161–170 of 290 posts
The fact that SpaceX can piggyback on its own customers' launches to put these in orbit is a significant advantage over competing communication constellations. Depending on the cost of their satellites it might make sense to use launching them as a means of testing the upper limits of reusability of their rockets. IE, they might not want to risk a customer payload on a rocket that has made 10 launches. But if they ar…
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You need more than just any satellites to provide GPS. Each of them needs a very precise atomic clock (among other things I'm sure I'm not aware of).
You can build GPS (well, a GNSS would be more accurate) system without atomic clocks. One way to do so requires user equipment that can transmit back to the satellites, but that will already be the case for SpaceX's customers. You can also use Doppler measurements to get your location, although this tends to be less accurate, especially if you're moving quickly
Too bad the public markets have given Elon such a lashing with Tesla, because I would love to buy into SpaceX. But then, I’m not the only one; “There is an unlimited amount of funding that the company could probably access globally in private markets," Hilmer said, adding that he has personally met many of "a diverse group" interested in SpaceX. Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individua…
The guy they’re quoting sells SpaceX stock on the secondary market. Of course he’ll say it’s selling like hot cakes—it’s what he’s hired to sell.
Oops, am I not supposed to admit that?
Too bad the public markets have given Elon such a lashing with Tesla, because I would love to buy into SpaceX. But then, I’m not the only one; “There is an unlimited amount of funding that the company could probably access globally in private markets," Hilmer said, adding that he has personally met many of "a diverse group" interested in SpaceX. Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individua…
Anybody who sees a ceo who plans to spend a large chunk of company profits on colonizing mars for the sake of humanity might think to themselves, "I wonder if I can start a similar company, avoid the mars colonization expenses and undercut them on price."
it would also lead to "undercutting" on technology. Look at Bezos - without such a powerful Mars hyper-drive the best he can do is being engine supplier to ULA. Hugely respectable achievement on its own, no doubts, yet nothing close to SpaceX who has already really advanced our civilization and is on track to advance it even further.
In particular i think the Mars mission based POV allows to filter for the best architectures long-term, like modular construction F9/Heavy which wouldn't be necessary the best in the short term of just servicing Earth satellites.
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Are you actually suggesting dropping SSL? Sure, Iridium is somewhat encrypted and indeed provide its own Facebook and Twitter apps.
Over 2400 baud? Yes, I probably would suggest dropping SSL and instead transmit pre-encrypted data over a very plain, very simple connection to avoid the overhead of SSL handshake (something like 5kb for current keysizes?) and its latency. GPG-encrypted email over plain POP would work; and you can have automatic "remailers" on both sides of the link that handle the encryption/decryption once the communications are do…
This is such a cool problem. We already have a ton of Geo sat which can do this kind of communication but they are super expensive and have a limited bandwidth. These satellites will actually have a ton of limitations in how much data they can send around and how they'll have to balance out their signals. Geo are easier to point to because, well they don't move. But these are going to be moving and changing all the t…
A GPS receiver is constantly switching between the satellites in the GPS constellation. This sounds like that, on a bigger scale.
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Motorola solved this problem with its Iridium constellation back in the 90s. Handoff between satellites isn't really that hard. Your phone knows where it is and what birds are overhead (and which are about to appear/disappear) so they can adjust automatically. Routing through the satellite constellation gets kind of hairy, but is also solvable via orbital mapping and some arcane routing algorithms. The real trick is…
The real trick is getting enough link margin with omni antennas to get good bandwidth. What about phased arrays? Also, why not have a completely different scale of ISPs? How about something the size of a soda vending machine or something the size of a suitcase which contains all the hardware for a very small scale internet service provider?
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I read that as there is a lot of money that wants to piggyback on the success of SpaceX instead of fundamentally developing anything via their own investments.
What do you think investment is exactly?
It basically takes a crazy, put it all on the line billionaire to assemble technologies, but why doesn't the economic system regularly do this? Musk is great, but I think his skill, much like Jobs, is excellent integration of a number of existing technological possibilities. Why is Musk, as an individual, the one of the few that can do that at scale, vs industries that have in actuality more resources than Musk.
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Why. China can just force SpaceX to turn off over China. Unless this is part of a political 'Radio Free Europe' style operation China will control this as much as everything else.
Why. China can just force SpaceX to turn off over China. How? By shooting down satellites?
However, the easier option is to just scan for the right EM waves on the ground and go after the people using the illegal network.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
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> There is just far too much space for 100k objects, let alone 10k to ever run the risk of collission. No, there isn't. Satellites can and do collide despite the vast amount of space in a given orbit. It is improbable, but likely enough to warrant at least some concern. > Why don't you hold that same fear for existing satelittes which typically operate at an orbit with far lower decay rate? I do, as does the FCC. Thi…
> Satellites can and do collide despite the vast amount of space in a given orbit. Excluding planned collisions, or collisions during failed docking, I found 4 instances of collisions between satellites and space debris. Ever. Now, a couple of things: * Yes this larger constellation will increase those odds in the future. * No, a catastrophic doomsday scenario did not occur when those happened. * SpaceX will have com…
My concern is just from a general interest in spaceflight. More of a wish to protect a resource rather than a Chicken Little fear of the sky literally falling out.