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“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#71

Post by dotnet00 »

georgeg23 wrote: post #55
Invictus0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This debate is as old as technology itself, and yet the naïve persist. Technological progress is inevitable and its application to war is also inevitable. All the amazing AI innovations, developed under the guise of AI-safety, are being used in surveillance cameras and weapons. And if the West doesn't develop the capability, then someone else will.

We all live on the same sphere, there is no West anymore. There is now more ideological similarity between NYC and Shanghai than there is between NYC and rural America.

That's one hell of a stretch, you're essentially suggesting that the average New Yorker wouldn't be just as up in arms as much of rural America if a Chinese style sham democracy was instituted in the US.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#72

Post by georgeg23 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
punnerud wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thank you for the article. Looking forward to Part II. Two questions: How do see the chances for other competitors to be able to catch up with SpaceX/Starlink? And are there some other challenges than congestested space and congestested frequency spectrum, when there will be several competitors in space?

> How do see the chances for other competitors to be able to catch up with SpaceX/Starlink? Not the author, but Starlink’s parallel competitive threats are usually exaggerated. They have cheap capital and they own their own trucks. That helps. But it’s not a blocking advantage. Their existing fleet is only a marginal competitive advantage to a new sensor suite; there is little evidence they build better birds than an…

An order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage. Constellations don't make sense otherwise, see history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Background

Keep in mind lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere. RF 10-30 GHz work fine to ground and are directional enough that spectrum can be reused and multiple beams formed with one phased array. The real limitation is ITU regulation on total power flux density on the ground for all constellations in these frequencies.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#73

Post by mikepurvis »

georgeg23 wrote: post #72
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do see the chances for other competitors to be able to catch up with SpaceX/Starlink? Not the author, but Starlink’s parallel competitive threats are usually exaggerated. They have cheap capital and they own their own trucks. That helps. But it’s not a blocking advantage. Their existing fleet is only a marginal competitive advantage to a new sensor suite; there is little evidence they build better birds than an…

An order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage. Constellations don't make sense otherwise, see history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Background Keep in mind lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere. RF 10-30 GHz work fine to ground and are directional enough that spectrum…

Also, conventional radio can be steered with multiple transmitters, right? Is there a way to steer laser beams in a solid state way?

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#74

Post by rektide »

ProlificInquiry wrote: post #53
treis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is the energy required and then the heat you have to dump. I haven't penciled out the numbers but feels like at least a decade or two of model & gpu improvements to get anywhere close.

Can GPUs run reliably in an orbital radiation environment at all? The combination of extreme transistor density and zero error checking seems like the opposite of what you'd want in a space processor.

This is just a vague intuition, but I feel like space hardening typically is done to insure very very high levels of reliability in all conditions. Im not sure how much easier the job might be if you could accept a sizable amount of transient failures. For many of these infernce systems, it feels like some "bad" processing might not really be a problem.

As others have said though, and as your "extreme transistor density" points to, high heat dissipation & energy usage are absolutely very real factors here. Still, Coral, back in 2017, was a half watt 2tflops inference engine, on a non-cutting-edge (at the time) process.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#75

Post by JumpCrisscross »

georgeg23 wrote: post #72
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do see the chances for other competitors to be able to catch up with SpaceX/Starlink? Not the author, but Starlink’s parallel competitive threats are usually exaggerated. They have cheap capital and they own their own trucks. That helps. But it’s not a blocking advantage. Their existing fleet is only a marginal competitive advantage to a new sensor suite; there is little evidence they build better birds than an…

An order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage. Constellations don't make sense otherwise, see history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Background Keep in mind lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere. RF 10-30 GHz work fine to ground and are directional enough that spectrum…

> order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage

If they used it to block, sure. Starlink’s advantage is SpaceX’s margin.

> lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere

Relay.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#76

Post by aml183 »

m2fkxy wrote: post #30
aml183 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work in the space, he is one of the most well respected people.

he's at least very communicative and pedagogical, and has a refreshing view of EO. reading him, Aravind, and Payload (thanks for it) is a good way to set you up on what's going on in the space-based EO industry.

Thank you! Appreciate you being a reader :)

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mikepurvis wrote: post #73
georgeg23 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage. Constellations don't make sense otherwise, see history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Background Keep in mind lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere. RF 10-30 GHz work fine to ground and are directional enough that spectrum…

Also, conventional radio can be steered with multiple transmitters, right? Is there a way to steer laser beams in a solid state way?

> way to steer laser beams in a solid state way?

Yes, MEMs and waveguides.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#78

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rektide wrote: post #74
ProlificInquiry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can GPUs run reliably in an orbital radiation environment at all? The combination of extreme transistor density and zero error checking seems like the opposite of what you'd want in a space processor.

This is just a vague intuition, but I feel like space hardening typically is done to insure very very high levels of reliability in all conditions. Im not sure how much easier the job might be if you could accept a sizable amount of transient failures. For many of these infernce systems, it feels like some "bad" processing might not really be a problem. As others have said though, and as your "extreme transistor dens…

> not sure how much easier the job might be if you could accept a sizable amount of transient failures

Starlink pioneered this. Redundant COTS almost always beats rad hardening, particularly in LEO.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#79

Post by georgeg23 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
mikepurvis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, conventional radio can be steered with multiple transmitters, right? Is there a way to steer laser beams in a solid state way?

> way to steer laser beams in a solid state way? Yes, MEMs and waveguides.

Unfortunately not ready for prime time yet, optical beamforming today is only a few degrees steerable angle and single beam. Also low power and poorly focused.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#80

Post by anonymousDan »

jvanderbot wrote: post #16
michaelnoguera wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me imagine a space station like data center in orbit that acts like a public cloud on earth, communicating directly with satellites and renting out processing time. I'm not sure how well economies of scale work when you have to pay for every kg you send up there, but it would be an interesting business model.

Stop imagining, in 2021 a cluster of computers were sent up to test this, and since then several instruments are in the works to make use of similar (but not same) CPU clusters. As always, finding a system that is affordable and radiation tolerant is the problem.

Do you have a link to this?
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