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SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites while setting two reuse records

cnbc.com

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

#121

Post by dotancohen »

caconym_ wrote: post #59
callesgg wrote: 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?

Many payloads have been launched with known issues to meet a launch window or mass specification. Notably, I think the Mars Curiosity rover had disabled hardware (microphones) on board because its mass (all 80 grams of it) had been factored into the launch vehicle and spacecraft burns and EDL maneuvers.

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

#123

Post by derekp7 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #67
gt565k wrote: 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…

People already covered why that's not possible with Starlink, but in-car WiFi is already incredibly cheap and works well. My Volt included unlimited data for 20$ a month, and it was fast enough for streaming video and worked at times where my phone didn't (presumably because of the better positioned antenna)

What do you use in-car wifi for, that you couldn't already use your existing unlimited cell data plan for? I have unlimited data, plus "unlimited" hotspot on my t-mobile phone for a really reasonable price (the unlimited hotspot throttles down after a certain point, but even that speed is still plenty for what I used it for -- I only which I could explicitly tell it I want to use the throttled speed gigabytes now, and save the high-speed gigabytes for when it would be useful).

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

#124

Post by eps »

lachlan-sneff wrote: post #6
udfalkso wrote: post #4

Are they recovering the fairing again?

Not this time, apparently the weather was too bad for the ships to go out.

Yeah, but the sea was calm and the weather looked fine on the booster landing video from the platform.

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

#125

Post by sq_ »

mkl wrote: post #113
LeoPanthera wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it would be pretty useless. It's not the camera you need, but the telescope, which would be too heavy to justify on these tiny satellites.

After the first Starlink launch, Musk made a number of comments about being willing to experiment with launching some telescope-equipped Starlink sats since they expect the per-sat costs to be so low.

If you had dozens to hundreds up there, you could probably do some useful interferometry even with small telescopes.

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

#126

Post by ianai »

paulsutter wrote: post #114
_flgt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each RF hop is going to have more latency than fiber for RF physical layer processing. Forward error correction intentionally uses large frames to spread out burst errors.

Sounds speculative. Given link bandwidths and likely error rates, it seems better to allow the higher layers to retransmit than to optimize for correcting burst errors. Especially given Starlink's goal to control latency.

Have they given a range on latency goals? Ie seconds, tenths of seconds, milliseconds, etc?

I’m seeing figures of 1 million$ per satellite. Over 10 years that’s roughly 100k/month in mortgage or around 1k customers at 100$/mo.

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

#127

Post by heavenlyblue »

londons_explore wrote: post #112
awalton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 satelli…

Not knowing why that one satellite failed is also a big cost though. There could be some systematic failure that affects them all, and just this was the first to fail. If the rest fail over the next 2 weeks, that will be a big goof.

But they took that cost, haven't they?

PS: besides, who said they don't know the reason?

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

#128

Post by caconym_ »

dotancohen wrote: post #121
caconym_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Many payloads have been launched with known issues to meet a launch window or mass specification. Notably, I think the Mars Curiosity rover had disabled hardware (microphones) on board because its mass (all 80 grams of it) had been factored into the launch vehicle and spacecraft burns and EDL maneuvers.

Yeah, that's why I specified individual spacecraft. Presumably the rationale is similar, but it's interesting that this time it's not just a defunct subsystem but rather an entire independent spacecraft.

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

#129

Post by sq_ »

derekp7 wrote: post #103
guelo wrote: post #54

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

If you don't mind me asking, What time of night was that image taken? That looks like sunlight reflected off the satellites, so it must have been just after sunset or just prior to dawn (where the satellites are illuminated but it is dark on the ground) -- or am I mistaken? And is that still an issue after the satellites were raised to their target orbit? Also, this being a composite image, I'm assuming it is from mu…

There was definitely a huge amount of controversy over this after the first Starlink launch. If I'm remembering correctly, the problems got significantly better after the satellites moved to their final orbits and oriented their solar panels correctly.

Additionally, SpaceX promised to do their best to lower the albedo of this second set of sats, which, based on side-by-side pictures of the two stacks of sats, they seem to have done.

In my opinion, there's definitely reason to be afraid of the effects of Starlink on astronomy, but SpaceX also seems reasonably receptive to making changes in order to lessen the impact.

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