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

Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

newscientist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 171 posts

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#131

Post by emkoemko »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #36
bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready to go". suborbital Yuanxingzhe-1 landed may 2025, and orbital Zhuque-3 was really close to landing in December. Long March 12A also tried in December although it wasn't as close to success. So if China is 10 years behind, they've caught up. We won't know if they're 10 years or further behind…

China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of st…

whats the issue with that? US just cloned the Iranian drone.... all countries do this

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#132

Post by rationalist »

mylies43 wrote: post #111
rationalist wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would collisions cause debris to be ejected into a higher orbit? Although I guess as long as the debris does not pick up any significant speed boost, its orbit would be elliptical and would just collide with Earth (burn up on re-entry)?

Wouldn't a explosion give it that energy?

I'm not sure every satellite would be exploding in the traditional sense with hot gases expanding.

There would be disentigration when satellite pieces rip through other satellites.

How many satellites carry compressed gas for orbit adjustments?

Maybe there is some compressed gas pushing against liquid fuel and oxidizers, but I don't think the fuel and oxidizers would explode. Shooting tanks of gasoline with regular bullets do not cause explosions like movies would have you believe. Well, maybe pure oxidizers might, would there be enough heat generated by the tank being punctured?

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#133

Post by bluGill »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #68
bluGill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, physics says they can't. relativite and signal degrigation is hard. the energy of a star outside our arm of the galaxy isn't easy to detect, much less any signal of lower power.

Our current knowledge of physics says they can't. Who knows what others figured out. We still can't even explain 80% of the mass we measure.

we know enough to know what we don't know is constrained by current rules. Newton physics mostly is good enough even when relativity is more correct - likewise whatever we don't know needs to generalize to relativity.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#134

Post by nine_k »

pacificmint wrote: post #123
nine_k wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To shoot something down at 70,000 ft (21 km) all you need is a conventional military jet fighter, and a long-range rocket, or even a MiG-31 with a conventional cannon. At best you can make these birds cheaper than the rocket + flight time. Something that flies at the upper edge of the stratosphere, at 40-50 km (160,000 ft) would be hard to reach with currently available means. You can of course fire a THAAD at it, bu…

> you can fire a THAAD at a Starlink satellite as well. You can fire a THAAD at one Starlink satellite, but probably not at 8000 of them. For comparison we’re currently producing THAAD interceptors at a rate of 96 a year (though Lockheed is aiming to increase it to 400).

Exactly; it's a limited and very expensive capability. Nobody would want to spend it on a $100k stratospheric flying vehicle, if the latter existed. It does not exist though, if you do not count weather balloons.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#135

Post by ripe »

kolinko wrote: post #126
thisislife2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India's ISRO already competes with SpaceX for these launches ( ISRO puts 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-successfully-... ), despite not having any reusable launch vehicles (reason - it's in the top 5 in space technology and just cheaper - Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo ). Once it masters reusable…

36 compared to 10000. This is 2-3 orders of magnitude. It's like a corner store trying to compete with Walmart.

They have a list of 434 foreign satellites launched so far as of January 2026 on their website:

https://www.isro.gov.in/ForeignSatellites.html

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#136

Post by maxglute »

thisislife2 wrote: post #4
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

Can you explain what makes Falcon9 / Starship special (or needed) to launch these satellites? China, India, EU, Japan etc. all have the capability to launch satellites. So why is a Falcon9 / Starship a particular requirement?

It's more tempo, less cost, resuable has faster turn around time, so more launch per unit of time. Long March 5 is ~$3000/kg, or ballpark enough to F9/kg, but disposables can't launch every few days.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#137

Post by maxglute »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #47
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

I'd broadly agree that EU is pretty behind the curve. But I think China is probably only ~5 years max behind the curve in terms of Starlink. But in terms of defense needs, I don't think you actually need the thousands and thousands for reasonable returns. DoD/NRO has bought maybe ~500 Starshields ( https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/03/26/spacex-starshield-... ) from SpaceX. I think China is well within reach of bei…

>put up those numbers within a few years,

And potentially exceed Starlink cumulative payload a few years after that.

US via SpaceX generates most launches/payload due to reusability PRC built 2x more disposable launch vehicles. PRC figures out disposables and they can operate reusable fleet 2-3x the size of US and simply throw more payload per year and catchup/exceed cumulative SpaceX volume in a few years. A few years after, permanent kgs in space advantage due higher replacement as old hardware deorbits.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#139

Post by fakedang »

ciupicri wrote: post #24
jmyeet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story I like to tell is about the Manhattan Project. This caused a debate in US strategic circles that set policy for the entire post-1945 world. Debate included whether a preemptive nuclear strike on the USSR was necessary or even just a good idea. Anyway, many in these circles thought the USSR would take 20 years to develop the bomb if they ever did. It took 4 years. The hydrogen bomb? The USA tested theirs in…

> many in these circles thought the USSR would take 20 years to develop the bomb if they ever did. It took 4 years. Because some people committed treason and gave the technology to the Soviets.

How Industrial Espionage Started America's Cotton Revolution

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#140

Post by thisislife2 »

kolinko wrote: post #126
thisislife2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India's ISRO already competes with SpaceX for these launches ( ISRO puts 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-successfully-... ), despite not having any reusable launch vehicles (reason - it's in the top 5 in space technology and just cheaper - Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo ). Once it masters reusable…

36 compared to 10000. This is 2-3 orders of magnitude. It's like a corner store trying to compete with Walmart.

The point was that you don't need a reusable launch vehicle if a single use launcher is just as cheap.
Post reply on HN