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

Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 162 posts

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#61

Post by dotnet00 »

s5300 wrote: post #29
Cyberdog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate for those of us who don’t typically follow space news? Has Space-X had some trouble recently?

Musk has had some trouble recently, but I thought it was pretty well known that Shotwell pretty much runs the show at SpaceX & has for some time. I may be completely incorrect, but I think Musk is mostly just a mascot/figurehead/hype-man for SpaceX & has been for a bit. Regarding most of the day-day stuff that is, he probably still has some input on very long term matters. But I think if Musk were to die in a mysteri…

It is well known that Shotwell runs the business side and Musk runs the engineering/R&D side.

Eg. Falcon Heavy was almost cancelled because the engineering side turned out to make it more expensive to develop than expected (with the original plan for fuel crossfeed) and F9 had improved so much that it ate up most of FH's potential market. So Musk's preference was to cancel it. But because it was favorable for the business side (I think they might've even already bid on some launches with it by then), Shotwell pushed for them to keep it, which is how we got the current variation of FH which just has F9s with a reinforced center-core.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#62

Post by georgeg23 »

kidme5 wrote: post #30
georgeg23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX already has contracts for a Missile Defense Shield (w/ SDA, now part of Space Force). Govt program was started by Mike Griffin-- one of the early founders of Strategic Defense Initiative, space kill vehicles, and SpaceX itself. His history with Elon is fascinating. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

I thought SpaceX is just building thermal imaging satellites for tracking ballistic missiles, but agree it's obvious just the first step to orbital weapons for interception. Yes that's the plan. Sounds like Biden Admin wasn't a fan of Star Wars and has been slowing Elon down.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

Correct

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#63

Post by bryanlarsen »

georgeg23 wrote: post #27
bryanlarsen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has been launching Department of Defense payloads since 2006.

Actually SpaceX's first contract and the name 'Falcon' came from the DARPA Falcon Project https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project

I believe I read in Eric Berger's book Liftoff that the name came from the Star Wars Millennium Falcon.

But your theory has some merit since the timing of the Falcon project's award to SpaceX could be coming about the same time that they named the rocket.

Both theories may be right. The Falcon project grew out of the Reagan era Star Wars project, so it's likely a backronym.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#65

Post by bryanlarsen »

dotnet00 wrote: post #61
s5300 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has had some trouble recently, but I thought it was pretty well known that Shotwell pretty much runs the show at SpaceX & has for some time. I may be completely incorrect, but I think Musk is mostly just a mascot/figurehead/hype-man for SpaceX & has been for a bit. Regarding most of the day-day stuff that is, he probably still has some input on very long term matters. But I think if Musk were to die in a mysteri…

It is well known that Shotwell runs the business side and Musk runs the engineering/R&D side. Eg. Falcon Heavy was almost cancelled because the engineering side turned out to make it more expensive to develop than expected (with the original plan for fuel crossfeed) and F9 had improved so much that it ate up most of FH's potential market. So Musk's preference was to cancel it. But because it was favorable for the bus…

It wasn't important to the business side -- they'd only sold a couple launches or so. But Shotwell convinced Elon that it was important to their reputation.

Musk has since cratered his, but Shotwell's is intact.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#66

Post by bryanlarsen »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #22
credit_guy wrote: post #12

Sooner or later the US Government will realize the Starship will be a good launching vehicle for the ballistic missile defense. Currently a midcourse ground base interceptor booster [1] weighs more than 20 tons, costs a few tens of millions, and carries one single kill vehicle [2] that weighs about 64 kg. A single Starship would be able to carry more than 1000 such kill vehicles. If Russia launches a few hundred miss…

It has to get off the ground first.

Nobody doubts it'll get off the ground, which is all you need for the OP's proposal. Catching the second stage with chopsticks, though...

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#67

Post by neatze »

At fist I thought this would something similar to band 14 on LTE networks, but seems like this is not the case, or at least they are not saying anything about QOS.

Not sure what they mean by encryption, since DOD has there own crypto chips with classified algorithms.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#68

Post by rzimmerman »

It sounds like they’re trying to sell two things:

1. Hosted payloads, where DoD entities pay to have something (telescope, Sigint equipment, whatever) strapped on to a starlink satellite with comms all figured out for them. Probably a good deal if your stuff fits on that big flat satellite. SpaceX starlink launches do sway the launch market significantly enough (offering a launch at half othe price or less, beholden to starlink orbits) that it can seem worth it.

2. A government friendly starlink service which has security features like hardware managed encryption.

The cynic in me wonders if there just isn’t enough market for commercial starlink. But honestly it makes sense to sell the empty edges, kilograms, and bandwidth to the government. They have a lot of money.

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#69

Post by [deleted] »

ilyt wrote: post #58

> Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements. aka "We put TLS in SPAAAACE!" ? I kinda doubt government needs help in such basic things as "talking over unsecure channel"...

[deleted]

Re: Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

#70

Post by bryanlarsen »

gz5 wrote: post #54
coolspot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no free cooling in the space. It is actually harder to cool something in the space than in Sahara, because you have no air that you can dump energy into. Your only choice is to radiate heat away, which is very inefficient.

agree you would radiate it away - but why does that need to be inefficient at scale (understood there are upfront costs)? meanwhile cooling is a huge expense in terrestrial DCs. i am not an expert - happy to hear more expert opinions which is why i wrote the parent comment - but on a quick google search it seems folks are working on these designs: https://orbitsedge.com/satframe

Cooling in space is easy -- it just requires massive radiators. And mass is expensive in space.
Post reply on HN