401–410 of 508 posts
I thought the purpose of the low orbits was to lower latency. To make the internet usable. Other satellite internet has much longer latency because of the distance the signals need to travel. Are they saying the satellites start out lower and then go higher later?
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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,…
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…
> I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. Starlink is a miracle for people with shitty or no cellular infrastructure. There are places in Australia that have exactly one cell tower for signal and they get 3G speeds at best. And if that tower has a fault, they'll be out of access for days or weeks. $99 per month for Starlink is…
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.
62M to launch. 250-500k per satellite.
That's $72M to $82M down the toilet. Given median per-person income is around $36k, that represents over 2,000 man-years of loss.
There are less than 30,000 people out of 7,900,000,000 in the entire world worth more than 100M.
You could buy around 20 windmills and power 15,000 entire homes per year with that money (or around 40,000 homes with natural gas).
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…
Except for a shower of heavy metal particles. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89909-7.pdf
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…
Frankly, I have issues with someone who defied every forseeable risk inherent in operating an LEO satcom network. There is a reason most long term comm infra tends to go to GEO... Replacing stuff in LEO because the atmo ate it is expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
In my opinion, the reserve is cheap at 3x the price. $500mil is 7 F35 raptors, and we are buying ~130/year at this point. There are plenty of defense spending justifications for establishing the reserve - it would protect against EMPs and small targeted attacks. We are already seeing small arms attacks on high energy transformers, and last year someone tried to use a drone to take out a substation.
Not surprisingly, the biggest hurdles identified in the report were the needed land acquisitions and the logistics of transporting the large transformers.
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategic%20...
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R43604.html
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43015/likely-drone-att...
Seems like a great way to test the resilience of Starlink launches during a predicted geomagnetic storm. And great PR considering how much negative press they’ve been getting over space junk. https://www.google.com/search?q=starlink+space+junk&rlz=1CDG...