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SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

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Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#161

Post by ceejayoz »

mstipetic wrote: post #147
whatshisface wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. SpaceX could be the key to launching a horde of new Hubbles. However that's not so likely in the short run because everything is going towards the JWST.

JWST is a great project and a type of project we should strive for. I'm personally just annoyed why the conversation is so defensive and negative. I don't know much about astronomy, but from what I understand the Earth's atmosphere is hard to deal with, why aren't we talking more about what can be done with this new tech, and not how it makes current things more difficult

It's the kind of telescope we should strive for, but definitely not the sort of project we should.

It's more than a decade late and billions over budget.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#162

Post by ixf »

mstipetic wrote: post #147
whatshisface wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. SpaceX could be the key to launching a horde of new Hubbles. However that's not so likely in the short run because everything is going towards the JWST.

JWST is a great project and a type of project we should strive for. I'm personally just annoyed why the conversation is so defensive and negative. I don't know much about astronomy, but from what I understand the Earth's atmosphere is hard to deal with, why aren't we talking more about what can be done with this new tech, and not how it makes current things more difficult

Earth's atmosphere is annoying, yes, but for huge swathes of observational science it's not a deal-breaker. Not having massive telescopes on the ground where you can fiddle with your instrumentation and take advantage of apertures and construction techniques simply not possible in space _is_ a deal-breaker.

The required precision for construction of telescopes is incredible, and doesn't translate to space well, especially once you start talking about apertures that even folded won't fit into even the largest Starship SpaceX is proposing.

Ground-based astronomy is here to stay and with good reason. SpaceX needs to avoid or minimise the harms to these users of the night sky.

There is another aspect of harm, too - the casual observer. The night sky is a precious resource and shared by all. Introducing huge constellations which in many parts of the world will be visible year-round (and in some quite heavily populated areas like northern Europe, even through the night at some times of year) is like building a huge mobile phone mast outside someone's window and expecting them not to complain, but on a much larger scale.

Light pollution is a huge issue, and satellites can pollute just as well (if not more effectively) than ground based sources - it needs to be an ecological consideration of any launch.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#163

Post by ericd »

shaklee3 wrote: post #141
ceejayoz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satellite internet has indeed existed for decades, but via small numbers of geostationary satellites (Iridium only has 76 active satellites; Starlink launches about that many in every launch ). That means severely constrained bandwidth, and high latency given the ~50,000 mile round trip the data has to take. It's also expensive to get a satellite out there. Low Earth orbit constellations have both lower latency (a co…

I'm well aware of the scale of starlink, but the speeds delivered by starlink won't be any faster than the existing GEO satellites at the time, not will it be cheaper. The OP talked about high speed internet, which, in most cases, the latency doesn't matter. Every cost estimate made by people in this industry say it will be much higher than geo to deliver a bit. If you have a source that says otherwise, please post i…

Can you point to some of those cost estimates?

Latency absolutely matters for "high speed internet". Once you have reasonable bandwidth, that's the dominant factor in the user experience.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#164

Post by mlyle »

shaklee3 wrote: post #114
SamReidHughes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering orbit doesn't substantially reduce latency, building more satellites does.

Building more satellites doesn't reduce latency. Are you referring to the ISL?

Adding more ground stations and building more satellites does reduce latency, because there will be a satellite closer to "halfway between" you and a ground station, which defines the shortest possible path.

If there is just one (non-stationary) satellite in your sky, the geometry is probably pretty crummy, so light-speed delay is greater. Also, link budget is worse, so probably data rate is lower too.

Yes, once you have a ton of satellites, adding more doesn't improve latency much.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#166

Post by _ph_ »

ForHackernews wrote: post #99
allovernow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>charlatan like Musk I'm not a fanboy by any means but the guy built two companies and launched a car from his factory into space from a rocket his other business built. He's personally spearheading the early stages of commercial space exploration. I don't know that I'd describe him as a charlatan.

Musk did not found Tesla, but would like you to believe that he did: https://www.quora.com/Did-Elon-Musk-found-Tesla-1 Maybe 'charlatan' is unfair, but he's certainly more of a sales-and-hype man than a real engineering type. I don't understand why so many technical people are snowed by his razzle dazzle.

No, he wasn't a first-day founder. But he joined not to long after and it was his private money and him as a CEO which built Tesla.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#167

Post by h5arehe5ra4h »

jayd16 wrote: post #115
new_realist wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they lowered the orbit because Starlink latency was/is not competitive.

I was under the impression that Starlink latency is actually very competitive with terrestrial fiber. Why do you say it wasn't or isn't? Everything I find suggest Starlink will have low latency.

For most usages yes. For gaming though it's right on the edge: theoretical minimum at 350km orbit is 40ms roundtrip, which would work for most games. But many complications, including position of the satellite, latencies within the networking components, packet loss etc, can easily slow this to 100ms+, which is unsuitable for many online games.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#168

Post by _ph_ »

kevingadd wrote: post #48
ChrisClark wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why Musk always asks people to come to him if they have a better idea. Even in large groups, or maybe especially in large groups, things can be overlooked. He recently said in a video that if anyone can convince him an aerospike is better than their solution, he wants to know.

There is a cultural risk involved though - we don't know how comfortable SpaceX employees feel raising objections given how aggressive Musk has been against concerns in the past (see the somewhat credible reports that Musk angrily rejected yellow safety markings on equipment based on personal taste: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-getting... ) I've heard similar reports from former Tesla employee…

The reports about the yellow markings are not credible. Just look at photos taken at the freemont car plant: https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/tesla-t...

Plenty of yellow lines in those.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#169

Post by rtkwe »

kerng wrote: post #124
rtkwe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily get yourself between cars and whatever natural thing you're trying to observe on the rare cases that what you're trying to study is anywhere near cars. The only way to do the same for Starlink is to launch multi-million dollar+ space telescope.

But in that case you have to travel to a remote location (most likely using a car or plane ironically). Hence, is it so far fetched that if you want to explore space in future you will do it from a different vantage point? Like via a satellite, or maybe in 50 years you go to a space station or the moon directly to do so. With tech it has always been this way- it's nothing new.

The costs are orders of magnitudes more than simply travelling to study nature where it is and will continue to be hugely expensive for a long long time.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#170

Post by [deleted] »

readams wrote: post #8
topologistics wrote: post #3

>“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.” That is absolutely ridiculous. The Iridium satellites were decommissioned recently and it was a big deal because, for the longest time, you had to check for "iridium flares" if you were using any type of sensitive equipment. Basically, the entire class of iridium satellites was highly reflective and they tended t…

They announced their plans years ago. The astronomy community could have raised concerns then. The fact that they didn't would indicate nobody connected the dots.

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