable.
Do you still wonder? Probably you could put a few million up there before collision is a worry.
Space debris and blocking observatories is a much larger problem.
... and then have them run at 17,000 miles per hour.
If a collision does happen 2 objects become 20,000 objects in an instance.
That smash "created at least 1,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm (4 in)".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision alone made two thousand cataloguable fragments to track on new paths we didn't get to pick.
SpaceX's existing constellation (also in such a self-cleaning orbit) made 1,300 maneuvers in six months to avoid debris from a satellite explosion a year earlier. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/10/starlink-satellites-are-do...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT#1985_test destroyed a satellite at 345 miles. Debris from it persisted until 2004.
The low orbit reduces the long-term impact of such a chain-reaction - we wouldn't be locked out of space for a thousand years - but it would still be a serious disaster.
Something still hit it.
Again, non-zero. You can argue it's low; you can't argue it's zero.
No, certainly not in LEO. Debris in LEO falls back to Earth in only a few years so even if a shooting war started and shattered every satellite in LEO into a mist of deadly orbital speed bullets, a few years after the war ends LEO would be clear again. All of the other effects of such a large-scale shooting war would be far more concerning to everybody on the ground, space debris would be the least of the concerns for any survivors.
A cubic kilometre keep out zone is pretty generous, we could probably put in trillions if needed.
The system of airplane management is 1000x more complex.
Newtonian physics says that ideal two-body problems are predictable to any point in the future. But ideal two-body problems exist nowhere in the universe, especially in near-earth orbit.
Source: I watched a Scott Manley video once
Why are you on HN if you truly believe this? To talk shit on HN?
HN is the exact opposite. I can also say with 100% certainty, tons of SpaceX/Tesla employees browse HN to take breaks.
You can't have one row of satellites orbit at the equator, and another row orbit at 40 degrees north latitude. A row is already difficult, they catch up with each other quickly just due to random perturbations and elevation differences.
Instead, each wrap of your ball of yarn crosses over the others. Each row intersects most other rows.
What kind of TAM does that add up to?
ISPs in the US rank very low in customer satisfaction, but is that enough to get people to use satellites to replace normal terrestrial links?
Starlink is not intended to replace terrestrial connectivity. It is intended to provide service to everyone on the planet that can not get terrestrial connectivity, and those areas that can never get terrestrial connections, like oceangoing vessels and airplanes.
But let's crunch some back of the envelope numbers. SpaceX currently are allowed to launch 7500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. A Falcon 9 can fit 22 of them in one launch, requiring ~341 launches. The satellites have a planned lifetime of 5 years, meaning the entire constellation would have to be replaced in that time frame. So costs then. Musk has given out $15 million as best case marginal cost for Falcon 9 back in 2020. But let's be conservative and say $25m per launch currently. That's $8525m in total for launches. The satellites themselves are estimated to cost between $200-300k each for the original v1, but the v2 probably costs a bit more, so let's say $500k each. That adds up to $3750m for the satellites.
So the totals then is $12275m over the span of 5 years, or ~$2.5 billion yearly. The subscription cost is currently $110, but it fluctuates depending on the capacity in an area, so let's just use $100 as a simple round number. Each subscriber would bring in $1200 a year in revenue, so that means SpaceX would need ~2.1 million subscribers to cover the cost of replacing their currently allowed 7500 Gen2 satellites. It doesn't include the SpaceX operated ground stations that connect to the rest of the internet, but they're probably a smaller part of their total costs. The user terminals are now being sold at a profit.
As of last month, SpaceX announced they had over 2 million subscribers, and reports from earlier this year indicated that they have passed the operational break even point for Starlink, which means my conservative numbers are much higher than the real numbers. There's also a lot of countries where it's not available yet, and given that it's a global system, the marginal cost for connecting a new country is very low, only requiring ground stations to be built.
So to conclude, yes, the numbers add up and they're in a good spot right now. Once they get Starship operational the numbers should change dramatically though, since launch costs are the main cost right now, and Starship would reduce that significantly.
Also net incoming energy flux due to anthropogenic climate change, this year, is 2W/m*2.
I let you do the maths (multiplie by earth surface) but think it’s close to 20’000 megaton eq TNT per day.
[0] https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-conjunction-increas...
> my share of the planet/universe without me having a say in it
You have a say in it. If you are in the US its regulated. And in space it regulated by a treaty between the US and everybody else. This is no different any other regulation that happen in a democracy.
I'd recommend reading more on the subject from non-emotionally charged sources.
It's sort of like the asteroid belt. You picture this belt of rocks, but in reality the distance between the rocks is so vast that it would take days, weeks, or months to travel between them even with powerful rockets.
All these new-generation communication satellites are intentionally placed in low somewhat unstable orbits too. This is done for two reasons. One is to minimize latency. You want them as low as they can possibly be to minimize distance between them and the ground. The other reason is so they will naturally deorbit after a while (when they are long past their design life). So even if the ability to intentionally deorbit them at EOL fails they will still not stay up there forever.
They do have a negative impact on terrestrial astronomy though. Astronomers using ground based telescopes need to ignore satellite tracks or remove them with post-processing.
> https://www.space.com/nasa-scientists-space-junk-treaty
Your dismissive attitude towards space debris is the polar opposite of leading scientists.
NASA and other space agencies have been lobbying to make politicians understand the immediate and long term dangers of orbital debris.
I’m not against satellite constellations, just wishing for a way to have them more organized and for having stricter rules on cleanup and deorbit.
I guess that’s why my original comment got downvoted :-(
The vast bulk of manmade CO2 emission is from coal burning for electricity, construction, and fossil fuel powered ground transport. The rest is a long tail. Aviation is small.
It doesn't make sense to focus that much on the long tail yet when huge improvements in CO2 emissions can more easily be achieved by focusing on phasing out coal for power generation, oil for cars, etc. Closing just a few coal burning power plants has a lot more impact than trying to stop people from flying.