Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

spaceweatherarchive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 231 posts

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#31

Post by ghaff »

b33j0r wrote: post #26
nbltanx wrote: post #7

Starlink plans to deploy 12,000 - 42,000 satellites. What if two competitors want to do the same? Can the low earth orbit handle 150,000 satellites that turn into space debris at some point?

LEO is big, but only a few orbits are desirable and all circular orbits at the same altitude cross twice, by definition. It’s like slot cars, but much lower probability of an “intersection event.” That’s fun! Of course, we do already have something analogous to FAA altitude separations. But that requires everyone everywhere to cooperate in real-time, and mandates some degree of maneuverability. I guess orbital decay…

You also have people who would largely prioritize for astronomical observations over rural internet—perhaps because they think people should be living in cities anyway. I’m only being mildly sarcastic.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#32

Post by chinchilla2020 »

op00to wrote: post #19
dfox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only insignificantly. Most of the radiation is filtered/diverted by the magnetosphere. The only really practical effect of the disturbance is making the already hard to predict sky-wave propagation of HF even more harder to predict and characterize. Which is today realistically of an interest to HAMs and mostly as an fallback for intelligence agencies and diplomatic services. Edit: It also somewhat changes the scatte…

What about high frequency trading shops?

This is talking about radio wave frequency, not trading frequency.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#33

Post by dotnet00 »

mcswell wrote: post #21
zgluck wrote: post #11

So now they'll also have to deal with "preserve the ionosphere" activists who have no clue.

I saw an earlier article about this on Newsweek, and that's exactly what happened. In fact one poster thought this meant we were "punching holes" in the atmospheres of other planets. The term "punching a hole" is absurd, IMO.

It's however very on point with the embarrassing standards journalism has fallen to, especially science journalism.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#34

Post by yreg »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #14
panick21_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The waste, waste majority of sats never turn into space debris. Every single sat that launches today in the West has a deorbit planned. The only sat that turn into space debris will be those that brake unexpectitly and totally unrecoverable. And the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever. And in general, yes LEO can handle millions of sats. We have like 150k cars in a single t…

Cars don’t constantly move thousands miles an hour uncontrollably

Cars move much more uncontrollably / unpredictably than sats.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#35

Post by Jeff_Brown »

arbuge wrote: post #23
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the holes are quickly healed by sunlight, and only local to where a satellite is launched, the answer would seem to be no.

> One famous example occured on August 25, 2017, when a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-5 satellite created a hole four times bigger than the state of California. Doesn't sound too local to me.

Good point. Deserves some numbers.

California's area is about 500 thousand km^2, and the Earth's is about 500 million, which means the side facing the Sun is about 250 million, so we're talking about 0.2% of the area facing the sun.

Suppose the hole takes six hours to heal (the article makes it sound like it takes much less), and suppose there's a launch every month (since launches have in the past carried 600 satellites at once, that seems plausible, no?), and suppose the hole lets in twice as much of whatever radiation we would like the ionosphere to keep out. Then that's an increase of 0.2 * (1/4) * (1/30) %, which is less than 0.002% -- that is, an increase by a factor of less than 1.00002.

Not negligible, but if the satellites provide a substantial public good, then it seems worth the cost. I feel like due to StarLink's use in Russia-Ukraine war alone, it more than qualifies.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#36

Post by jrockway »

dfox wrote: post #25
op00to wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about high frequency trading shops?

That is completely different definition of HF. And if they use radio (lower latency than fiber, in theory and in right circumstances ), it is somewhere between SHF and EHF (C through V in the IEEE nomenclature), ie. what sane person would informally call “microwave”, not HF.

There was a thread on here the other day about HF traders using HF radio.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#37

Post by jrockway »

tamimio wrote: post #24

> Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. When we fly drones especially BVLOS operations we sometimes encounter some GNSS anomalies, that in some cases we just cancel the mission that day and the next day it’s with no issues. Could it be that’s the reason? Who knows, but it might be an issue later with crewed drones.

If you have a dual frequency receiver (L1/L2), then the ionospheric error is corrected for. These are very common these days, so probably not the reason.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#38

Post by tomjakubowski »

jrockway wrote: post #36
dfox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is completely different definition of HF. And if they use radio (lower latency than fiber, in theory and in right circumstances ), it is somewhere between SHF and EHF (C through V in the IEEE nomenclature), ie. what sane person would informally call “microwave”, not HF.

There was a thread on here the other day about HF traders using HF radio.

Yes that's right, also known as shortwave radio.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/wall-street-tries-shortwave-ra...

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#39

Post by tamimio »

valine wrote: post #27
tamimio wrote: post #24

> Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. When we fly drones especially BVLOS operations we sometimes encounter some GNSS anomalies, that in some cases we just cancel the mission that day and the next day it’s with no issues. Could it be that’s the reason? Who knows, but it might be an issue later with crewed drones.

If it’s crewed is it still a drone?

Usually when they carry passengers but with no pilot/s, they get called crewed (or manned) ones, but to be honest, there’s no definitive answer or definition as there’s always a mix, sometimes it’s called unmanned/manned aircraft, unmanned/manned drone, uncrewed/crewed drone, and in Canada they even created their own terminology, RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft system), so take the whole thing with a little grain of salt :)

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#40

Post by panick21_ »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #18
panick21_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The waste, waste majority of sats never turn into space debris. Every single sat that launches today in the West has a deorbit planned. The only sat that turn into space debris will be those that brake unexpectitly and totally unrecoverable. And the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever. And in general, yes LEO can handle millions of sats. We have like 150k cars in a single t…

> the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever. Is that right? Scientific American seemed to think it could be a problem in 2019[1]. Space.com says Starlink satellites orbit at an altitude of about 342 miles (550 kilometers)[2]. And the Wikipedia article on Kessler Syndrome[3] (which is a chain reaction of satellite debris) mentions an incident at 555km that was problematic: "In…

The decay where the waste majority of it is gone in 10 years is just not long enough to meaningfully have a Kessler syndrom. The reality humanity wouldn't even have the launch capacity to put enough into orbit in that time period for it to matter.

The real concern for meaningful space debris issues is in the regions where decay requires 100+ of years.

The articles mentions the ASAT because that's what they used to study orbital behavior and decay.

Also generally, Space.com is universally agree to be the single worst 'space news' page known. I would never use it as a source for anything.

Post reply on HN