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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

#91

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> now more ideological similarity between NYC and Shanghai than there is between NYC and rural America

What are you basing this on? I live in New York and Wyoming (both the more urban part and deep, red and ranching rural). I’ve been to Shanghai, and work with folks there. American culture is adversarial, but it runs deep in unsaid ways.

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

#92

Post by georgeg23 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #82
georgeg23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Curious how LiDAR tech could be used for high speed communication?

At best that is time-multiplexing, not multiple parallel beams of information?

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

#93

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Why particularly in LEO?

Faster degradation means quicker rejuvenation requirements. If you’re replacing your birds every five years in any case, the net benefit of rad hardening is diminished.

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

#94

Post by ohyoutravel »

idiotsecant wrote: post #83
theptip wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bandwidth to send down results vs raw data? Ability to relay instructions directly from that data to the next satellite without a downlink and uplink?

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

#95

Post by BenjiWiebe »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

From a radiation standpoint I think the Earth's magnetic field helps more than the atmosphere at that altitude.

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

#96

Post by mandmandam »

Invictus0 wrote: post #56
georgeg23 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you do that, you might want to understand the other side, and how ignorance contributes to an unnecessary arms race. We in the US have driven most provocation in space. The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined (including China). Whether it be the Strategic Defense Initiative, unilaterally leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Prompt Global Strike, hypersonic missiles, the US is de…

> The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries. You are totally uninformed about what you're talking about, and beyond naïve to think that the US can just stop investing in defense and somehow end up in a more peaceful world. Please stop stoking ideological argument…

> That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries.

It's uncool to accuse people of stoking ideological arguments because they stated a relevant fact.

And can you please use better reasoning? How, in your view, does spending 25% of a budget on salaries explain a budget that's higher than the next nine countries combined?

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

#97

Post by kidme5 »

aml183 wrote: post #76
m2fkxy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

An honest criticism of Payload is it has no comments section. It also seems a bit Fox News-y.

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

#98

Post by mandmandam »

campchase wrote: post #45
georgeg23 wrote: post #18

This guy is really drinking the space militarization Kool aid that the SDA is churning out. It's sad to see another young generation getting sucked into the military industrial complex

It’s a dual-use technology, and while my job is to focus the commercial half of the equation, I’m not ashamed to support the US military and intelligence communities, either.

... Did you see what happened in Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, South America?

... Did you hear about the torture, black sites, global surveillance, drone assassinations, and censorship?

... Did you see what happened to the people who blew the whistle on this stuff?

And you're not ashamed to play a part in this? Is there some line they haven't crossed yet that would do it for you?

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

#99

Post by hef19898 »

keewee7 wrote: post #58
georgeg23 wrote: post #18

This guy is really drinking the space militarization Kool aid that the SDA is churning out. It's sad to see another young generation getting sucked into the military industrial complex

This kind of naive thinking is what lead to the West being caught off guard in Ukraine. Russia and China have been weaponizing space for decades.

I don't think the West was caught off guard in Ukraine. Maybe, and that is big maybe, before the occupation of Crimea. Since then, not so much.

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

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mandmandam wrote: post #96
Invictus0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries. You are totally uninformed about what you're talking about, and beyond naïve to think that the US can just stop investing in defense and somehow end up in a more peaceful world. Please stop stoking ideological argument…

> That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries. It's uncool to accuse people of stoking ideological arguments because they stated a relevant fact. And can you please use better reasoning? How, in your view, does spending 25% of a budget on salaries explain a budget that's higher than the next nine countries combined?

> How, in your view, does spending 25% of a budget on salaries explain a budget that's higher than the next nine countries combined?

America’s win two-theatre war doctrine [1] absolutely mandates the largest military in the world. Not sure how the comment you’re replying to even contemplates challenging that. But if America paid Chinese wages, its budget at all levels would be smaller. We pay more for every soldier, bullet and missile because Americans are better paid.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-theatre-war

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