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Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

spacex.com

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Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#201

Post by billiam »

derekp7 wrote: post #177
sp332 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean to be specific your homeowners' insurance would pay you directly for "falling debris", but then they would go sue SpaceX to get their money back.

This reminds me of an episode of Jim Henson's TV series Dinosaurs where a space rock hits the Sinclairs' house, and the insurance refuses to pay out. Because they had "meteor" insurance, so their house would only be covered if it was floating in the upper atmosphere at the time of the strike. Instead, the insurance said their house was hit with a meteorite (a meteor that reached the ground), which wasn't covered unde…

It wasn't a meteorite when it hit the house, only when it hit Earth. I know, hit me with the downvotes.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#202

Post by paulcole »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #45
oxplot wrote: post #20

40 sats makes up about 2% of the current fleet - so a rounding error in cost and time. The important part of this news is how those 40 sats deorbit and leave no junk either in orbit or on earth.

An entire launch worth of satellites is not a "rounding error." The carbon impact of just one launch is pretty obscene.

No post body was provided.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#203

Post by praveen9920 »

Wondering if they have insurance providers for satellites in orbit. Even with the limited lifetime, low earth satellites provide lot of value to company.

With high risk that entails, it may not make sense now even with high premium but it might be a thing of future

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#204

Post by kortex »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #145
yabones wrote: post #18

What's crazy to me is that 50 years ago, losing 40 satellites would have been a significant portion of all satellites ever launched . Today, it's a temporary setback for a company that launched nearly one thousand satellites last year.

> 50 years ago, losing 40 satellites would have been a significant portion made me think "100 years ago, it would have been (40/0)*0.01 = infinity percent", which probably means i need to lay off the coffee a bit.

Is it bad that my thought in response was, well if you consider suborbital rockets a fractional satellite, then you can analytically continue the function of satellites over time all the way back to the invention of blackpowder? 1 satellite = ability to orbit at least once = ~150 km apogee. So a 150m launch would be 1 millisatellite...

I too probably should lay off the coffee.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#205

Post by lsaferite »

HWR_14 wrote: post #149
SapporoChris wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40 of 49 launched were lost, about 80% loss. Perhaps they intend to learn about geomagnetic storms and deal with them better next time.

As far as I can tell, they didn't lose 40 because of the storm directly, but because they entered safe mode before reaching their orbit, and were then unable to exit safe mode because they were too close to earth. So the data, other than "don't launch during a geomagnetic storm" is likely to be minimal.

> Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers

The increased drag was caused by the storm.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#206

Post by liamkinne »

jayd16 wrote: post #140
mabbo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't hand them anything. SpaceX took the risk of being a first mover in a very difficult field and looks to have had their bet pay off. There's room for more satellites. Space is pretty big, and with some careful automated coordination we can avoid collisions. But someone else needs to first figure out how to cheaply launch a competing fleet, and I doubt anyone will come close for years.

I think its a fair question. Handing out unlimited well water rights in the 1860s was also probably seen as not giving away anything. There's plenty of water.

The difference is SpaceX don’t have these orbits forever. The satellites will fall back to earth and congress can enact regulations that limit the number of them launched in the future.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#207

Post by Diesel555 »

hyperhopper wrote: post #189
wilg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" is peak Hacker News pettiness. Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly.

Like you ask this poster to assume the best of the company, I think you should assume the best of the poster. In my opinion it's pretty clear the jist of his message is "how did this happen when there was a freely available warning"

"Be Curious, Not Judgmental" - Ted Lasso, and (not?) Walt Whitman.

To ask why "Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" instead of asking "why did Space-X choose to launch when there was a warning" are two drastically different questions. The first has an assumption that checking for the warning is the problem while the second does not make an assumption of the problem.

I think it's a pretty poor assumption that an organization like Space-X would not check the warnings before launch. They likely have an NOAA rep advising their decision. It's silly to assume a highly regulated multi-million dollar discipline that has little tolerance for failure (space flight) would be so haphazard. Even pilots of small airplanes are required to check government notifications before each flight. So I'm curious, why did they launch when that warning existed?

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#208

Post by dnautics »

Shank wrote: post #151
wilg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" is peak Hacker News pettiness. Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly.

> Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly. I'm just asking questions -- I would be genuinely curious if SpaceX has a system for determining and evaluating risk when it comes to a situation like this. It does seem absurd that they wouldn't review the active warnings prior to launches. What is indisputable here is that they've announced the loss of 40 satellites during an active warning. I think…

You could have phrased it: "how does SpaceX review...?"

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#209

Post by Armisael16 »

leoh wrote: post #192
Armisael16 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. None are space junk and none were made nonfunctional by the storm. 1. The storm caused the atmosphere to expand 2. which increases drag on satellites. 3. The satellites were in safe mode because of the storm, so… 4. some satellites fell out of orbit because they couldn’t produce enough thrust to recover after the storm No satellite was ever even at risk of becoming space junk. This is pretty read TFA stuff.

Is there any way they are being held accountable/is there open data to support assertions of the article in question?

This is also fairly well-known physics. We know what the atmosphere is like at those altitudes and we know what a starlink satellite looks like. Anything that sits around there is going to fall out of orbit pretty fast unless it has active thrust.

Several governments have space-object tracking systems that work on stuff far smaller than starlink satellites - the US, the EU, Russia, probably China. I doubt that’s open enough for you, though.

Frankly it doesn’t seem to me like there much to hold spacex accountable for. They’re out ~$35mm, but it’s harmless to the rest of us.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#210

Post by alexfringes »

sho_hn wrote: post #58
alexfringes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the press release is lacking in detail. For example, they completely fail to disclose whether recovery was attempted by rerouting power from life support to the structural integrity field.

I believe a geomagnetic storm calls for rerouting power to the subspace accelerators backing your deflector dish, and of course sufficient impulse power to maintain an appropriate heading, not rerouting to the SIF. Please get your spaceship right. It's a technical forum!

Sorry, was assuming SpaceX had quantum slipstream already. But it appears I was mistaken. In the case of a slipstream drive, integrity for entry and exit of the slipstream would be paramount. But if they’re still using warp, then your comment of course is accurate.

Impulse, by the way, is covered by the press release [1] and, I agree, would need to be a priority no matter which FTL drive is used to get the satellites to their final destination.

[1] > The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively “take cover from the storm”

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