“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by campchase » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:35 AM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #115

campchase wrote: post #32

My name is Joe Morrison, and I’m ready to be roasted on here again. Please feel free to ask me anything or challenge any of what I’ve written!

With what sounds like the industry moving to something more like high throughput real time mapping, does that mean that there's a chance we'll see an open source imagery dataset/tile server sometime afterwards, when the current dated offerings become less competitive?

I hope so. I wrote a whole article about it: https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/open-all-of-the-satellite...

Even Maxar is starting to deeply discount old imagery via their ARD program: https://twitter.com/marcpfister/status/1541858657473744898?s...

RIP Open California, but at least Planet gives away their monthly mosaic of the mid-latitudes now via their partnership with NICFI (non-commercial use): https://twitter.com/planet/status/1435229673882017794?s=46&t...

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

#132

Post by campchase » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:40 AM UTC

wazer5 wrote: post #104

campchase wrote: post #32

My name is Joe Morrison, and I’m ready to be roasted on here again. Please feel free to ask me anything or challenge any of what I’ve written!

When Mike Griffin started the Space Development Agency under Trump in 2019, he said we need LEO constellations to track hypersonic missiles and be proliferated to be robust against anti-satellite tech. However, existing MEO satellites have proven capable of tracking hypersonics just fine. Meanwhile LEO satellites are way more vulnerable to ASAT, they can be directly hit. No... LEO only makes sense when you look at Mi…

I can’t comment on Griffin or the history of SDA, but proliferated LEO targets are much harder to take out with an ASAT than a small number of MEO or GEO satellites that are practically sitting ducks. If it costs ~$10M to take out a ~$1B asset, it’s gonna be the first thing to go in an apocalyptic scenario.

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

#133

Post by campchase » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:41 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #127

wazer5 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Mike Griffin started the Space Development Agency under Trump in 2019, he said we need LEO constellations to track hypersonic missiles and be proliferated to be robust against anti-satellite tech. However, existing MEO satellites have proven capable of tracking hypersonics just fine. Meanwhile LEO satellites are way more vulnerable to ASAT, they can be directly hit. No... LEO only makes sense when you look at Mi…

Not invalidating the rest of your chain of reasoning, since I agree with the idea this is likely to lead to eventual space based mid course interception…. While MEO satellites are able to do the job, they pose a greater “systemic risk” than LEO satellites do. If a war goes hot with long range use of prompt global strike style hypersonic weapons against the USA or its closely allied military alliance partners like UK,…

Agree with you!

Fun fast: the largest US satellite imagery provider, Maxar, was founded by the technical program lead for Brilliant Pebbles. It’s a small world and history rhymes.

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

#134

Post by campchase » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

m2fkxy wrote: post #70

rrrix1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are vastly oversimplifying the problem here. One of the most obvious being, cameras don't really work without light on the subject being captured, and currently Starlink doesn't have a sun synchronous orbit like most (non-SAR) remote sensing birds do. Starlink would need to be completely reengineered from scratch to add even mediocre remote sensing capabilities without degrading the original mission of the Starli…

SAR typically are in sun-synchronous orbits too, but mostly for power management reasons. difference is, of course, that they do not need to have their ascending node in daylight. the only SAR constellations I know aren't in SSO are Israeli (due to launch geometry constraints) and NRO's birds (LACROS/ONYX/TOPAZ, whatever their names are) [1]. some of them have exotic retrograde orbits [2]. [1] see e.g. https://space.…

Best comment in the thread, I knew about Onyx but nothing more than the Wikipedia page (hardly anything)

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

#135

Post by nine_k » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 3:33 AM UTC

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…

Do efficient 30 GHz masers exist?

If not, how narrow can be made a beam by using a beam-forming phased array 10-20 m wide? The diffraction limit at 30 GHz (10 cm) should be reasonably small.

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

#136

Post by SiempreViernes » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 4:02 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #127

wazer5 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Mike Griffin started the Space Development Agency under Trump in 2019, he said we need LEO constellations to track hypersonic missiles and be proliferated to be robust against anti-satellite tech. However, existing MEO satellites have proven capable of tracking hypersonics just fine. Meanwhile LEO satellites are way more vulnerable to ASAT, they can be directly hit. No... LEO only makes sense when you look at Mi…

Not invalidating the rest of your chain of reasoning, since I agree with the idea this is likely to lead to eventual space based mid course interception…. While MEO satellites are able to do the job, they pose a greater “systemic risk” than LEO satellites do. If a war goes hot with long range use of prompt global strike style hypersonic weapons against the USA or its closely allied military alliance partners like UK,…

Unless you have a plan that involves using violence at a time of your choosing, the temporary advantage you get from deploying a new solution is mostly just peace of mind for a very small group of space force nerds until the adversary adapts.

And the sort of "worst case" imaging we're talking about here, the kind that makes you think the MEO sats that are part of the nuclear early warning system will be attacked in the first place, _absolutely_ compels you to assume the adversary will adapt in time.

Another important point here is that "systemic risk" here really only means "risk to US space systems of dubious utility", and nothing so grand as international deterrence or even international stability: jamming can a perfectly fine solution to ensuring the space based information is not timely available to US forces, and it's not like the timelines SIBRIS gives you are competitive with what good humint around intentions can give you.

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

#137

Post by bboygravity » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 4:15 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #114

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

> SpaceX’s near-infinite fundraising capacity I have to wonder how sustainable this is. From the perspective of an investor, I would not be excited by Tesla being down 70% off peak and Twitter becoming the most notable corporate clusterfuck of the year. Investing in SpaceX these days seems like a bet that the CEO will be so distracted by his other problems that he won't have time to mess with the people actually runn…

Do you have ANY substantiation for Twitter being a coorporate failure or are you just parotting the biggest Twitter competitors (newspapers)?

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

#138

Post by georgeg23 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 4:24 AM UTC

campchase wrote: post #132

wazer5 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Mike Griffin started the Space Development Agency under Trump in 2019, he said we need LEO constellations to track hypersonic missiles and be proliferated to be robust against anti-satellite tech. However, existing MEO satellites have proven capable of tracking hypersonics just fine. Meanwhile LEO satellites are way more vulnerable to ASAT, they can be directly hit. No... LEO only makes sense when you look at Mi…

I can’t comment on Griffin or the history of SDA, but proliferated LEO targets are much harder to take out with an ASAT than a small number of MEO or GEO satellites that are practically sitting ducks. If it costs ~$10M to take out a ~$1B asset, it’s gonna be the first thing to go in an apocalyptic scenario.

A LEO satellite can be hit directly with relatively cheap surface to air missiles in a matter of minutes (e.g., RIM-161). Getting to space for the ASAT takes much less energy than putting something into orbit. On the other hand, MEO and GEO satellites take a long time, many orbits, to interact with.. would even have enough time to summon ambassadors and ask questions.

For these "proliferated LEO constellations" an adversary just needs to punch a hole in the mesh immediately before launching an attack.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...

The fact is, putting HAWC-style interceptors in space (that could also of course be used offensively) hovering over every country on Earth, is incredibly aggressive and provocative. Everything is accelerated and mistakes will be made on both sides. It's fundamentally destabilizing (as the link above concludes). We've been down this road before and collectively decided its a terrible idea (Brilliant Pebbles). Helping SDA means furthering a dangerous future.

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

#139

Post by milgrim » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 4:45 AM UTC

Invictus0 wrote: post #22

So sat-to-sat connectivity will enable 1) software updates on the sats so that you can do your post processing in space, 2) you can rapidly downlink in a parallel manner. Seems like a big step forward for the defense industry.

Software updates for satellites have been possible for a long time.

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

#140

Post by agolio » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

campchase wrote: post #32

My name is Joe Morrison, and I’m ready to be roasted on here again. Please feel free to ask me anything or challenge any of what I’ve written!

Hi Joe, thanks for the article. I am thinking of getting into satellite data science (from a data science/ software eng background). If you can recommend any datasets that are open to the public that can be fun to play around with or any other advice I'd be happy to hear it.