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We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

arstechnica.com

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Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#11

Post by eastbound »

greatgib wrote: post #9

[flagged]

It’s not big corps. Interns. Student projects. I make software typically used in the space industry and our customers are surprisingly small, just s dozen people each time. Startups, half of them funded by the EU startup funds.

The kilogram in orbit is supposed to go down to $1000, and everyone’s joking that it becomes affordable to send a turd to space “for the lulz”. It’s literally the case.

Ariane 5G is already down to 10k$/kg, Falcon 9 is at 6500k$, pricing on https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/ and you can literally click “Buy” and enter your credit card number.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#13

Post by croes »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #10
croes wrote: post #4

So more satellites to block the view for astronomers.

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing. In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.

You could turn that around.

Progress in Earth bound astronomy has the downside of less satellite internet.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#15

Post by jvanderbot »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #8

I wonder what "earth observation" opportunities there would be with such megaconstellations, from simply having a camera with a telephoto lens pointed down to a giant, sky-spanning Synthetic Aperture Radar utilizing multiple satellites. Anything like that would explain the secrecy...

Probably few. The US has excellent observers and comms sats by the dozens are not very big. It's true you can get some photos but the kind you're thinking of, where you can track vehicles in a meaningful way or something, has to be done by something closer to the hubble telescope (pointed backwards).

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#18

Post by ghaff »

9dev wrote: post #2

The video of the satellite release looks really eerie; it’s got something biological to it, like an insect releasing its pods.

To a first approximation, no one is going to forgo better Internet for whatever definition of better because they don’t like some billionaire’s politics or behavior.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#19

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

jvanderbot wrote: post #15
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #8

I wonder what "earth observation" opportunities there would be with such megaconstellations, from simply having a camera with a telephoto lens pointed down to a giant, sky-spanning Synthetic Aperture Radar utilizing multiple satellites. Anything like that would explain the secrecy...

Probably few. The US has excellent observers and comms sats by the dozens are not very big. It's true you can get some photos but the kind you're thinking of, where you can track vehicles in a meaningful way or something, has to be done by something closer to the hubble telescope (pointed backwards).

Even if it would just deliver 1 or even just 10 meter resolution, I would imagine the high revisit frequency would make it commercially valuable, and potentially also provide some value to military/intelligence groups because it would make it harder to hide activity through careful timing and the data would come with fewer secrecy requirements.

And I have no clue what is doable with SAR, but I'd imagine multiple satellites following each other would enable some interesting features, as it essentially gives you a giant antenna.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#20

Post by az09mugen »

jvanderbot wrote: post #14
greatgib wrote: post #9

[flagged]

These have to de orbit at end of life. Junkyard might be the wrong analogy. More like busy workyard. Or highway.

I just cross the fingers to not witness a Kessler syndrome : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
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