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SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

forbes.com

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Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#81

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

pergadad wrote: post #77
aperrien wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. This is such an incomplete report, it reminds me of the old adage "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can put it's pants on." A proper, less sensational reporter would have waited until they knew why they declined to move the satellite before writing the piece.

The reason the author is unaware of the reason is because SpaceX refused to give a reason. Impotence? Incompetence? Malice? Different risk calculation? Game of chicken? Either way if they throw thousands of satellites into space they can't just say "sorry, tragedy of the commons, everyone else should shoulder the risk we created (& the costs to avoid risk)"

SpaceX might not bother giving comment to random bloggers. Especially on Labor day and regarding what they probably regard as a non-incident. There are probably a lot of such individuals asking for comment on any of thousands of different subjects.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#82

Post by scarejunba »

aperrien wrote: post #54
saagarjha wrote: post #20

Of course, inside the article it’s explained that SpaceX didn’t “refuse” to move the satellite, they were politely asked to do so and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. Possibly because they couldn’t move the satellite or had a higher collision tolerance.

> and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. This is such an incomplete report, it reminds me of the old adage "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can put it's pants on." A proper, less sensational reporter would have waited until they knew why they declined to move the satellite before writing the piece.

Interesting. So if I am the only one to have some information as to why I wanted to move a satellite, you should not publish anything until I tell you why, and so I can simply prevent you from publishing by just not telling you anything. Interesting system.

You could publish that I'm not telling you, but you don't know 'why' I'm not telling you, so that makes you irresponsible too.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#83

Post by optimiz3 »

dahdum wrote: post #75
avocado4 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either way, it exposes a flaw in SpaceX’s design What is this statement based on? You are saying yourself that there's no information available to the public about this due to lack of transparency, yet in the next sentence you are making a bold statement about design flaws. To me it sounds like there should be clear regulation about right of way in space. I haven't seen any information pertaining to SpaceX design s…

> To me it sounds like there should be clear regulation about right of way in space Common courtesy worldwide would be for the person causing the risk to move aside first. Worse still it was a private company working on a for-profit product forcing a public weather satellite to divert. There's no need for regulation until bad actors show up.

Are we then saying there's an equivalent of domain squatting in space? Cause I could see all types of problems showing up if we call that common courtesy.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#84

Post by cdash »

mcguire wrote: post #74
BurningFrog wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they declined because (1) it was impossible for them to do it or (2) they explained it wasn't needed.

" ...they explained it wasn't needed. " Well, somebody seems to have needed to maneuver.

So? They have that right, what they don't have a right is to demand someone else take action. Just because one party believes something to be necessary does not actually make it so.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#85

Post by dtkav »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #60
DuskStar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active transponders on the satellite itself. GPS fixes. Other observations from the satellite. Controlling the target makes some problems a lot easier.

GPS appears to not give great online performance in LEO[1], and transponders is just slightly easier radar, not a fundamental difference. Do they have really good star trackers on their sats? [1]: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/563/in-leo-what-is...

They don't need great online performance, they need offline performance for orbit determination.

Once they have a good orbit fit, they will propagate it to predict the probability of collision a few days in advance.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#86

Post by fwip »

duskwuff wrote: post #70
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they deorbiting? Didn't they just launch these?

To test their ability to perform a controlled deorbit.

Sounds like the test didn't work, if they can't avoid hitting other satellites.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#87

Post by lukeschlather »

mabbo wrote: post #33

The ESA is sure making a huge deal out of this. I wonder if politics is involved. https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753 > Hmmm. We move our satellites on average once a week and don't put out a press release to say who we maneuvered around... -Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium

The ESA asked SpaceX to move to avoid a collision, and they refused. What would happen if a private airline refused the FAA telling them to redirect to avoid a collision, forcing another aircraft to take evasive action?

It definitely is political, and it's going to become a bigger problem if SpaceX's approach to potential collisions is just to play chicken.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#88

Post by dahdum »

optimiz3 wrote: post #83
dahdum wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me it sounds like there should be clear regulation about right of way in space Common courtesy worldwide would be for the person causing the risk to move aside first. Worse still it was a private company working on a for-profit product forcing a public weather satellite to divert. There's no need for regulation until bad actors show up.

Are we then saying there's an equivalent of domain squatting in space? Cause I could see all types of problems showing up if we call that common courtesy.

Domain squatting is on unused domains while this was an active public weather satellite already on an established orbit. Not at all comparable.

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#89

Post by sanguy »

saagarjha wrote: post #20

Of course, inside the article it’s explained that SpaceX didn’t “refuse” to move the satellite, they were politely asked to do so and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. Possibly because they couldn’t move the satellite or had a higher collision tolerance.

The issue is constellations like StarLink are setup to tolerate some % of failures and still function. They launch in bulk as part of the overall plan.

So this brings up the question - if the value of your satellite is lower do you burn up precious fuel to manueveur around potential collisions? Or do you play space chicken and let the others maneuver around you?

Re: SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite

#90

Post by konschubert »

Paul-ish wrote: post #69
konschubert wrote: post #9

I wonder if AI is really the right tool to automate the process. Couldn’t it be done more robustly with a simple algorithm that takes todays collision probability models as input?

Reading the Wikipedia page for a 2009 satelite collision[1]: > Calculations made by CelesTrak had expected these two satellites to miss by 584 meters (1,916 ft) Perhaps the calculations aren't straightforward Newtonian mechanics? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

You’re misunderstanding my comment.

I wasn’t suggesting to not use AI algorithm for computing the collision probabilities. For this, they will obv use whatever tools they already have.

The whole discussion is around how to react automatically to a likely collision.

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