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Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

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Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#71

Post by wkat4242 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #66
wkat4242 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mate 60 uses beidou sats which are not quite geostationary but also in a pretty high orbit. But messaging is only a small part of their task, the main one is geolocation. They're only able to supply short message service where latency isn't really relevant.

I’m out of my depth here, but my research said Tiantong-1 and that that’s geostationary. Adding the keyword BeiDou I do get a few results too, but it looks like BeiDou is GNSS, so I think those might be errors? Anyway, my point was just that this stuff isn’t equivalent to Starlink. For what satellite phones do, GEO or whatever similar is fine, but the appeal of Starlink certainly requires that it be LEO.

I didn't look into it but I read that in a review, that BeiDou-3 sats have a sidechannel for emergency comms and that this is what's being used. Perhaps that info was wrong, it's hard to get info on this in Europe.

If this is the case it would be too bad though, because Tiantong-1 is indeed geostationary (leading to suitability issues for emergency comms like needing visibility to the Southern horizon) but also only available in the China region.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#72

Post by eunos »

chrismorgan wrote: post #32
eunos wrote: post #21

Speaking of Starlink, what piqued my interest is that Huawei Mate 60 incorporated satellite call module without being bulky. It is not yet able to do data transfer but in case they can, isnt that practically a portable starlink equivalent?

Starlink is low earth orbit, around 550km up, adding best-case latency of under 4ms (550km*2/c ≈ 3.67ms). That allows an excellent service. Satellite phones (and I’ve confirmed this applies to the Huawei Mate 60) connect with satellites in geostationary orbits, meaning an altitude of about 35,786km, adding latency of around 240ms (35786km*2/c ≈ 238.74ms). This can be acceptable for some purposes, but harms things far…

There's a a Chinese plan for Guo Wang equivalent

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#73

Post by onethought »

justapassenger wrote: post #69
onethought wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone said that. It’s just intuitively obvious it makes starlink much more viable when you can launch more/bigger version of it with more fuel for less cost. Not sure about the rest of that axe you wish to grind.

> I don’t think anyone said that It’s exactly what op said and caused me to engage in this thread. “Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink (if it's not already profitable) will be assured if Starship meets its goals”

Yes, viability of starlink. Not profitability of SpaceX.

Starlink isn’t their only income source.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#74

Post by modeless »

onethought wrote: post #51
alex_duf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there debate around their aluminium frame reacting with the upper atmosphere? The ozone layer maybe? 4 or 5 years of lifetime for literal tons of satellites is definitely not sustainable

Perhaps they could find a way to refuel the constellation?

Unfortunately the physics of this don't work very well. And at least for now the satellites are getting generational upgrades frequently, so the old satellites are obsolete. Maybe in the far future it will make sense to try this, but not anytime soon.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#75

Post by onethought »

modeless wrote: post #74
onethought wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they could find a way to refuel the constellation?

Unfortunately the physics of this don't work very well. And at least for now the satellites are getting generational upgrades frequently, so the old satellites are obsolete. Maybe in the far future it will make sense to try this, but not anytime soon.

Pie in the sky: in the future when they have the ability to put large starship fuel tankers into orbit, they could match the orbits of starlink and have some kind of drone move between satellites and tanker.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#76

Post by mlindner »

It's unfortunate that this misinformation is being upvoted on this site. The headline is completely incorrect, as is the statistics they're using to base the article on.

https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/17055628292254106...

https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html

There has only ever been 350 starlink satellites that have deorbited, and only 8 within the last two months.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#77

Post by mlindner »

modeless wrote: post #6

Lost 200 but launched 345, almost all of which are the latest upgraded version. The satellites are designed to last 5 years (the lifetime is limited by propellant because of atmospheric drag at their low altitude) and the first batches were launched 4 years ago now. As the constellation matures they will be de-orbiting satellites about as fast as they launch them. Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink…

It's unfortunate that this misinformation is being upvoted on this site. The headline is completely incorrect, as is the statistics they're using to base the article on.

https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/17055628292254106...

https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html

There has only ever been 350 starlink satellites that have deorbited, and only 8 within the last two months.

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