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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

#181

Post by nine_k »

kbenson wrote: post #157
mstipetic wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's figure out a way to assemble them in space. Hubble is thirty years old, and is being used now as a reference. I don't understand all this negativity. Had we had this mindset, Hubble would not have been there

Hubble's mirror is 8 feet in diameter, and you aren't going to be assembling something as high precision as that in space, at least not from a few components. If we had the manufacturing capability to make it from scratch in space, maybe, but that's a much larger enterprise. There is a question of whether 100 a foot diameter telescopes can work as well or better than one 8 foot one. Or 500. If it's about photons hitt…

There are several large terrestrial telescopes that use assemblies of a number of coordinated smaller mirrors.

This looks like something reasonably doable on Earth orbit with the current launch capabilities.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #131
ForHackernews wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by notatoad »

Hoping i can get an answer here from somebody who actually knows, and not just a spacex fanboy or hater: what's the actual scope of the problem here?

Shotwell's response and other comments i've seen seem to imply starlink satellites are primarily impacting amateur astronomy ("kids looking through telescopes") and that scientific research is performing post-processing to the recorded images which can mostly eliminate the effects of the starlink satellites. Is that accurate, or is this also impeding telescopes at the big observatories?

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

#184

Post by shaklee3 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #158
shaklee3 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well aware of the scale of starlink, but the speeds delivered by starlink won't be any faster than the existing GEO satellites at the time, not will it be cheaper. The OP talked about high speed internet, which, in most cases, the latency doesn't matter. Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit. If you have a source that says otherwise, please post i…

Iridium currently offers a handful of megabits at best, doesn't it? Starlink's loading 20 Gbps on each satellite, and has successfully tested up to 610 megabits on a connection with a military plane. ( https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin... ) > Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit. I'm not clear on whether you're referring to…

The ground system is what will make or break starlink. Every phased array antenna to date is at a price point that would put starlink selling exclusively to enterprise customers. This means consumers won't be able to get it unless you're in the 1% and living very remote.

SpaceX will not realize 20Gbps per satellite in useable bandwidth. It's more like 5Gbps.

http://www.mit.edu/~portillo/files/Comparison-LEO-IAC-2018-s...

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

#185

Post by ceejayoz »

shaklee3 wrote: post #180
ericd wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to some of those cost estimates? Latency absolutely matters for "high speed internet". Once you have reasonable bandwidth, that's the dominant factor in the user experience.

No, it's not. Streaming media is by far the largest consumer of bandwidth on the internet today. Latency doesn't matter at all for those. Please see this blog for approximate cost estimates, or the MIT study comparing leo constellations. http://tmfassociates.com/blog/category/operators/spacex/

Streaming uses lots of bandwidth, but it's not necessarily the majority of browsing activity. High latency is painful if you're doing things like browsing Reddit.

The blog you're citing claimed Starlink was getting canceled a year ago, so I'm a bit skeptical of its use as an oracle.

http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2018/09/18/420000-km-funding-s...

> Another hint that Starlink is going away was the statement that BFR is expected to consume the majority of engineering resources after the commercial crew development has been completed for NASA next year, despite Starlink supposedly costing more to develop than BFR ($10B+ compared to ~$5B) over the next 5 years.

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

#186

Post by tigershark »

h5arehe5ra4h wrote: post #167
jayd16 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that Starlink latency is actually very competitive with terrestrial fiber. Why do you say it wasn't or isn't? Everything I find suggest Starlink will have low latency.

For most usages yes. For gaming though it's right on the edge: theoretical minimum at 350km orbit is 40ms roundtrip, which would work for most games. But many complications, including position of the satellite, latencies within the networking components, packet loss etc, can easily slow this to 100ms+, which is unsuitable for many online games.

No, the round trip for electromagnetic waves at 350km it’s about 2 ms not 40. The lowest orbit of the satellites though would be 550km and not 350km, but it would still be less than 4ms. From where did you get the 40ms figure that it’s wrong by an order of magnitude?

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

#187

Post by mstipetic »

ryan93 wrote: post #178
mstipetic wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's make the manufacturing capability to do so. It's as if the "manufacturing capability" is some limited rare earth metal. What is the actual limited resource other that ingenuity and engineering?

You can’t manufacture complicated objects in space

We shouldn't have been able to land on the moon using whiteboard engineering and calculator level computers, but we did

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

#188

Post by iudqnolq »

mstipetic wrote: post #177
ixf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's atmosphere is annoying, yes, but for huge swathes of observational science it's not a deal-breaker. Not having massive telescopes on the ground where you can fiddle with your instrumentation and take advantage of apertures and construction techniques simply not possible in space _is_ a deal-breaker. The required precision for construction of telescopes is incredible, and doesn't translate to space well, espec…

I live in a very large city in Europe. I think the number of stars you can see is less than 20. Ground based pollution is horrible, I don't know how you can compare those two.

Maybe because large telescopes aren't in very large cities.

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

#189

Post by ceejayoz »

shaklee3 wrote: post #184
ceejayoz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iridium currently offers a handful of megabits at best, doesn't it? Starlink's loading 20 Gbps on each satellite, and has successfully tested up to 610 megabits on a connection with a military plane. ( https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin... ) > Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit. I'm not clear on whether you're referring to…

The ground system is what will make or break starlink. Every phased array antenna to date is at a price point that would put starlink selling exclusively to enterprise customers. This means consumers won't be able to get it unless you're in the 1% and living very remote. SpaceX will not realize 20Gbps per satellite in useable bandwidth. It's more like 5Gbps. http://www.mit.edu/~portillo/files/Comparison-LEO-IAC-2018-…

OneWeb claims to have cracked that, for a price point of $200-300. https://spacenews.com/wyler-claims-breakthrough-in-low-cost-...

Even if it winds up being more expensive, you might see a neighborhood getting an antenna and distributing it to a group of houses.

> SpaceX will not realize 20Gbps per satellite in useable bandwidth. It's more like 5Gbps.

Based on guesses made prior to the first launch of production hardware, and speculative guesses on the number of SpaceX ground stations? Your slides are from 1 October 2018. The first batch of production hardware went up 24 May 2019.

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

#190

Post by shaklee3 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #185
shaklee3 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Streaming media is by far the largest consumer of bandwidth on the internet today. Latency doesn't matter at all for those. Please see this blog for approximate cost estimates, or the MIT study comparing leo constellations. http://tmfassociates.com/blog/category/operators/spacex/

Streaming uses lots of bandwidth, but it's not necessarily the majority of browsing activity . High latency is painful if you're doing things like browsing Reddit. The blog you're citing claimed Starlink was getting canceled a year ago, so I'm a bit skeptical of its use as an oracle. http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2018/09/18/420000-km-funding-s... > Another hint that Starlink is going away was the statement that BFR i…

Browsing Reddit is perfectly fine on satellite internet. It's obviously not as fast as cable, but it's not the satellite internet of 10 years ago people judge it on.

TMF is probably the most accurate consultant in this industry if you read the whole blog. He tends to be opinionated, which you won't find on places like spacenews.

Either way, it's not productive arguing. It's like the Tesla versus anti-tesla camp, and that certainly won't be settled anytime soon.

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