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SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

spaceweatherarchive.com

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Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#101

Post by bratgpttamer »

pologreen wrote: post #73

I feel like this isn’t a good thing in the long term Does anyone else feels it’s a good thing?

> Ham radio operators may notice them when shortwave signals fail to skip over the horizon, shooting through holes instead of bouncing back to Earth. Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

On one hand, Science™ sez it fixes itself every morning. On the other, Elon Bad and Planet Good.

So, I'm torn.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#102

Post by throwaway4837 »

eqvinox wrote: post #79

"molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å – the same color as red auroras." Anyone else have this use of Ångström trigger an exception in their brain? The unit of default for wavelength is nm, not Å… (1nm=10Å)

Angstroms are used pretty commonly in molecular/nuclear physics.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#105

Post by kube-system »

macksd wrote: post #49
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The funny thing is that in most ham radio usage, the "high frequency bands" are actually about as low a frequency as most people will ever use. I don't think I've come across anything about low and medium frequencies except in reference materials. People generally use "high frequency", "very high frequency", or "ultra high frequency".

AM radio is medium frequency.

Radio clocks are low frequency.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#106

Post by panick21_ »

j4ah4n wrote: post #97
starbase wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool thing about satellites is if you're on the same path, you must also be going the same speed. Collision avoidance in LEO is quite elegant. When two satellites are predicted to pass uncomfortably close to one another, one satellite will fire its station keeping thrusters to raise its orbit above the other. No brakes or swerving needed, just a slight push well ahead of time. Starlink sats do this over 1000 times pe…

What powers those thrusters? Never really thought about it.

They are powered by solar electricity that is saved in batteries. But to actually move you need something to throw out. That can be many things, anything from normal water, metal or noble gases.

Starlink initially used Krypton for its thrusters. But they have now switched to Argon since its incredibly cheap and available. Xenon for a long time was the standard, but its to expensive and rare.

Some sats also have chemical power, often a Hypergolic propellant, like dinitrogen tetroxide plus hydrazine. Specially for larger sats this is the case.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

-

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#107

Post by mensetmanusman »

pologreen wrote: post #73

I feel like this isn’t a good thing in the long term Does anyone else feels it’s a good thing?

It’s the early blips of an eventual space faring civilization.

The signal might propagate and alert other intelligence that we are attempting something challenging.

Hopefully they send help.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#108

Post by lacrimacida »

ericd wrote: post #77
pseg134 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not seem like a big issue but it speaks to the attitude of billionaires. I am no longer free to vent personal amounts of coolant from a refrigerator but Elon Musk can punch all of the holes he wants with his expensive rockets.

Why do you want the ability to vent such potent greenhouse gasses? I'd like the ability to visit space at some point in my life, and I'd like our species to become experienced at doing things in space. Like, if we need to be able to deploy something in space to decrease the amount of heat we're taking in to try and buy more time to decarbonize before we're completely F'd because of all the people venting potent green…

The space industrial complex would pollute a whole lot more than today, and let’s hope space tourism it’s not something too feasible, aside from stroking egos it wouldn’t do much, space is very human unfriendly after all. I for one hope we move slower not faster.

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#109

Post by [deleted] »

panick21_ wrote: post #9
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?

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…

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

#110

Post by PhasmaFelis »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #90
ajhurliman wrote: post #78

A technically correct, but insignificant headline which appears dangerous at first glance; yeah that seems par for the course of modern journalism.

Not being able to tell the difference between a news article and a blog post is par for the course of modern society.

It's pretty clearly both, being an article posted on a news blog.
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