171–180 of 343 posts
Could someone explain to me how/if this resolves the speed issues that all satellite internet has had since its inception.
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Musk's stated goal for Space X is to colonize Mars. His stated goal for Starlink is to fund said colonization. I 'm not so sure that he would enable any competition that he saw as having the potential to pose a real threat to his ultimate goal.
You know, I have to wonder though. I've been ok with the tesla-only superchargers, because they are good. But it is a self-serving infrastructure and a competitive advantage. I wonder what the reality would be about sending up bezos's satellites? It could also be a PR problem, PLUS it would undermine the bezos employees working on their launch platform.
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Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1] Maybe Starlink constellations will be an incentive to finish the JWT, and other space telescopes... [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-...
> Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1] The study you're citing was only studied 4 wind turbines, while the evidence does point towards this working, I wouldn't say that the existing evidence is conclusive. Also, the turbines with the darker blades still killed birds, just less bird than the turbines with standard blades.
The percent of human-caused bird deaths due to wind turbines is smaller than the percent of Americans dying in airplane crashes each year, compared to all US deaths each year.
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SpaceX has put in a lot of effort to reduce the visual pollution aspect of starlink. See https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh/status/136999054076322611... for how the visibility of Starlink sats has changed over time. For professional earth based astronomy, it is possible to remove the streaks digitally. But of course there is a slight impact. But what is the alternative? Just stop development of low earth orbit foreve…
We could be constantly lifting new observatories to space, launch is no longer the constraint, but satellite manufacturing and cost. NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent of an org that churns out satellites. The next bus to orbit leaves shortly.
I don't think NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent for satellites - SpaceX itself is causing a boom in satellite manufacturing, so commercial market is accumulating expertise and lowering prices. NASA should find it easier and cheaper to buy or subcontract pieces of satellites too, and focus on bespoke mission-specific hardware.
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SpaceX has put in a lot of effort to reduce the visual pollution aspect of starlink. See https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh/status/136999054076322611... for how the visibility of Starlink sats has changed over time. For professional earth based astronomy, it is possible to remove the streaks digitally. But of course there is a slight impact. But what is the alternative? Just stop development of low earth orbit foreve…
We could be constantly lifting new observatories to space, launch is no longer the constraint, but satellite manufacturing and cost. NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent of an org that churns out satellites. The next bus to orbit leaves shortly.
It's unbelievable that we don't currently have standard designs not just for observatories, but for communication, navigation, cartography and other satellite types. Cubesats took a step into the right direction, the same needs to happen for even larger payloads.
Another side of the problem is that NASA budget is heavily influenced by politics and PR. I'm sure there's plenty of smart people there who have realized that from purely scientific point of view, ten or twenty less capable and more disposable interplanetary probes or observatories could have advantage over unique absurdly expensive projects like JWT and Perseverance. But they are not as exciting and harder to sell to politicians and general public.
For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community. If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…
Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1] Maybe Starlink constellations will be an incentive to finish the JWT, and other space telescopes... [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-...
For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community. If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…
FWIW, turbines may be worse than cats in terms of harming large birds of prey. You won't see neighborhood cats killing eagles. I'd still agree that it's probably a reasonable tradeoff though, and that it could be further reduced with better engineering.
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It appears to be faster than rural Wisconsin internet service. someone I know (coincidentally in wisconsin) is getting 100m down 20m up There's always (the other) Linus: https://youtu.be/Fh1a2K9ZgNA
I'm in Wisconsin, just got it, and am seeing 65-115 down, 15-40 up. I was hoping it would be better than Hughesnet, but I didn't expect it would be quite this good. I did have about a five minute downtime yesterday. Not too shabby!
I'm in exurban Wisconsin. Speeds are fine, but Charter has terrible routing that pushes everything out to Minnesota before routing back down to Chicago. 40ms to 60ms latency on EVERYTHING.
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Not just increased launch demand, Starlink launches serve SpaceX as a testbed for reusability and refurbishment techniques they want to experiment on themselves without risking customer hardware. For example, they intentionally swap hardware components between reflown boosters to better understand their behavior after multiple reuses, to the point they have individual modules that have flown more times than the curre…
It's "booster", not "buster".
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Maybe SpaceX should make it up to the scientific community by promising to (at no charge) put 100T of satellite telescopes in a high orbit every year once Starship is functional.
I don't know why you're being downvoted... maybe it's the "no charge" aspect of your post, but SpaceX offering to send up research telescopes for at-cost-of-launch, or maybe a little over, would be a great philanthropic endeavor.
Launch costs tend to be a small part of mission costs for bespoke scientific hardware - but what makes those missions expensive is a feedback loop: rare and expensive launches -> need to make best use of the mass budget -> increased complexity -> need to make more robust -> increased complexity -> more expensive -> rarer launches -> more expensive launches. SpaceX just kicked that loop into reverse. With that much cheaper launches, people can afford less robust and less complex missions, and do more of them, which lowers the costs as scale kicks in.
SpaceX is making space cheap. That's already a great gift to everyone.