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Rocketlab acquires Iridium

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

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Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#141

Post by ceejayoz »

nradov wrote: post #83
Centigonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hank Green did a video recently advocating for an "orbit value tax" -- like a Georgist Land Value Tax, but for orbits. This tax would, among other things, help fund orbital cleanup and internalize the externality of polluting orbital shells. It's an idea that deserves more discourse IMO. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjW6zuYmos

Do you think Russia will be willing to pay a tax on their new Rassvet constellation?

Seize a few shadow fleet tankers to pay for it.

(This is already happening, today, for other bits of their misbehavior!)

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#142

Post by xp84 »

Sanzig wrote: post #125
lstodd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nobody is arguing that space isn't big. The argument is space is big but dynamic, and launching enough stuff up there means that over a sufficiently long time horizon, you will have a collision between uncontrolled objects. This is not a theoretical concern, it has already happened [1]. Collision risk is significantly reduced by having maneuverable spacecraft with good conjunction prediction systems in place. But fun…

Whatever happens to Starlink, the debris in their new lower orbit would decay within months at the worst. It’s not one of those “thousand years imprisoned on the planet by a cloud of deadly debris” that we’ve heard about.

Not saying it couldn’t be bad if there were such a collision as obvi a really bad collision could in the short term damage Starlink and anyone else who decides to use that orbit, but this isn’t existential risk territory anymore.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#143

Post by amluto »

lxgr wrote: post #95
piltdownman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

//I don’t think there a unified “market” here. You mean like the ASTS/Vodafone partnership that birthed the Satellite Connect Europe? https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/satellite-... https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/vodafone-a... Or like the US JV where they provide the infra for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513491108/en/AST... //Phones don’t…

They didn't circumvent phone antennas being largely omnidirectional (unlike VSAT or phased arrays, which are highly directional) and as a result having much lower gain, they just work with it, just like Iridium, Globalstar, Inmarsat, Thuraya, and all the other early players in what's now called "direct to device". The market is as bimodal as ever on the device side: On one side, you have small, battery-powered, (most…

I suspect that the lack of ability to form nulls in the beam is as big or even a bigger limitation than the reduction in gain when going from a big array to a phone.

The SNR in Shannon’s Law has a log in front of it, but spectrum reuse is more or less linear. If there are five visible satellites and I can null out four of them, then I can receive from and transmit to the fifth without substantial interference. (I’m not saying this is easy! Contemplate how many WiFi generations have had MIMO and how limited it still is.)

So I believe that it’s comparatively straightforward to demonstrate a shiny new direct-to-cell system with a single phone on a stage, but achieving usefully large aggregate bandwidth in a dense area will be more challenging.

FWIW the problem with Iridium, historically anyway, was that available bandwidth was very low, so they had to charge a silly amount for usage of that bandwidth, so very few people used it. Iridium used low-ish frequencies, with narrow bandwidth, and (I think) no MIMO whatsoever, not even polarization diversity.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#144

Post by Sanzig »

xp84 wrote: post #142
Sanzig wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is arguing that space isn't big. The argument is space is big but dynamic, and launching enough stuff up there means that over a sufficiently long time horizon, you will have a collision between uncontrolled objects. This is not a theoretical concern, it has already happened [1]. Collision risk is significantly reduced by having maneuverable spacecraft with good conjunction prediction systems in place. But fun…

Whatever happens to Starlink, the debris in their new lower orbit would decay within months at the worst. It’s not one of those “thousand years imprisoned on the planet by a cloud of deadly debris” that we’ve heard about. Not saying it couldn’t be bad if there were such a collision as obvi a really bad collision could in the short term damage Starlink and anyone else who decides to use that orbit, but this isn’t exis…

VLEO addresses the risk, sure, but the new Starcloud space datacenter hype machine isn't going VLEO, it's going 600-850 km. Those altitudes are in the years to decades range for deorbit, and SpaceX has filed for 88,000 of them.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#145

Post by dguest »

notahacker wrote: post #131
cptaj wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is on a similar scale to complaining about there being too many tennis balls on the surface of the earth. Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Nah, it's more akin to complaining about the number of bullets crossing your path. They don't occupy much space, but the fact they're moving at 17,500mpg means you want to ensure you avoid them, and ideally for there to be fewer of them fired at more predictable intervals.

I feel like LEO is a convenient speed to know if you are someone who often asks "how fast is that". At Mach 23 it's a lot faster than sound, and on the slow side of "how fast space stuff moves".

Of course it's still 3 orders of magnitude slower than galaxy collisions, which themselves are colliding at roughly 1% of the speed of light.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#147

Post by ericmay »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #126
nba456_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who does the tax get paid to? Some mythical Global Government that will totally work this time?

The Dutch figured out how to do collective dike maintenance a millennium ago without inventing mythical super government. Collective rules worked just fine. I encourage you to reflect on this bias. I suspect you're taking the American state as a template, and extrapolating its incompetence. The history is filled with different ideas - some of them far older than America itself. Hell, I'd call America a place so natur…

And how did the Dutch collect the toll and who received the tax benefits for it?

I’m interested in understanding your comparison here and how it would be applicable to space and how you envision it working based on your comparison.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#148

Post by proee »

Dig1t wrote: post #124
proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

>but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms The number of satellites required to create a measurable number of particles in the planet's atmosphere would be impossibly large. How much mass to orbit do you think is required to create a 1 PPM increase in earth's atmosphere of these "micro particles"? I find it extremely d…

People are not worried about the mass increase in the entire atmosphere, but very selective layers of the atmosphere (mesosphere and stratosphere). These are delicate layers that are highly affected by nano particles created from satellite burn-up.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#149

Post by saganus »

s0rce wrote: post #42
proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

Isn't that kinda how we got the plastic pollution problem in the ocean?

At first, the ocean seems immense. So much so that dumping plastic and toxic chemicals makes no difference.

But then we humans are great at scaling things it seems, such that at some point ocean plastic pollution became a real problem.

I know that space is much much bigger than our oceans, but I wouldn't underestimate the ability of mankind to scale launches to the point where debris becomes a problem.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#150

Post by thatoneengineer »

proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

Space is big and still very hard to get to. A kilogram of payload in orbit costs several times as much as a kilogram of silver on earth, even after SpaceX's aggressive scaling of capacity. No one's going to be spending that kind of money and effort carelessly. I was more worried about SpaceX becoming monopolistic, so I'm encouraged to see this deal.

Don't project your worries about pollution on Earth-- which is a much bigger problem!-- onto space industry which is at a much much earlier stage. The "burning-up" thing sounds extremely speculative, like you're looking around for reasons to dislike this. Space is exciting and inspiring-- and yes, that includes commercial uses, since realistically we couldn't afford to expand science or exploration in space much otherwise!

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