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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

#81

Post by kidme5 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #71
georgeg23 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Willingness to get vaccines and wear masks made New Yorkers look Chinese. Honestly I think when human population centers get dense and connected enough they are essentially the same. Economic ties and shared needs and values are ultimately more significant than the 6% of the population in government (e.g., Chinese CCP). The CCP is on their way out anyway and not a true threat.

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

#82

Post by JumpCrisscross »

georgeg23 wrote: post #79
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> not ready for prime time yet

Totally agree. But the frontier is advancing thanks to LiDAR. And in the meantime, the advantages of laser relay and downlink are vast enough to make mechanical actuation worth it. Particularly for unboosted birds in LEO.

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

#83

Post by idiotsecant »

theptip wrote: post #17
jvanderbot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck for orbital edge isn't software, it's hardware that can tack into an optical terminal and tolerate radiation. The edge analogy breaks down because the consumer isn't on the edge, the sensor is, and it's just a problem of doing heavy compute next to the sensor, then sending back a summary data product. After that, networking is well understood.

IoT sensor aggregation is already a major edge-compute use-case, it's not just for reducing latency for end-users. In this analogy you're just co-locating the edge compute on the same LAN as the sensor. All of the orchestration, runtime, and framework concerns from existing edge compute systems still apply. Edge compute isn't solved; it's an area under active and aggressive development. The Cloudflare Workers wasm ru…

Why are we selling colocated processing on a piece of mass-constricted ultra-expensive hardware we have to launch into orbit again? That seems like a solution in search of a problem.

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

#84

Post by marcusverus »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75
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…

> 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.

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

As long as Starlink competitors use SpaceX to reach orbit, the advantage is realized on both Starlink launches (as savings) AND on competitors’ launches (as profit). Doesn’t that make SpaceX’s advantage 2x their margin?

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

#85

Post by JumpCrisscross »

marcusverus wrote: post #84
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> If they used it to block, sure. Starlink’s advantage is SpaceX’s margin. As long as Starlink competitors use SpaceX to reach orbit, the advantage is realized on both Starlink launches (as savings) AND on competitors’ launches (as profit). Doesn’t that make SpaceX’s advantage 2x their margin?

> the advantage is realized on both Starlink launches (as savings) AND on competitors’ launches (as profit). Doesn’t that make SpaceX’s advantage 2x their margin?

Sort of. Every dollar of competitors’ launch margin doesn’t go to Starlink. SpaceX’s near-infinite fundraising capacity, and thus low cost of capital, is far more significant. (There are also orbital trade-offs between imaging and comms.)

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

#86

Post by JumpCrisscross »

treis wrote: post #49
strangattractor wrote: post #15

Had a dinner conversation with a person who had worked for military intelligence back in the day. At one time a receiving station was located in Antartica. For Polar orbit satellites this insured reception once per orbit. Since it was so cold the only reliable media for storage they could use was paper tape.

That doesn't really make sense given we have buildings and heaters.

> we have buildings and heaters

These can fail and give off a heat signature.

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

#87

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kidme5 wrote: post #61
keewee7 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia and China have been weponizing space for decades and they already have working hypersonic missiles.

If you know the history China/Russia are doing smaller-scale R&D type development mainly to respond to to US ditching arms control treaties and building offensive tech first (usually happening when Republicans in power).

> US ditching arms control treaties

Russia broke its agreements first. And I don’t think we have arms control treaties with China.

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

#88

Post by georgeg23 »

aml183 wrote: post #26
georgeg23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author? According to his LinkedIn he's only been in the space industry for exactly 2 years. This article also reads as very superficial.

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

OK makes sense, this Payload Space blog is 1.5 years old. So Joe would be pretty experienced by those standards.

Payload is also super SDA focused.. seems like an echo-chamber for the DoD.

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

#89

Post by ohyoutravel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78
rektide wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why particularly in LEO? Benefits of some atmosphere still?

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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