321–330 of 469 posts
But how do they beam copies of the space to space links down for wiretapping, as Iridium does?
At the ground stations
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I think it means pretty much all Starlink users have at least some data go over laser links every two hours. Which is a bit of surprise to me, if true. I have a year or so of fine-grained latency detail taken with IRTT on a Starlink connection, I should sit down and see if I can see times I'm using a satellite. Latency is highly variable in Starlink though so it's pretty noisy data.
Have you posted that data anywhere? I'm currently on a 10mbps DSL connection and considering StarLink, but have so far been scared away by the cost and concerns about latency, so I'm always on the lookout for real world data.
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Real time video and telemetry for military drones that’s nearly immune to electronic warfare counter measures is the real end game. The fpv drone carnage in Ukraine is currently limited to the contact lines plus or minus a few kilometers. Satellite comms change that drastically. Yes it’s available now but highly restricted.
But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.
I should add that anti-satellite missiles are _large_ missiles. The missiles of this size in the US arsenal are SM-3 missiles (or larger). The number even the US has is only in the high hundreds to possibly low thousands. That's completely out of the ability of Russia. It's maybe possible for China but not in their current stockpiles.
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How feasible is it though once the network reaches a huge size? Starlink satellites are tiny, and they've been deploying thousands of them over the last few years. I imagine it would take enormous resources to shoot them down, especially if the US does treat them like a strategic resource and adds more for redundancy.
The huge size of the network is itself a risk. Kessler syndrome is something everyone is currently trying to avoid, but if you wanted to intentionally induce it you could just start launching giant payloads of tiny ball bearings into their orbits, or take down enough of them that the shrapnel becomes equivalent to that anyway. Starlink is low enough that the debris from even a full Kessler syndrome cascade will deorb…
It's actually thought that Kessler syndrome is kind of already happening right now, which is why there's a lot of push right now to try to de-orbit the very large pieces of debris, so they can't act to form further debris.
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How feasible is it though once the network reaches a huge size? Starlink satellites are tiny, and they've been deploying thousands of them over the last few years. I imagine it would take enormous resources to shoot them down, especially if the US does treat them like a strategic resource and adds more for redundancy.
Even if anti-satellite missiles are too expensive to be used to shoot down thousands of targets, the ground stations could be bombed instead. Hacking the control plane and sending de-orbit commands could be even cheaper.
And you can't just wave around "hacking the control plane". Russia's been trying to interfere with Starlink for a while and they haven't had any long term success. And finally, even if the did somehow get access to the control systems at SpaceX, the satellites can't de-orbit quickly. It takes weeks to de-orbit, over which time they could be commanded to reverse course.
At first this sounded like an utopian dream but now it looks like common infrastructure that has a place in everyones life.
This must have been the same feeling when the first landlines were installed. The very first lines were a sensation and then after only a few years it becomes normal quickly.
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Like all other US defense companies, why not? Do you think US Navy produces their own ships?
The distinction here is that ships are built by nongovernmental private enterprises, whilst Starlink is operated by a nongovernmental private enterprise. With a somewhat volatile executive. Which isn't unprecedented. But it's also far from the equivalence your comment suggests.
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> Which also makes me wonder how many of the shooting stars I've seen recently are just old starlinks burning up. Probably close to none. The lifetime of the satellites is about 5 years give or take. According to this page [1], a total of 355 satellites have deorbited over the past roughly 5 years. That's an average of about 71 per year or about one every 5 days. Since planned disposals are done over uninhabited area…
If someone makes a mistake and the satellite deorbits in the wrong place, am I likely to be impaled by a satellite screw or something travelling at terminal velocity?
Put another way, every kilogram of Starlink spacecraft has as much energy "stored" in it's motion as around 4-5 tons of TNT.
Somewhat tangential: I assume that Starlink is not yet profitable. How many customers do they need to become profitable?