How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images • Hacker News Board

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#341

Post by apacheCamel » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

ballooney wrote: post #307

gorgoiler wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaceships and radio waves are cool and provide a unique solution. Let’s not pretend this was the one true way to get around Comcast et al’s stranglehold though. That problem could have been solved politically with regulation plus (in the countryside) ground based radio, or (in cities) with regulation of cable infrastructure such that it was separated from packet-routing and customer-service. If satellite ISPs genuin…

This should be the top comment. It’s an especially prevalent view in the USA that bad politics is a law of physics and the only solutions are madly technological. It’s not true as many other parts of the world prove. You can just have a not-insane ISP/telco regulatory system if you so choose. (see also healthcare, food/agricultural standards, water quality, online privacy... all choices).

It is also very hard to change regulations whenever the ISPs are deep in the pockets of the same people making those regulations.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#342

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

beached_whale wrote: post #278

reitzensteinm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.

Funny, Canada, even less dense, is doing exactly that. Maybe not 10, but at multiple levels of government there have been up to half the capital without many strings attached to get broadband out to rural areas. My understanding though, it's not work the time even with the fibre there for the larger companies in many cases. This is the latest program https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications...

[deleted]

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#343

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

q3k wrote: post #52

reitzensteinm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. However, this conversation has basically been skipped over. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. The constellations are being launched, and there's zero chance of shutting them down once they're serving a commercial role. Considering the abundant red tape in the modern…

> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. I've had faster Internet than the average Starlink speedtest says, in rural Romania, at the foot of a mountain, wild bears and all: https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632 . Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem, it just now hing…

> Starlink is yet another SV-style attempt to solve (US) societal problems by blindly applying technology. Except this time, this also affects other countries, and we're furious.

Perhaps you are. I'm from the same country, and I couldn't be happier :).

I mean, LEO Internet constellations are awesome for providing access (not just in rural areas, but also in remote areas and at sea). But more than that, we're talking Starlink here in particular. The problem it's solving isn't (just) how to improve Internet access for some people. The main problem it's solving is how to fund SpaceX's R&D on Starship. Which translates to dropping another order of magnitude from the cost of access to orbit. Which will, longer-term, translate to a boon for astronomy.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#344

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #258

mdorazio wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I'll die on the opposite hill with, I suspect, the large majority of the public. And I say that as someone who has been a lifelong space enthusiast. Ubiquitous access to cheap internet has done more for humanity in the last 20 years by far than any contribution from ground-based astronomy. If the choice is between Starlink and more difficult ground-based astronomy, I'll choose Starlink.

Yeah, this is a tradeoff, and the balance seems to favor adding more satellites. We're not going to the stars for centuries at least. It's unlikely that further knowledge we're able to glean from ground-based installations will ever have practical value for anyone on any appreciable timescale. As cool as the stars are, they're really far away and damn hard to see, especially through the atmosphere.

I think long term this isn't really a tradeoff. Starlink exists to fund SpaceX ventures designed to significantly drop the costs of lifting bulk mass to space. That translates to even cheaper missions, which means space-based astronomy can become affordable.

What is a loss of some percentage of astronomical observations today, if it means putting a telescope on the backside of the Moon in 20 years, or a ridiculously large "virtual telescope" via a satellite constellation doing interferometry?

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#345

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

welterde wrote: post #244

valuearb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically this has only been true because of the immense cost of building super lightweight payloads using super expensive super light materials to fit in very limited payload mass requirements. Falcon 9 is a heavy launch system that can lift up to 50,000 lbs of payload to orbit, similar to the Shuttle. Falcon Heavy is a super heavy launch system that can put 140,000 lbs of payload in orbit. Starship is designed t…

You are forgetting that the telescope has to work in space. Big thermal swings, no easy air cooling, no AC outlet to get your power from, no convenient anchoring point for your telescope to push against to point a certain direction, no just bolting several racks full of off-the-shelve electronics to the telescope (none of them work in vacuum), no possibility to repair or upgrade anything, ... Having to use lightweigh…

With much cheaper launch costs, you can afford to send a couple more robust telescopes.

That's the vicious cycle of space mission costs put in reverse. The missions are expensive today, because launches are expensive, meaning you have one shot at doing your decade-long project, so you need to max out on risk mitigation - increasing your project length, labor costs, and launch mass. Significant drops in launch costs and increases in cadence translate to ability to launch much less robust mission (and launch a replacement if/when it fails), which drops the costs all across the board.

> Big thermal swings, no easy air cooling, no AC outlet to get your power from, no convenient anchoring point for your telescope to push against to point a certain direction, no just bolting several racks full of off-the-shelve electronics to the telescope

While by no means easy, that's still table stakes for space missions, and something there's decades of experience in around the world.

> none of them work in vacuum

Nobody is, nor was, sending the equivalent of a ground telescope installation upwell. You only send the looking part, with a downlink bolted on them. You do control and data processing planetside.

> no possibility to repair or upgrade anything

Cheap launches = you can replace. Even cheaper launches = you can try to repair. We'll need to develop that capability anyway, if we want a cislunar space economy.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#346

Post by sfblah » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #199

jeroenhd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. Perhaps in the US, but other countries, even poor ones, manage to do rural internet fine without cluttering the night sky. I, for one, am not stoked about the implications of an American ISP forcing worldwide coverage for themselves. Their shady business practices…

> without cluttering the night sky Current mitigations (visorsat) by SpaceX already make the satellites completely invisible to the naked eye. It’s less of a visual impact (zero once deployed) than any other visible LEO satellite or air travel. Celltowers high enough to need a light are highly visible and are a much greater visual impact than Starlink.

Isn't the issue for telescopes, not the naked eye?

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#347

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

badwolf wrote: post #203

knolax wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk and some investors don't represent humanity. Hell I doubt even SpaceX values Starlink all that much, most employees I know say that it exists mostly as a filler payload during launches.

The fact that they are doing tens of dedicated launches solely for Starlink says otherwise. Starlink is looking to be a multi-billion dollar business by itself.

Whose whole point was a sustainable funding source for SpaceX R&D. In this sense, it's fair for SpaceX employees to consider it "filler payload", given that they have their sights set on Mars. And everyone else, astronomers included, will benefit from drastically cheaper access to space.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#348

Post by sfblah » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

I appreciate the arguments on both sides of this, but it's hard for me to get past the point that the satellites are temporary infrastructure, whereas Earth-based fixed wireless or fiber/wire lines are fairly permanent. It's hard for me to understand why the solution here is the temporary one.

A decade ago I think my opinion would have been different, because technology didn't make offering gigabit bandwidth via wire/fiber and fixed wireless pretty straightforward. So, back then you could have argued everything was temporary. Nowadays, I suspect gigabit fiber/fixed wireless will last a very, very long time before being outmoded (if it ever is).

So, I'm asking myself whether it isn't just more sensible to put up the fixed investment to connect remote areas using existing technologies rather than blasting off satellites again and again to do it.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#349

Post by neckardt » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

gorgoiler wrote: post #300

mmaunder wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m afraid you will die on that hill and be replaced by a happy rural resident who was being abused by a local telco monopoly, but is now using competitively priced, fast, low latency satellite internet. Using keps and scrubbing exposures in post is something we could already do decades ago. It’ll just be a new part of the workflow and eventually the space NIMBYs will quiet down.

Spaceships and radio waves are cool and provide a unique solution. Let’s not pretend this was the one true way to get around Comcast et al’s stranglehold though. That problem could have been solved politically with regulation plus (in the countryside) ground based radio, or (in cities) with regulation of cable infrastructure such that it was separated from packet-routing and customer-service. If satellite ISPs genuin…

> That problem could have been solved politically with regulation plus (in the countryside) ground based radio, or (in cities) with regulation of cable infrastructure such that it was separated from packet-routing and customer-service.

My hope is that these constellations put pressure on the ground based incumbents to fix their shit. The result might be that we get cheap enough internet on the ground that the constellations become unprofitable and shut down. Might be a win-win without politics and regulation.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#350

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

sreevisakh wrote: post #169

sumedh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making space flight cheaper and more reliable certainly helps advance human knowledge in my opinion.

Spaceflight wouldn't be there in the first place if astronomical observations didn't help generations of scientists (including Kepler, Newton and Oberth) evolve the concepts of astrodynamics. Astronomy is far from having given up all its secrets - many of which will surely be applied in everyday life some time in the future. Besides, nobody would be complaining if this was about making spaceflight cheaper. This is ab…

Powered flight wouldn't be there if not for generations of people playing with kites. That doesn't mean we should abolish airports because they take the prime spots for kiting.