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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

#511

Post by foobiekr »

emteycz wrote: post #509
HWR_14 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

He has a BS in physics and never worked in the field a day in his life. No one would call someone with merely a BS a “well educated physicist.” This kind of thinking is cult-like attestations of faith.

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

#512

Post by fy20 »

varjag wrote: post #450
fy20 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Northern Europe, a car parked in direct sunlight can easily get to 70C (160F) inside. In winter the same car may be expected to start up straight away without issues at -30C (-22F).

While most modern car much of the time manage to start at -30C indeed, "expected" is overstating it. You really need one with an engine heater.

Well I expect it of my car, and it hasn't let me down yet :-)

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

#513

Post by jrockway »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #460
sundvor wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and with the data they gather, they might be able to work out geographically appropriate versions. Eg add a smaller AIO water cooler to a hot climate area version, or some other hardening. Maybe it makes sense to apply to all versions? Can't know until you have some data. Sounds like a great and sensible beta program to me. Avoids premature optimisation, lets you see what actually goes wrong (where, and in what…

For fuck sakes people this is ambient temperature, it does not require beta testing, it requires someone to get off their ass and look at over a century of temperature data that organisations like nasa have been collecting. I see people here hate the idea of startups or engineers being responsible for any kind of reliable service even though lives depend on it, and as this "SV spirit" infiltrates more of our life eve…

Why do you think the parts spec'd for this use case are available? The humble STM32 microcontroller has ONE YEAR lead times right now. If you're launching a hardware product right now, the supply chain dictates the design, not the other way around.

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

#514

Post by ultrarunner »

maccam94 wrote: post #502
ultrarunner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't explain why it's less significant. It is a large cohesive city with elements of consistency, including its own culture. I have friends on the extreme east and west of the city. Less density is the result of insane central planning that resulted poorly, although predictably. That doesn't make it any less of a place.

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

#515

Post by rini17 »

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?

To give them some benefit of doubt, all the industry experience is with geostationary sats. There is AFAIK little experience with tracking multiple quickly moving satellites using one antenna array.
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