Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

cnbc.com

51–60 of 162 posts

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#51
post #22

Can't wait to see every Tesla become a wifi hotspot hooked up to Starlink. Traditional ISPs are in trouble if the Starlink latency is really in the sub 100ms due to the LEO distance advantage. Global coverage with decent latency! I wonder if that's why google dipped out on rolling out fiber infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is about to become obsolete as more advancements in wireless tech and satellite internet…

Google dipped out of rolling their own fiber because all the other ISPs started doing it, so there was no need anymore.

Pretty sure Google dipped out of rolling their own fiber because dealing with city councils, pole sharing nonsense, lobbying from incumbent ISPs, and customer service overhead was a huge pain in the ass that doesn't fit with their current operating model.

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#52
post #22

Can't wait to see every Tesla become a wifi hotspot hooked up to Starlink. Traditional ISPs are in trouble if the Starlink latency is really in the sub 100ms due to the LEO distance advantage. Global coverage with decent latency! I wonder if that's why google dipped out on rolling out fiber infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is about to become obsolete as more advancements in wireless tech and satellite internet…

> I wonder if that's why google dipped out on rolling out fiber infrastructure.

Google stopped deploying fiber for several reasons:

a) they weren't able to get reasonable access to poles for deployment.

b) incumbents started large rollouts of gigabit capable services (FTTH from telcos and DOCSIS 3.1 from cablecos) in markets Google had announced, but hadn't built out

c) maybe? lots more LTE deployment

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The satellites stack, so the speculation is that they would have had to spend days to unstack and restack everything.

If they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again.

> If they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again.

My guess is that they did a cost benefit analysis of doing this, and realized it was worth more to them to launch a dead satellite and verify it deorbits as planned than it was to miss a launch deadline, take apart the stack, fix the bum satellite, reintegrate the stack, put it back on the rocket, and schedule a new launch date.

The satellite's cheap - that's literally the point. Verifying failure modes with NASA and the USAF? Now that's expensive. It's worth more as a science experiment than a time sink.

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if that fairing endeavor will come out net positive over the lifetime of Falcon. They paid for a specialized boat to catch the things, and iterated on the boat design several times. Starship is the real reusability project; Falcon is now just holding on to revenue while they get Starship ready to take over the entire launch market (including their own). The fairing is passive, I really wonder if it would…

I've been thinking about this, and it seems doubtful. The fairings are under a million dollars apparently, so they'd have to recover many dozens if not hundreds to pay back the investment into all the catching technologies. It's not clear that they'll ever use that many fairings before switching over entirely to BFR.

Fairings cost upwards of $5M per launch. The technology for the boat basically consists of some arms (with shock absorbers) welded to the deck and a big net strung between them. The boat itself is chartered, not owned by SpaceX as far as I know. The only real tech development is in the parachute systems for the fairings, which also aren't particularly advanced.

I can't imagine positive ROI requiring more than 4 or 5 recoveries. Personally, I'm kind of disappointed they didn't go with a skyhook concept, but getting that system to work with something the size and drag of a half-fairing would probably be a nightmare.

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#57
post #9

One off the satellites where apparently already dead and would not respond to commands when they got it mounted on the rocket. But they launched it anyway.

I've been having this hard to articulate notion that humanity hasn't really begun to fathom the changes that will come with "cheap" launch vehicles.

We have better than half a century where space launch was so expensive, and so rare, that this had an impact on the payloads themselves. Perversely it caused the payloads to become so highly engineered (for a variety of reasons) that they also became ultra-expensive in-line with the launch vehicle and launch opportunity cost.

This also created a negative feedback loop that because the payload was expensive, the launch vehicle had to be extra reliable and thus cost more.

Think of the entire lifetime program expense (R&D, launch, repair, etc.) for the Hubble program, billions upon billions of dollars to basically put a large 1 MP sensor at the end of a tube with a digital radio for communications.

What would happen if this program cost went into hundred of launches, every month, for decades? We could launch not only an equivalent, but technologically improving payload every month? Why not make the device cheaper? Experiment a bit? Who cares if one fails? Maybe launch 2, 3, 4 at a time? Have constellations of Hubbles spread throughout the system? What if Hubble was 300 telescopes with massive 20MP sensors clustered into a distributed virtual telescope the size of the orbit of Mars?

When the launch costs, and cadence drop so low, it doesn't really matter if your satellite doesn't work because you didn't spend 15 years of R&D, and a billion dollars putting up as technologically "perfect" a device as possible, you fab another one, maybe with better parts, and put it up next month instead and write-off the couple hundred thousand as cost of doing business. It's all still cheaper than the alternative.

Smallsats were a kind of way to try to squeeze costs down by simply cutting capability, size, and power. But the cost of a smallsat in orbit was still dominated by the cost of the launch. What if you could launch a fully capable space platform (not a compromised small sat) for less than the cost of a shared-ride smallsat.

With the tonnage going up comes more capability as a by-product. The ISS took over 40 flights to get ultra expensive space hab parts into orbit. A SpaceX Starship might be able to life equivalent mass in 5 launches, at a fraction of the cost. What if, instead of one space station every 20 years, we get two per year?

We have no idea what's about to happen in the next decade.

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#58
post #22

Can't wait to see every Tesla become a wifi hotspot hooked up to Starlink. Traditional ISPs are in trouble if the Starlink latency is really in the sub 100ms due to the LEO distance advantage. Global coverage with decent latency! I wonder if that's why google dipped out on rolling out fiber infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is about to become obsolete as more advancements in wireless tech and satellite internet…

> Can't wait to see every Tesla become a wifi hotspot hooked up to Starlink.

The Starlink receiver is the size of a pizza box (and cannot get smaller, since that is the size of the necessary antenna) - and doesn't work while moving.

So it's impractical to use on cars.

What Tesla probably could do is put a receiver at every Supercharger and broadcast wifi there. It would be especially useful at the more rural locations.

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#59
post #9

One off the satellites where apparently already dead and would not respond to commands when they got it mounted on the rocket. But they launched it anyway.

Is this another record? The first individual spacecraft launched into space despite prior knowledge of the fact that it was inoperable?

Re: SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

#60
post #54

Goodbye amateur astronomy https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=1...

I don't know how practical or useful this idea is, but I wonder how useful a camera on the back of the Starlink satellites would be, looking up.
Post reply on HN