Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 343 posts

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#211

Post by stirlo »

yakz wrote: post #186
mabbo wrote: post #136

Worth also pointing out: That's the 9th flight of Booster 1051. And it had a perfect landing. The goal of this design of Falcon 9 is to handle 10 flights with minimum refurbishment. Right now, it looks like they're within a couple months of achieving that goal for the first time, with booster 1049 close as well, at 8 flights. SpaceX is soon going to reach a point that they don't need to build more Falcon 9 boosters.

Wouldn’t they want to continue building them to some extent just so they don’t lose the institutional knowledge of how to build them? Or is the expectation that Starship will render it obsolete soon enough?

They produce a new non reusable second stage for each launch which is constructed in a similar manner to the first stage (just far smaller) so they are keeping their skills current.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#212

Post by rst »

joezydeco wrote: post #15

So where is Amazon in relation to all of this? I got pinged by a recruiter from Kuiper the other week and all I can see is that there's no way they're on track to be working in 5 years. They don't even have a stable launch platform. Would Musk sell Bezos the ride?

RocketLab just announced they intend to build a rocket they're calling "a purpose-built megaconstellation building machine", but they're not planning to launch until 2024, and reportedly still are evaluating options for engines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqxJw5ISdk

And Bezos launching his satellites on someone else's rockets would be a pretty bitter pill...

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#213

Post by fuoqi »

drglitch wrote: post #111
Magodo wrote: post #4

I'm keen to see Starlink deals with government censorship requests. Can a country even effectively enforce their requests? How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance?

Russia already has law in works to make possession of StarLink hardware illegal. There was some coverage in January: https://m.slashdot.org/story/380606

While you can often see the claims that simple citizens can be fined under the proposed law, I could not find an official confirmation. Here is the law in question: https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/1086353-7

The relevant part can be translated like this:

> (not complying with the law) entails the imposition of an administrative fine on officials in the amount of ten to thirty thousand rubles; On legal entities - from five hundred thousand to one million rubles.

For some reason the part about officials gets applied to simple citizens, which is completely incorrect in my understanding of the law.

So my guess is that you will not be able to legally to import Starlink receivers into Russia unless some kind of agreement will be achieved, but simple citizens owning such receiver will not be prosecuted (well, at least in the near future). Though they may be prosecuted under a different law if they'll try to share the unrestricted Internet access with other people. It's quite similar to VPNs, currently it's not illegal in Russia to use it to visit blocked resources, but it's illegal to provide such service (though any sane person would not use a VPN-service based in Russia to work around those blocks in the first place).

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#214

Post by someperson »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #96
iso1210 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any issues with snow etc?

I was thinking it might generate enough heat to keep it warm. But the comments in this thread appear to think it has a heater inside of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JSq6xB591M

I wouldn't be surprised that the Starlink dish can melt snow. It's literally an antenna that shoots high energy microwaves into space over many hours.

100W of microwaves according to another comment here. By contrast your microwave oven might emitting 800W for a few minutes.

Unlike the few watts of a Wifi router or phone, it emits high power electromagnetic radiation.

It's definitely something you attach to your roof and pointed at the sky, not something you want to be sitting in front of for hours.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#215

Post by jiofih »

JasonFruit wrote: post #139
jiofih wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are very very far from that happening. Even with most satellites being in the same torus around earth, if every single one in orbit right now were to instantly shatter, each piece would have something like a 1000sqkm volume to roam in.

*area

I meant km3 :)

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#216

Post by state_less »

bombcar wrote: post #120
robbiet480 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishy will actually intentionally heat up to melt snow. I’ve seen YouTube videos of it melting a good amount of snow per hour and service remaining stable.

Dishy also seems to continually pull 100 watts even when not in melt mode.

That’s some large continuous power consumption for off grid use. Curious if they’ll come up with a way to put it into some sort of low power idle mode during low utilization?

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#217

Post by fuoqi »

p2t2p wrote: post #157
elihu wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance? By filing legal complaints through the ITU (which is a UN agency), probably. I expect some international treaties probably come into play. Basically, China complains to the UN, the UN tells the US they can't provide Internet service in China unless they follow China's rules, and then the FCC tells SpaceX that if they don't comply the FCC will shut them down. O…

That's, easy, just like they do it in Russia - jail time and fines for having Space X antenna.

You either intentionally lying or you simply don't know what are you talking about. Not only the law in question only has administrative fines, no jail time, but also it has not been even accepted yet. Also it may not even apply to simple citizens, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26460626

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#218

Post by NelsonMinar »

I set up on my Starlink near Sacramento last week and it is fantastic. So much better than other rural Internet options. The one drawback to it now is it's a little unreliable, largely because there aren't enough satellites up in orbit yet. I'm papering over it with the Speedify VPN for now (using a second slower link). Every launch brings Starlink closer to 100% uptime.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#219

Post by adamjb »

mlyle wrote: post #207
rb666 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind turbines do not kill many birds, that is a myth pushed by climate hoaxers. They have their drawbacks, but that aint one of 'em.

https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2193/200...

>The Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) began operations during the 1980s and by 1998 included about 5,400 wind turbines of various models, each rated to generate between 40 kW and 400 kW of electric power, or 580 MW total

>Using mortality estimates adjusted for searcher detection and scavenger removal rates, we estimated the annual wind turbine–caused bird fatalities to number [...] 2,710 (80% CI =-6,100 to 11,520) birds.

That's 1/2 a bird per turbine per year. Or one bird per 110 nameplate KW per year.

That means that they're a bit safer than the average building, assuming that the number of buildings in the US doesn't exceed the number of people by a large amount.

>We estimate that between 365 and 988 million birds (median = 599 million) are killed annually by building collisions in the U.S., with roughly 56% of mortality at low-rises, 44% at residences, and https://academic.oup.com/condor/article/116/1/8/5153098

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#220

Post by jostmey »

beebmam wrote: post #146

I'd like to point out that I'm a big astrophotography nerd. And these satellites are regularly showing up in my long exposure images. It's really quite a nuisance, and I don't look forward to it getting worse.

If we want to travel to space instead of just looking at stars, humanity will need to deploy a much larger footprint in orbit
Post reply on HN