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Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

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Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#391

Post by bcrl »

nefitty wrote: post #384
IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, where would you rank the climate crisis on this list? It has already irrevocably caused the extinction of lots of species, and while certainly humans will continue to live, "modern humanity" will be replaced by something else.

My list: 1. Solar flares 2. Rogue AI 3. World war 3. Water scarcity (tied to war above) 5. Pandemic 6. Climate disasters My naive perception heavily weighs future possible technological progress. Solar flare collapse is basically unmitigable due to a combination of unpredictability and deep systemic interdependence and dependence on susceptible technologies. Some governments paid lip service to this risk in the past,…

Solar flares should be a lot lower on the list, as the bulk of the risk can actually be mitigated in the electric grid. Every few years the IEEE publishes an article on the risk solar flares pose to the electric grid, and how it can be mitigated by installing capacitors on the multi-ground neutral. Remember: solar flares induce current in long wires, not short ones, so the risk is not so great to individual electric devices were the electric grid protected.

Of course we're human and have a tendency to ignore large scale risks that haven't occurred in recent history as evidenced by the fact that no major electric grids have implemented this kind of protection. If we do get an 1894 level solar flare, many of the high voltage transformers will be fried. Some of them take months to build, so it would take years to recover from that kind of damage.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#392

Post by MaxDPS »

6d6b73 wrote: post #389

Prediction: Elon/SpaceX will cause major damage to space exploration and astronomy before 2025

> The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground. This unique situation demonstrates the great lengths the Starlink team has gone to ensure the system is on the leading edge of on-orbit debris mitigation.

Kinda strange to make your prediction on this story.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#393

Post by irthomasthomas »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #152

It must be noted that the satellites were not directly damaged by the geomagnetic storm. The storm warmed the atmosphere which caused it to expand, leading to additional drag that prohibited the satellites from leaving their low "safe mode" orbit. Shortened excerpt: "These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase.... speed and severity of the storm caused…

Given Musk's email about SpaceX being close to bankruptcy, how will this affect them financially? Can SpaceX survive without a bailout? What would a bailout look like, another Solarcity?

https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/

  "Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this... 

  ...we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.

  The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.

  In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise"

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#394

Post by Kye »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #379

Everyone here understands that when a geomagnetic storm starts knocking out satellites, that means we're now actually in the SyFy movie that we've only just survived the prequel for, right?

It's only an issue here because the satellites fly so low that they could be closer than the equivalent node in a land-based link and they're designed to sacrifice themselves rather than risk causing problems. They can replace all of these with one launch.

The science fiction you're thinking of assumes satellites are difficult to make, expensive to replace, and create a hazard when they fail. That will become less of an issue in time. Even the expensive ones could have a temporary equivalent launched to cover their function while a new long-term satellite is built.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#395

Post by lmm »

jve wrote: post #346
Aloha wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectr…

> To be clear - it's not novel Except no-one has run constellation of thousand satellites. Except no-one is trying establish sat-to-sat communication links (I may be wrong here, someone should provide proof) Except no-one can provide you with low latency, high speed satellite internet. If you have alternatives (I do where I live) - Starlink is probably not for me. You seem to paint as if starlink is something trivial…

> Except no-one is trying establish sat-to-sat communication links (I may be wrong here, someone should provide proof)

Iridium has been running sat-to-sat communication links since 1998?

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#396

Post by unfocussed_mike »

Kye wrote: post #394
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #379

Everyone here understands that when a geomagnetic storm starts knocking out satellites, that means we're now actually in the SyFy movie that we've only just survived the prequel for, right?

It's only an issue here because the satellites fly so low that they could be closer than the equivalent node in a land-based link and they're designed to sacrifice themselves rather than risk causing problems. They can replace all of these with one launch. The science fiction you're thinking of assumes satellites are difficult to make, expensive to replace, and create a hazard when they fail. That will become less of…

I think the science fiction stuff I'm thinking of assumes the audience just wants to see a story about one broken family succeeding against personal and scientific odds to save the solar system with one small device that has been stored in a shed somewhere on a ranch in Oregon by a scientist who continued to do his work after his project was hijacked by the military.

;-)

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#397

Post by mabbo »

arwineap wrote: post #214
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.

Amazon's Project Kuiper Behind, but it's there

Launching on what, exactly?

Right now they have 9 launches planned using Atlas 5. That's not going to get them a usable fleet of satellites. If they want to launch anything beyond that, Blue Origin must finish the BE-4: a rocket engine years behind schedule. (Either using them for Vulcan rockets or for the New Glenn).

From Amazon's perspective, those 9 launches are money wasted if BO doesn't come through. I'd be ecstatic if they did, but my money is on yet another delay from them.

If I had to guess, by the time Kuiper is launching enough satellites to matter, SpaceX will be doing the same thing using Starship at an order of magnitude lower cost. And I don't even think Starship will be doing real launches for years.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#398

Post by rtkwe »

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.

What's kind of crazy is the expected lifespan of an individual satellite in the 'full' 12k constellation is supposed to be 5 years so 6-7 satellites a day will reenter or just go offline and need to be replaced. Unless that 12000 number includes some in longer parking orbits they bring down into the ELEO service orbit that's a dedicated Starlink launch about once every week.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#399

Post by mabbo »

Aretas77 wrote: post #298
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 agree that space can accommodate these satellites, but what about the used up resources required to build the satellites? The shortage of natural resources, as of now, will only worsen and the losses are more costly than the price - its always possible to print more money but its not possible to print more resources.

2000 satellites, each a few hundred kg?

What's the typical daily production of cars in the USA? And how much materials do they use?

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#400

Post by Symmetry »

mlyle wrote: post #179
Symmetry wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about .7 MJ to refine a kg of lox, compared to 43 MJ released by a kg of kerosene. So that's not really a significant fraction.

It's estimated that about 260g of CO2 is emitted per kg of liquid oxygen delivered to end users. And the oxidizer to fuel ratio is 2.5, so basically this doubles the impact. (And let's not get started on the rest of energy intensive things involved in space launch). Yes, space launch isn't ridiculously energy intensive, but it does put the 777 to shame.

Ok, so with each kg of kerosene burned emitting 3.6 kg of CO2 about 85% of a launch is due to the kerosene. Whether 15% is significant or not is in the eye of the beholder but I don't think my contention was unreasonable. There are, of course, ground crews and radars and tarmacs and so forth associated with a rocket launch but the same is true with a 777 flight as well. Most 777 flights aren't to the plane's max range, this is more of a Pacific crossing fuel consumption but I still think its broadly comparable.

The big difference, I guess, is that a Falcon 9 might only make it through 10 or 20 flights while a 777 might do thousands. That is a big difference in energy usage but I don't feel competent to try to quantify it.

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