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Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

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Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#281

Post by ianburrell »

oskarkk wrote: post #266
ianburrell wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes produce lots of gamma and x-rays. On Earth, those are absorbed to produce the fireball. In LEO, some are absorbed by upper atmosphere to make EMP. In space, they are radiation. Except for military satellites like GPS, most satellites aren't hardened to deal with that much radiation. My guess is that the range would be thousands of miles.

I wondered how much energy could pass through some area 1000 miles away from the explosion, so I made some rough calculations. Assumption: all energy of the nuclear explosion is radiation uniform in every direction. The energy E would be spreading in a sphere with area 4*pi*R^2. Area A being a part of that sphere would capture E*A/(4*pi*R^2) of energy. So with: energy E = 209 PJ (Tsar bomba for an extreme example) ar…

Radiation is measured in gray, which is 1 J absorbed by 1 kg. I can't find the conversion between flux to absorbed dose. 5 gray is fatal. If even a fraction of that energy is absorbed, it would be fatal.

I found that satellites get 100-1000 rad per year. Getting that much in a moment would cause problems.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#283

Post by cozzyd »

modeless wrote: post #75
rossdavidh wrote: post #61

So, if (just spitballing here) Russia were to have wanted to take out Starlink in order to handicap Ukrainian operations, and they didn't want to do something as visible as actually taking out the satellites, what would be the most likely way for them to have done it? And how would we be able to check if that's what happened? No idea if this is plausible at all, just raising the question for anyone who knows more abo…

It's essentially impossible for anyone to disable the Starlink network by "taking out satellites" through physical means. There aren't enough anti satellite missiles in the world to make a dent, it would cost trillions to manufacture enough, and SpaceX can launch satellites faster than anyone could manufacture interceptors anyway. And Kessler syndrome is impossible at the altitudes Starlink uses. Cyberattack is the o…

Taking out GNSS satellites would probably also effectively take out starlink.

User terminals rely on GNSS for timing and position and I wouldn't be surprised if the satellites did too.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#284

Post by cluckindan »

reaperducer wrote: post #240
cluckindan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t it count if multiple operators are down for multiple thousands of people for several hours? Not even emergency numbers were working.

2,500 people out of 70,000,000 isn't "major." And your own link states that 999 service was restored in 61 minutes. Emergency service lines go down somewhere in the world almost every day. Often for longer than that. HN didn't used to be a place for people who like to gin up conspiracies, and engage in speculative hyperbole.

The UK isn’t just somewhere in the world, but whatever, they have worse connectivity in Russia for sure.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#285

Post by Scoundreller »

belter wrote: post #245
ozten wrote: post #144

Pro-tip: Don't host your status / outage page on your own infrastructure. We learned this lesson the hard way at AWS with S3.

Pro-tip: Host your status/outage page on your own infrastructure... :-) If you can't reach it...You are down :-)

It’s like when our vendor’s tech support number tells you you’re 300th in queue (or busy cuz their lines are saturated) instead of the usual 2nd or 3rd.

You just hang up cuz you know it’s everyone.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#286

Post by Scoundreller »

woutifier wrote: post #3

A service outage meaning starlink is down globally. Anecdotally my starlink is using more power currently than usual. And when I first looked at the app it mentioned having gotten a new public IP address.

So in AWS-speak, this is a yellow/orange status outage ?

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#287

Post by oskarkk »

ianburrell wrote: post #281
oskarkk wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered how much energy could pass through some area 1000 miles away from the explosion, so I made some rough calculations. Assumption: all energy of the nuclear explosion is radiation uniform in every direction. The energy E would be spreading in a sphere with area 4*pi*R^2. Area A being a part of that sphere would capture E*A/(4*pi*R^2) of energy. So with: energy E = 209 PJ (Tsar bomba for an extreme example) ar…

Radiation is measured in gray, which is 1 J absorbed by 1 kg. I can't find the conversion between flux to absorbed dose. 5 gray is fatal. If even a fraction of that energy is absorbed, it would be fatal. I found that satellites get 100-1000 rad per year. Getting that much in a moment would cause problems.

So, given that human body area viewed from the front is around 0.5 m^2, then a 70 kg human in space 1000 miles from the explosion would get 6.4 kJ * 0.5 / 70 kg = 45 gray. That would mean that even being a couple thousand miles away could be fatal. But that's assuming 100% of Tsar Bomba energy would be ionizing radiation, I don't know what % would that be in reality.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#288

Post by beefnugs »

Rooster61 wrote: post #19

Curious as to what could cause a global outage like that. The system consists of birds in the air and individual ground stations. There's no big choke point that I'm aware of that could cause the whole shebang to go dark. Am I missing something here?

Too many HEILs near the rack power buttons

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#290

Post by hdgvhicv »

elzbardico wrote: post #269
oblio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Vodafone and other major European mobile networks were down during the last few days. This is hybrid warfare, not a coincidence. Russia needs to learn some manners, the hard way.

Incredibly, Americans still think they have any chance of teaching Russia or China "manners". The hubris of a decadent empire. And of course, they have to downvote to hell. They need to keep the illusion that the US is still the most powerful military, the most powerful economy, and that AI will save their hegemony. Really sad.

There’s no doubt the US military is by far the most powerful military ever seen. Even accounting for technical progress it’s arguably more powerful than the Romans or Mongols.

What is the illusion is that a powerful military is enough to win a conflict.

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