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SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

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Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#131

Post by greglindahl »

ForHackernews wrote: post #99
allovernow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>charlatan like Musk I'm not a fanboy by any means but the guy built two companies and launched a car from his factory into space from a rocket his other business built. He's personally spearheading the early stages of commercial space exploration. I don't know that I'd describe him as a charlatan.

Musk did not found Tesla, but would like you to believe that he did: https://www.quora.com/Did-Elon-Musk-found-Tesla-1 Maybe 'charlatan' is unfair, but he's certainly more of a sales-and-hype man than a real engineering type. I don't understand why so many technical people are snowed by his razzle dazzle.

"Founder" is a label decided by the company, not by outsiders. Many Silicon Valley companies have "founders" who were not there on Day 1.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#132

Post by chr1 »

chr1 wrote: post #31
Tomte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the professional astronomers using large telescopes on Earth are the ones deepening our understanding of the universe. Not the greedy entrepreneurs littering the sky with Internet access satellites.

Professional astronomers would rather use a swarm of large and better working telescopes in space instead of dealing with clouds, city lights, and the Sun not allowing to work at normal hours. > Not the greedy entrepreneurs littering the sky with Internet access satellites. The "littering" will be done not just by "greedy entrepreneurs" but by millions of people who will pay for faster internet, and by astronomers wh…

I'd be very interested to know if any of the people who strongly disagree with the above comment are professional astronomers, or physicists.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#133

Post by portillo »

pcunite wrote: post #121

We want to make sure we do the right thing to make sure little kids can look through their telescope Before the end of next year, there is going to be 12,000 of these units above our Earth. One must certainly hope.

I would bet that there will be no more than 1,200 (if they raise the money needed to launch and manufacture that many).

And I would also bet that even in an 8 year time-horizon, they will not launch 12,000 satellites for Starlink because simply, there will be no market for so much capacity. In my opinion, we are heading towards an Iridium, Teledesic, Globalstar 2.0 scenario.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#134

Post by mstipetic »

cbanek wrote: post #110

(I'm not speaking for any of my current or past employers, just for myself, and how I've seen this play out. One employer being a telescope impacted by Starlink, and the other being SpaceX, I want both sides to succeed.) First, astronomers know that satellites can disrupt observations. They've known for a while, and have had to deal with things like flares from Irridium satellites, which were probably when these prob…

This sounds to me like a new technology and a way of operating has come and we're trying to make it accommodate the old way of doing things.

If we really have a way to launch thousands of satellites easily, can't we replace the terrestrial functionality with that? Let's launch hundreds of satellites observing near earth asteroids.

If a private company can do it, governments definitely can

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#136

Post by portillo »

chr1 wrote: post #54
sprash wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I don't really care. Laying fiber is a dead simple procedure that is rather inexpensive. The main reason it doesn't happen are political reasons. Other countries are responsible to solve their political problems themselves. I have neither any influence, ability or responsibility for the political process in other countries (which is certainly a good thing). Former poor soviet block countries built their own…

First starlink is better than fiber because it will have lower latency. Second and more important it doesn't destroy astronomy at all, it adds some small temporary inconvenience for some types of observations, but at the same time makes space launches cheaper allowing more space telescopes, which is going to help astronomy greatly. Your reaction would be totally justified if starlink was really disrupting astronomy,…

It will only have lower latency when they have the inter-satellite links. Until then, they will have the latency of fiber PLUS the RTT from the user terminal - satellite - gateway path.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#137

Post by [deleted] »

jdsully wrote: post #75
ChrisClark wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why Musk always asks people to come to him if they have a better idea. Even in large groups, or maybe especially in large groups, things can be overlooked. He recently said in a video that if anyone can convince him an aerospike is better than their solution, he wants to know.

He also has a history of calling people pedophiles for disagreeing with his designs. Even when they are domain experts and he is not. I think that’s more just PR and he’s not honestly seeking feedback.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#138

Post by ceejayoz »

shaklee3 wrote: post #117
jesseb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every country has the resources or desire to lay nation-wide fiber. Satellite internet could beneift millions of people who don't have access to reliable high-speed connections.

Satellite internet has existed for decades. Why is spacex the only way to provide high speed internet?

Satellite internet has indeed existed for decades, but via small numbers of geostationary satellites (Iridium only has 76 active satellites; Starlink launches about that many in every launch). That means severely constrained bandwidth, and high latency given the ~50,000 mile round trip the data has to take. It's also expensive to get a satellite out there.

Low Earth orbit constellations have both lower latency (a couple hundred miles for data to travel instead of tens of thousands) and dramatically more (and cheaper) satellites = more bandwidth available.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#139

Post by SamReidHughes »

shaklee3 wrote: post #114
SamReidHughes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering orbit doesn't substantially reduce latency, building more satellites does.

Building more satellites doesn't reduce latency. Are you referring to the ISL?

Having more satellites lets you communicate in a straighter line. Lower altitude lets you hug the Earth more closely. Higher altitude lets you see more neighbors. I'd wager the low altitude satellites are for last mile communication moreso than global linkage. I mean, otherwise they'd have no use for the higher altitude ones? An optimal low latency link around the planet would mostly alternate low-high-low-high-low in sequence, if there aren't enough low altitude nodes to use them exclusively. But maybe you could crush this argument by doing the actual math in this case.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#140

Post by rrss »

buboard wrote: post #77
EE84M3i wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even the wikipedia page mentions the astronomers' concerns Note, this section was added June 03 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Starlink_(satelli...

yep. the referenced articles are from this summer. still before the launches

60 satellites were launched on 24 may 2019. It looks like all the articles are after that, in response to people seeing the satellites in the sky.
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