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SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

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Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#201

Post by gameswithgo »

yakz wrote: post #186
mabbo wrote: post #136

Worth also pointing out: That's the 9th flight of Booster 1051. And it had a perfect landing. The goal of this design of Falcon 9 is to handle 10 flights with minimum refurbishment. Right now, it looks like they're within a couple months of achieving that goal for the first time, with booster 1049 close as well, at 8 flights. SpaceX is soon going to reach a point that they don't need to build more Falcon 9 boosters.

Wouldn’t they want to continue building them to some extent just so they don’t lose the institutional knowledge of how to build them? Or is the expectation that Starship will render it obsolete soon enough?

Some clients request brand new boosters, and some mission profiles require losing the booster. I think there is no danger of them ceasing to build booster.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#202

Post by brianwawok »

JasonFruit wrote: post #196
SkyPuncher wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your latency like? I'm in exurban Wisconsin. Speeds are fine, but Charter has terrible routing that pushes everything out to Minnesota before routing back down to Chicago. 40ms to 60ms latency on EVERYTHING.

It's varied from as low as 30ms up to almost 80. Latency is just not going to be great with satellites, seeing that we're pushing it out to fricking space .

Except it’s low space. And signals travel faster in air than in glass. And the path is likely more direct.

Just space alone isn’t enough to say the latency will be worse.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#203

Post by Rebelgecko »

ctdonath wrote: post #35

While watching today’s launch, occurred to me the ratio of paying-client launches to Starlink launches is [whatever it is]. Profit margins on paid launches must be high, maybe amazing, to support so many Starlink launches.

That things that's clever is that it's a great way to test the limits of their refurbished boosters. A paying customer might be unhappy if SpaceX uses their launch vehicle to push the limits of minimal maintenance and reusability. But for their own payloads, that's not a big deal. Especially since if there is an oopsie, the Starlink payloads are much more easily replaced since they're mass produced

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#204

Post by ZoF »

kristofferR wrote: post #158
Topgamer7 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking it might generate enough heat to keep it warm. But the comments in this thread appear to think it has a heater inside of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JSq6xB591M

There's absolutely no heater inside it, as this great disassembly/destruction shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmdQnIlnRo

Depends on your definition of a heater, certainly there's no separate heating module but here's[0] a SpaceX team member saying it has 'self heating capabilities' in their reddit ama.

[0]-https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jybmgn/we_are_the...

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#205

Post by pfundstein »

rjzzleep wrote: post #113
alextheparrot wrote: post #46

My mother was raving about the service the other day. Speeds are 10-15x faster, she’s having an easier time with her online community college course and her job KPI is up by double digit percents [1]. She was worried that IT wouldn’t be OK with it when I said it was satellite (They’d been burned too many times), but the IT guy was incredibly excited because he’s also waiting to get Starlink. Looking forward to the se…

Faster than? Also, does anyone know who's behind this effort? Other leaders would celebrate the people behind the development but at spacex and tesla it's only ever news about Musk? Any interesting people behind what is happening at SpaceX ?

Musk never claims credit for the work of his team. The burden of proof is on you.

That said, I recall he has not only explicitly credited lead engineers by name but also discussed their technologies with them and given them stage time to discuss their tech with the audience. [see the automation day videos for example]

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#206

Post by rst »

mabbo wrote: post #136

Worth also pointing out: That's the 9th flight of Booster 1051. And it had a perfect landing. The goal of this design of Falcon 9 is to handle 10 flights with minimum refurbishment. Right now, it looks like they're within a couple months of achieving that goal for the first time, with booster 1049 close as well, at 8 flights. SpaceX is soon going to reach a point that they don't need to build more Falcon 9 boosters.

They have occasional landing failures (one this year, two last year), and still do launch expendably every once in a blue moon, so they'll likely need to build a new one every once in a while until the end of the program is in sight.

(It looks like they have very few customers anymore that insist on a new-build booster -- the fussiest had been the US government, but at this point, NASA is accepting reused boosters for human spaceflight, and the NRO has also accepted one for a mission last year. As far as I know, no one has publicly said they'd rather their booster has a test flight yet.)

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#207

Post by mlyle »

rb666 wrote: post #181
ShockedUnicorn wrote: post #110

For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community. If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…

Wind turbines do not kill many birds, that is a myth pushed by climate hoaxers. They have their drawbacks, but that aint one of 'em.

https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2193/200...

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#208

Post by mempko »

smoldesu wrote: post #67
mempko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been a non-profit operation no? I would expect rural internet to be cheaper than what SpaceX is charging. $100 per month is very expensive, especially for people in rural areas which generally are poorer. Example, I believe over 90% of rural china has high speed internet and they pay less than $10 a month. Edit. Anyone have a good argument why we can't get $10 per month high speed internet in rural area…

The whole point of this is that it isn't a non-profit, though. I'd love to live in a world where we can snap our fingers and motivate people to build $1/month internet, but that's not even a remote possibility. Starlink's big boon was that someone with money saw a problem and invested a ton of money into fixing it, hoping to turn a profit in the long-term. I'd love for someone to run fiber out to my house, but even g…

Couldn't we have a publically owned ISP? Also Starlink is already subsidized with public money to the tune of $900 million. Seems we are getting the worst of both worlds. We pay to build the infrastructure with public money but as a public we don't own any of it.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#209

Post by mempko »

coiledsnake wrote: post #36
mempko wrote: post #24

On my early morning walk I can see the satellites as very bright (much brighter than the stars) line across the sky. It's clear they didn't do enough about the reflectivity issue. Edit: Already downvoted for stating a fact. Amazing. Edit: Changed 'did nothing' to 'didn't do enough' Edit: Looks like experts still believe reflectivity is still a problem: https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-coated-starlink-satellites-a...

> On my early morning walk I can see the satellites as very bright (much brighter than the stars) line across the sky. No you do not. Satellites, when visible by the naked eye, are seen as point sources of light. Dots, not lines. One of two things has happened here: Either you saw meteor showers and mistook them for satellites (meteors move fast enough to be seen as lines, not points of light) or you saw long-exposur…

> No you do not. Satellites, when visible by the naked eye, are seen as point sources of light. Dots, not lines.

It was 60 satellites spaced together very closely after they were ejected from the rocket. From far away they look like a bright line just like the pixels of your monitor look like a line (even though they are just dots).

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