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Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

arstechnica.com

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Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#501

Post by solarkraft »

foobiekr wrote: post #491
rini17 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dishes reportedly use around 100W. To safely dissipate such a power at higher temps, the design would need visible features (such as active cooling). Can't be done by just pushing software update.

This. I don’t understand why people give these companies credit for being able to solve problems when they straight up ignored industry experience. It’s like.. hey guys, the rest of the world has been designing satellite dishes for 40 years that addressed these problems including very low cost stuff from the satellite TV era. Why didn’t SpaceX learn from the rest of the industry instead of having to rediscover it?

> Why didn’t SpaceX learn from the rest of the industry instead of having to rediscover it?

Elon Musk famously works by „first principles“, which can indeed be roughly translated to „discover everything yourself“. The advantage is that it gives a clean slate for approaches considered impractical when the books were written.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#502

Post by maccam94 »

ultrarunner wrote: post #164
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Phoenix area is really only has a metropolitan statistical area rank of 10 so it's about the size of Atlanta or the Boston area in terms of population. By GDP it's only 16 which is lower than the Detroit area. It is a lot of people but it's not even close to being #4 once you account for desert cities being physically larger due to geography and political needs. That said, SpaceX/Elon should not have sold the pro…

Maybe I'm missing something, but it has a large population and is physically larger, thus it is less significant?

Sprawl isn't really a positive indicator. Cities exist to support their population and economic activity, not cover land.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#503

Post by rainbowzootsuit »

bliteben wrote: post #137
bart_spoon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually believe that the opposite is true. It takes much more energy to cool off a home with AC than it does to heat a home in cold weather.

I think you are confusing the efficiency of heating sources vs the inefficiency of A/C. However A/C just moves heat, it doesn't have to create it. This is why in climates in which they are appropriate heat pumps can be even more efficient than other forms of heating. I will say there likely isn't a ton of good hard data on this for another reason, and that is that humidity plays a role, both in what temperatures are…

The work put into the compressor and fan motors has to be rejected along with the heat that is transported by the refrigerant.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#504

Post by m4rtink »

catblast01 wrote: post #414
azernik wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a subsystem with three major sections, a working fluid , and its own heat rejection requirements. A resistive heater contains two parts - a properly placed wire and a switch.

Still say “sophisticated reverse heat engine” is a needlessly verbose way of saying refrigerator or heat pump. Also how sophisticated is something that is mass produced for devices sold under $100 in every big box retailer.

Still I can't really think about any mass produced consumer item that includes a heat pump and is not either part of building/car cooling/heeting or a refrigerator itself.

Like mobile base stations of course have AC units and some amateur astronomers use peltier cooled sensors, but I would hardly call these mass produced consumer items.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#505

Post by awesomeusername »

shaklee3 wrote: post #386
awesomeusername wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preemptive thermal shutdown at this temp doesn't mean the units aren't designed to handle much higher. It means at this stage in the beta program they aren't ready to push the envelope with customer deployed hardware. I always back off from the maximum limits for the gear I design then after years in the field and proven reliability you can remotely update it and push things a bit. And that's in production. This is b…

You don't know that. It's highly likely that they know it will do damage above those temps and are doing this to prevent damage. We will see in a year or so.

Responding with 'you don't know that' to a comment with no specific assertions, followed by 'its highly likely...' is a good example of 'irony'. We need more of those on US centric forums as a public education service. Thanks.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#506

Post by HWR_14 »

cowl wrote: post #433
shaklee3 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from experience in this same industry, this is the wrong way to look at it. They significant amount of engineering goes in to designing the ground systems such that it can tolerate all different types of environments. Currently with Starlink you are only seeing probably less than 5% of the environments that it would be rolled out in. This is mainly due to how they are targeting RDOF areas to appease the gove…

SpaceX is known for using less than ideal products during test phases and working in parallel for the improved/final versions. it depends on what they are trying to test. and in this phase they are trying to test the network and will use the cheapest dishes that can do for this purpose. I mean they practically used a water tower to test their starship engines. while in parallel they worked for rocket design just to t…

> SpaceX is known for using less than ideal products during test phases and working in parallel for the improved/final versions

That works for building rockets one at a time. It works less so for mass producing consumer electronics. Lines cost a lot of money to set up, and economies of scale exist.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#507

Post by HWR_14 »

solarkraft wrote: post #501
foobiekr wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I don’t understand why people give these companies credit for being able to solve problems when they straight up ignored industry experience. It’s like.. hey guys, the rest of the world has been designing satellite dishes for 40 years that addressed these problems including very low cost stuff from the satellite TV era. Why didn’t SpaceX learn from the rest of the industry instead of having to rediscover it?

> Why didn’t SpaceX learn from the rest of the industry instead of having to rediscover it? Elon Musk famously works by „first principles“, which can indeed be roughly translated to „discover everything yourself“. The advantage is that it gives a clean slate for approaches considered impractical when the books were written.

> The advantage is that it gives a clean slate for approaches considered impractical when the books were written.

I'm not sure when that has ever worked out like that though. SpaceX built on a lot of existing aerospace knowledge. Tesla went through a lot of manufacturing hell trying to automate what turned out to be pretty unautomatable parts of manufacturing a car. As far as I know, whatever you think of the EV, the car manufacturing process Tesla has isn't uniquely good.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#508

Post by himinlomax »

numpad0 wrote: post #424
awesomeusername wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preemptive thermal shutdown at this temp doesn't mean the units aren't designed to handle much higher. It means at this stage in the beta program they aren't ready to push the envelope with customer deployed hardware. I always back off from the maximum limits for the gear I design then after years in the field and proven reliability you can remotely update it and push things a bit. And that's in production. This is b…

122F = 50C Means the antenna is not even outdoor rated

It could just be a cutoff that's set to low, this event does not tell that much by itself. It may turn out that the antenna fries itself at 60C and that's why it's turning off at 50. Or perhaps it could easily handle much more but it was set at that temperature for some reason.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#509

Post by emteycz »

HWR_14 wrote: post #507
solarkraft wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn’t SpaceX learn from the rest of the industry instead of having to rediscover it? Elon Musk famously works by „first principles“, which can indeed be roughly translated to „discover everything yourself“. The advantage is that it gives a clean slate for approaches considered impractical when the books were written.

> The advantage is that it gives a clean slate for approaches considered impractical when the books were written. I'm not sure when that has ever worked out like that though. SpaceX built on a lot of existing aerospace knowledge. Tesla went through a lot of manufacturing hell trying to automate what turned out to be pretty unautomatable parts of manufacturing a car. As far as I know, whatever you think of the EV, the…

I guess Musk still wanted to find out anyways. His goal isn't merely building cars the simplest way possible. The guy is an educated physicist, he knows how stuff is usually done.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#510

Post by shaklee3 »

awesomeusername wrote: post #505
shaklee3 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know that. It's highly likely that they know it will do damage above those temps and are doing this to prevent damage. We will see in a year or so.

Responding with 'you don't know that' to a comment with no specific assertions, followed by 'its highly likely...' is a good example of 'irony'. We need more of those on US centric forums as a public education service. Thanks.

That's not how it works. It's well known that overheating electronics for an extended period of time causes them to fail. Especially ones that are not rated for large temp ranges. So to speculate that it's probably not a real issue and that they could just change it later needs more evidence.

They put the limit there in the first place, so why did they choose that temperature? Keep in mind these terminals need to last 5-10 years in these conditions. The motorized antenna is another part that is known to fail in extreme weather. Let's revisit this in a couple years when they have a decent amount of customers.

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