Astronomy and space exploration

[cheapchips]

I looked into this before, no it won’t be, it’ll be pretty pisspoor internet, I suppose though they will just have to update their satellites in 5 years time and hope the others come crashing down as planned. I suppose it’s ok atm with just musk and somewhat Amazon, but what happens when there’s over a dozen companies all with 1000s of satellites providing this service, just a disaster wAiting to happen. And with bezos animosity towards musk I wouldn’t be surprised if an ‘accident’ occurs

Neither Bezos or anyone else is going to take a 'scorched orbit' approach. The business they're trying to establish is dependant on sensible management of orbital debris. If they did piss about, the FAA can withdraw their launch licence. What you have at the moment is lots of noise on safety as no one wants a land grab on the best orbits/frequencies and all that, given the billions at stake.

Kessler syndrome is generally misrepresented as two satellites crashing and then within a short span everything's blown up by debris. In actual fact it would take many decades to reach that state. They'd be time to do something about it with the launch capacity required for putting constellations up in the first place.

It's clearly best avoided though and would be costly.

 

[Davros]

They'd be time to do something about it

To a point but a lot of debris is too small to track

 

[cheapchips]

To a point but a lot of debris is too small to track

Indeed. That's problem of capability rather than something insurmountable though. The biggest issue would be if Kessler syndrome happened and society was in a place where we were either unwilling or unable to do something about it. There's obviously various scenarios that could knacker our industrial and space flight capability just at the time we'd need it to mitigate that problem.

Thinking about it, a 'Kessler Attack' would make for the most boring non-lethal alien invasion story ever. "Haha. Now you're stuck you stupid humans!"

 

[zed]

Neither Bezos or anyone else is going to take a 'scorched orbit' approach.

I mention Bezos cause judging on his recent actions, he seems exactly like trump, whilst not rational, he strikes me as having the attitude of 'if it can't be me, then I prefer it is nobody'.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX permission to fly 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the company has filed paperwork with an international regulator to loft up to 30,000 additional spacecraft.
To put that into perspective, only about 4,300 active artificial satellites currently orbit Earth, and only 11,670 have ever been launched in all of history, according to the European Space Agency.

So 11k satellites in history obviously the maximum number at once has been lower as thats over 60+ years
has their been collisions before? Yes
starlink ATM has 1730 satelittes, plans to get from 12k - 42k
from the bbc today

Amazon's Project Kuiper plans to launch a constellation of 3,236 satellites,Telesat, a Canadian company, says it will put 298 satellites in orbi,The EU has plans for a mega-constellation,China has also announced plans for its own network
And then there's OneWeb, part-owned by the UK taxpayer, which, like Starlink, already has hardware in space. The firm launched 34 satellites this week, meaning there are now 288 of the 150kg objects in space.

Chinas plan is 12,992 satellites at 500-1,145 kilometers in altitude(*)
The thing is doubling the number of satellites in orbit doesnt double the chances of a collision it raises them higher, no idea how much, prolly 4x, maybe 8. Remember collisions have already happened and you want them to increase the chances of them happening exponentially

ATM According to Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which keeps a record of the operational satellites, there are 6,542 satellites, out of which 3,372 satellites are active and 3,170 satellites are inactive, as recorded by 1st January, 2021

(differs from the above number, none knows)
whats this gonna be like when theres 30k satellites, I tell you what will happen, there will be a collision every year.
Mate lets have some foresight and don't treat it like Y2K, global warming etc and just ignore it and say we will worry about that later

(*)at 1000km high you are talking about 100s of years to deorbit

 

[cheapchips]

Mate lets have some foresight and don't treat it like Y2K, global warming etc and just ignore it and say we will worry about that later

I wasn't suggesting a laissez-faire attitude, to be clear. It's a serious issue that should be treated as such. It's just not reason not to have significantly more stuff in orbit.

The idea that SpaceX and Amazon etc are plunging in without foresight and oversight is wrong. The idea that Kessler Syndrome is some inevitable and unavoidable consequence of large constellations is also wrong.

Discussion seems to just end up assuming that these companies aren't regulated, want to destroy their own interests and that our drive to do more in space doesn't evolve our ability to mitigate the issue somewhat.

 

[cheapchips]

Scott Manley posted a video on Astra's heroic launch failure.

 

[zed]

I wasn't suggesting a laissez-faire attitude, to be clear. It's a serious issue that should be treated as such. It just not reason not to have significantly more stuff in orbit.

And Im all for there being internet from space, but supplied by one entity, run by the UN or something, sure it can be for profit

The idea the SpaceX and Amazon etc are plunging in without foresight and oversight is wrong. The idea that Kessler Syndrome is some inevitable and unavoidable consequence of large constellations is also wrong.
Discussion seems to just end up assuming that these companies aren't regulated, want to destroy their own interests and that our our drive to do more in space doesn't evolve our ability to mitigate the issue somewhat.

So who is regulating the Chinese when they double the number of existing satellites in a few years?
I was gonna write 'want to destroy their own interests' just in case someone brought this up as this is an invalid point proven time & time again with 1000s of examples eg cigarette companies surely would not cause the premature deaths of the ppl that buy their products as it goes against their own self interests. hint - oh but they do. There is literally 1000s of real world examples disproving the 'going against their own self interests' point
Basically what these space companies are doing is negative externality they reap the rewards but society as a whole pays the cost

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise

SpaceX's Starlink satellites alone are involved in about 1,600 close encounters between two spacecraft every week, that's about 50 % of all such incidents,

and starlink has only just gotten going, what happens when they really ramp up and all the other players join the market?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89909-7

The rapid development of mega-constellations risks multiple tragedies of the commons,

Yes tragedy of the commons is a better way of what I was saying, we all pay the cost and the few reap the rewards


edit: that Astra launch is funny, they had the craft in the wrong gear at launch
edit #2: recent estimates of number of space junk so about a million pieces >= 1cm
https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers

Also I was reading with deorbiting this is very risky as you are then moving downwards passing through the travel paths of other satellites, so best to do this ASAP, i.e. have fuel and a rocket onboard to deorbit perhaps, I suppose you could trail out a long cord or something in an attempt to slow the craft down but then the larger you make your satellite the greater the chance of hitting something else

 

[zed]

Its lunch so I'll expand on what I wrote before "it’ll be pretty pisspoor internet,"

Dont believe me, Crunch the numbers yourself
each satellite can do 20Gbps (though this is best case, in real world it will be lower I assume)
whats a good internet speed?, I just tested mine ( 'Your Internet speed is 91Mbps', this is with WiFi as I unplugged the cable to unclutter the back of the PC but Im happy with this)
ok so we say 20Mbps to keep things easy, thus each satellite can handle 1000 average connections at once
how many satellites? 12000 - 42000 (sometime in the future), so max will be 42 million connection around the whole world, Absolutely the best case scenario, in reality satellites will be above oceans, sibera etc, the 20 Gbps will be lower in realworld tests (donno if clouds lessen it, trees)
= pisspoor internet, sure its better than nothing.

Sure if you live in a remote location like Siberia this is perfect, but continental USA (<2% of the globe, which if there was 42k satellites couldnt even do a million connections @ 20 mbps, I have read comments from ppl going shit can't wait, I can drop comcast etc but it just shows they have just fallen for the dream)
ATM theres only 90,000 ppl linked up to starlink (so they have decaent results ATM), once this starts climbing at a quicker rate than the corresponding number of satellites their experiences are just gonna decrease

Is it worthwhile risking space disaster so a million ppl can have internet?
I'm a big fan of Musk as I've said on these forums multiple times, but I cant get behind this at present (maybe if the satellites done 1Tbps then yes?, but at a measly 20gbps its not worth the risk)

 

[cheapchips]

So who is regulating the Chinese when they double the number of existing satellites in a few years?
I was gonna write 'want to destroy their own interests' just in case someone brought this up as this is an invalid point proven time & time again with 1000s of examples eg cigarette companies surely would not cause the premature deaths of the ppl that buy their products as it goes against their own self interests. hint

You picked an awful example. Tobacco companies don't care if customers are dying. New customers are born every minute. Especially in developing countries, where the rules are looser. *

Constellations have a direct profit impact from losing sats and a fairly direct one of stinking up their orbital plains. Things many of those 1000's of examples have in common is no immediate profit or practical reason to respect the commons.

Agree on China joining in being a potentially issue. There's not a strong enough framework for cooperation between nations.

I think your average speed per user is off for Starlink. Just look at your own usage over a period, assuming you don't have crazy usage. Also their sats have the potential to grow as Starship comes online.

Having said that, they're unlikely to offer service in cities. I don't know why that's an expectation.

* I keep having recruiters approach me from a large tobacco company. Even replying would feel like selling my (entirely metaphorical) soul.

 

[Davros]

 

[cheapchips]

It's a good video from Anton, as always. I'd pick at his use of the 2019 ESA/Starlink incident. As far as I'm aware that's not been repeated (SpaceX missed an email). Although I generally find it alarming that the system satellite operators use for notifications is email.

 

[cheapchips]

Anyone else watching Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space on Netflix? It's following the mission from crew selection, training, to launch. It's very much a human interest series, rather than technical. It's engaging when it telling those stories rather than Time's reporter chattering about the importance of the mission.

I'm quite nervous about the launch on Wed/Thu. Even more than usual, I don't want them to blow up and die.

The final episode(s?) next week will be from the three mission. Assuming success.

 

[cheapchips]

Not sure if I manage to stay up for the 20:03 ET launch. 1AM in the UK is a bit late for my bedtime, especially with the chance of delay or it moving a day.

 

[Karamazov]

 

[Davros]

I havnt seen that before I was expecting
"look at this on the radar"
"what is it"
"it's a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance, angle, or velocity of objects"

 

[iroboto]

We are go.

 

[hoom]

Now that is space tourism worthy of the name.
A price very few will be able to come anywhere near affording (same applies to the 5min hops) but they get 3 days in actual orbit.

 

[zed]

Sweet guys. yes this makes the virgiin/blue origin stunts look embarrassing, and the thing is the main guy who paid for this only paid like 3x what the person in BO paid, 3 days vs 3 minutes

Blue Origin is perhaps the biggest joke of a company ever, it started before space X they've spent billions and even till today they have not managed to put anything into orbit, during this time space X has done this over hundred times with various rocket designs!

And now BO even with this embarrassing track record has the nerve to sue Nasa cause they had the audacity to give the moon contract to space X instead of BO (not to mention BO was wanting more money than space x)

 

[Davros]

What case do BO think they have ?

 

[zed]

Nasa were obviously biased against bezos I mean just look at the facts

Proposal 1: Company has never been to orbit costing $5.9 billion to go to the moon
Proposal 2: Company has been to orbit > 100 times costing $2.9 billion to go to the moon

I could see there being a case if the roles were reversed i.e. the company without the proven track record offering to do it for half the money then maybe you would have to consider more fully which of the 2 bidsto go with. But as it stands now, jeff is just making himself look like an even greater tosser by arguing that Nasa choose wrongly

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/16/22623022/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-sue-nasa-lawsuit-hls-lunar-lander

BTW: looking at pictures of the dragon capsule interior, I can see it not being a comfortable 3 days, you've gotta be OK with shitting in front of ppl as well I expect