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

A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 112 posts

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#101

Post by Weeenion »

newsclues wrote: post #18
Weeenion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 Million people benefit from it, 8 Billion people don't. We should have done that A LOT slower without breaking shit left and right. Edit: Because of the one downvote: It affects astronomy and a PRIVATE company has impact on a war like in ukraine. And they are violating shit just because its Musk

"These are Starshields, not Starlinks." The number of people that benefits from security provided by the military is not the same as the number of people that subscribe to starlink internet.

[dead]

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#102

Post by robocat »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #82
Zigurd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient and shrinking TAM. The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.

> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient [TAM] Insufficient for what? > and shrinking TAM. Starlink has made quite an impact on planning around servicing commercially non-viable or marginal customers in government and telcos where I am from. It is IMO quite likely that some existing cell towers in remote areas that are very expensive to operate and maintain will eventually be shut down. So that could act…

The US military wants to have option to deploy anywhere in the world, so they also want to have comms everywhere.

The starlink network surely has special features to support US military needs (resiliance, encryption, blocking enemy countries from access, robustness against countermeasures, yaddayadda).

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#103

Post by anonymousiam »

dylan604 wrote: post #87
boringg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they don't have any comms signals and wouldn't connect to that unless absolutely necessary emergent situation. I thought they operate in the dark.

Subs do pop up to make status reports or check-ins. They do operate independently in that command knows what area they patrolling but not exact locations at any given time.

Subs (at least the US ones) also use "strategic" LPI/LPD milsat comms instead of commercial satcom. You don't want your enemy to geolocate your sub fleet whenever they phone home.

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#104

Post by dzhiurgis »

ACCount37 wrote: post #4

This reeks of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), and we know Starshield sats carry custom sensor payloads that normal Starlinks don't have.

The fact we speak about it already sometimes suggests it has been already deployed, sometimes for many decades.

Can it (a SAR sat doing a flyover) somehow be detected from ground?

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#105

Post by brookst »

krisoft wrote: post #76
brookst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure it works. Do you design in these sensors and build in the normal starlink factory, where most people don't have security clearances? Or do you make thousands of people get security clearances, making it pretty obvious? And as soon as any data from a specific sensor leaks, adversaries would likely be able to pinpoint what satellite produced it. And then the contractual term…

> where most people don't have security clearances Are we sure about that? Because i see plenty of clearance required job listings to their redmond facility. > And as soon as any data from a specific sensor leaks, adversaries would likely be able to pinpoint what satellite produced it. Yeah. Thats why usually data from any satelite would be very closely held. Even with old satelites it was a big deal when the preside…

You’re saying that thousands of starlink satellites are actualky spy satellites, but it’s scret because spacex hires some people with security clearances, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t have to be secret to be useful, but it is secret despite involving 100x times more volume than any previous spy satellites, and the only evidence is… vibes?

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#106

Post by krisoft »

brookst wrote: post #105
krisoft wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where most people don't have security clearances Are we sure about that? Because i see plenty of clearance required job listings to their redmond facility. > And as soon as any data from a specific sensor leaks, adversaries would likely be able to pinpoint what satellite produced it. Yeah. Thats why usually data from any satelite would be very closely held. Even with old satelites it was a big deal when the preside…

You’re saying that thousands of starlink satellites are actualky spy satellites, but it’s scret because spacex hires some people with security clearances, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t have to be secret to be useful, but it is secret despite involving 100x times more volume than any previous spy satellites, and the only evidence is… vibes?

> You’re saying that thousands of starlink satellites are actualky spy satellites

No. I didn’t say that and wouldn’t say that. Read carefully because i write carefully what i mean.

You are saying that the theory as presented by bob1029 could not work. I’m saying that your argument why it couldn’t work is not persuasive.

You present two arguments in your comment. (As best as i can understand it.)

One is about the secrecy around the design and manufacturing of the satelites. You claim, without support, that most people don’t have a security clearance in the redmond starlink factory.

Satelite design and manufacturing is already very secretive. Because of ITAR and regular commercial confidentiality you won’t hear a peep about what is on the satelites. The people who design and develop the satelites would of course know the full capabilities of them, but the people manufacturing them need not know. All they need to know is that they are installing optical assemblies. Whoever asks can be told that they are for laser communication.

So the amount of people who need to know is smaller than the full work force. That workforce is already trained on secrecy, and they are practicing it. They already risk prison if they leak anything. (Without any spy satelite business, just because what they work on is ITAR controlled.) On top of that spacex is quite openly hiring for a number of positions requiring top secret clearance.

Your other argument is that if data from these hypothetical sensors would leak that would compromise the hypothetical secrecy around them. Which is true, but is a general property of all inteligence gathering. If it was not an argument against any of the other systems why would it be an argument against this one?

Secrets like this hypothetical one have a finite lifetime. You do it because you hope to gain from doing it. You keep it secret because you hope to gain more than if you didn’t keep it secret. Even if the capability becomes known to your adversaries you won’t loose all the benefits, just some.

> and the only evidence is… vibes?

Because i’m not claiming that they are spy sattelites. All i’m claiming is that your argument claiming that they are not, or couldn’t be is not persuasive. The negation of the statement “they couldn’t be spy satelites” is not “they are spy satelites”, but “they could be spy satelites”.

I hope that helps clarifying what i wrote. Happy to answer any further questions.

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#107

Post by ACCount37 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #104
ACCount37 wrote: post #4

This reeks of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), and we know Starshield sats carry custom sensor payloads that normal Starlinks don't have.

The fact we speak about it already sometimes suggests it has been already deployed, sometimes for many decades. Can it (a SAR sat doing a flyover) somehow be detected from ground?

Yes, as long as it's active. Like with any other active radar - you can detect the radio waves and narrow down on their source.

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#108

Post by Zigurd »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #82
Zigurd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient and shrinking TAM. The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.

> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient [TAM] Insufficient for what? > and shrinking TAM. Starlink has made quite an impact on planning around servicing commercially non-viable or marginal customers in government and telcos where I am from. It is IMO quite likely that some existing cell towers in remote areas that are very expensive to operate and maintain will eventually be shut down. So that could act…

Satellites that last 5 years and have un-transparent launch economics are very unlikely to win on cost in any land-based market. If the market is too small or too poor to support FWA, it's not going to contribute significant revenue to Starlink.

Starlink needs tens of millions of subscribers to be valued like a telco.

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#109

Post by Zigurd »

robocat wrote: post #102
stinkbeetle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient [TAM] Insufficient for what? > and shrinking TAM. Starlink has made quite an impact on planning around servicing commercially non-viable or marginal customers in government and telcos where I am from. It is IMO quite likely that some existing cell towers in remote areas that are very expensive to operate and maintain will eventually be shut down. So that could act…

The US military wants to have option to deploy anywhere in the world, so they also want to have comms everywhere. The starlink network surely has special features to support US military needs (resiliance, encryption, blocking enemy countries from access, robustness against countermeasures, yaddayadda).

The military has interoperating and compatible comms everywhere. People have solved many problems before Elon invented a thing.

Re: A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

#110

Post by inemesitaffia »

stuff4ben wrote: post #16
Zigurd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a pretty harsh critic of Starlink. I don't think it's going to compete well against terrestrial wireless links, specifically 5G FWA. But if they can actually do something interesting with distributed SAR in a large constellation, that's one of those national security breakthroughs that's worth every penny.

> national security breakthroughs Can you explain what you mean by this? Still not sure how SAR would fit in here...

Search "NRO you can't hide"
Post reply on HN