Are the pictures in that second link from a diffusion model? They look flashy but they don't look like any spacecraft I recognize (and are weirdly asymmetric) and especially don't look like the Starlink satellites SpaceX has launched so far, which look more like [1].
The are larger, because each is going to hold significant compute power, all driven by solar and internal magno-derived, gravatic driven ancillary power systems.
The first satellite to fly W Band was in 2021. It supports much higher data rates but has atmospheric attenuation issues. This would be the first commercial use of it. It's possible SpaceX is using this to reduce downlink bottlenecks.
Excellent callout. Might be a component of Starshield. Hard to say until the RF is active in the wild or FCC filings are public (is it possible SpaceX is filing in Tonga to sidestep FCC public filings on the tech?). Would be wild if this system will be able to provide global airspace radar surveillance to the US DoD with high precision.
They have a lot of competition, maybe too much. From wikipedia, nominally active space companies besides SpaceX include:
> Arianespace, Astra, Axiom Space, Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin, Equatorial Space Systems, Firefly Aerospace, Galactic Energy, i-Space, Northrop Grumman, Redwire, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, United Launch Alliance, Virgin Galactic
Most of these have accomplished little and are destined to be forgotten (or never known by most people in the first place.) If SpaceX had fewer competitors, maybe engineer resources wouldn't be spread so thin and some of their competitors could actually compete in a meaningful sense.
But it's not just a problem of resources. Some of these companies have backers with deep pockets, and had every opportunity to accomplish what SpaceX has. Arianespace is backed by the French government; they've been in business for 20 years longer than SpaceX. They've built and flown hundreds of rockets. With that 20 year head start, extensive experience and backing of a powerful government, have they innovated? Nope. Ariane 6, still not flying, won't be reusable. Ariane Next should be, but they only started development on that a few years ago (2019-2021-ish) If it doesn't get delayed, Ariane Next will be a Falcon 9 competitor 20 years too late. Arianespace are so far behind SpaceX it physically pains me as a francophile.
Or Blue Origin. They were founded by Jeff Bezos in America two years before SpaceX was founded. They're a private company operating in the US backed by a billionaire with insanely deep pockets, just like SpaceX. They hired and have been hiring tons of great engineers with proven track records in the space industry. So what have they accomplished? They've put nothing put into orbit, ever. Not a single orbital test let alone fulfilled contract. They won a contract to sell engines to ULA for Vulcan, and subsequently caused Vulcan to be delayed for many years by their failure to deliver those engines on time. They may actually end up killing ULA like this; Atlas V and Delta IV / Heavy are end of life.. ULA needs Vulcan to continue fulfilling new contracts.
And why is ULA on the precipice? How could Blue Origin's failure do this to ULA? ULA were founded a few years after SpaceX, but as a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed and inherited their technology and engineering talent from those companies. They're a darling of the American military-industrial complex, the favored launcher of the Pentagon's most advanced and expensive satellites. So why haven't they innovated? Instead of innovating, they've wasted their time and money building the same old rockets they inherited. Instead of developing their own new engines, they decided to buy engines from the likes of Russia(!!!) and Blue Origin. ULA had all the opportunity in the world but they squandered it because of poor leadership.
Why does SpaceX succeed where the others flounder and fail? It's not because SpaceX had more time, money, or experience; they have several competitors with all of those in spades. It's not because of the regulatory environment SpaceX operates in, because they share that with at least some of the others as well. It's because SpaceX has more visionary leadership. I know a lot of you hate Elon Musk so you will hate this conclusion, but I challenge you to explain it any other way. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin each could have done what SpaceX is doing, but didn't because they have ineffective leadership with no vision for the future. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin wanted to plod along selling antique rockets at the speed of government molasses so they got blindsided by the company that's actually trying.
The thing that struck me when I visited Starbase was the fact the people at SpaceX are very much the "move fast and break things" types, in a good way rather than the shitty hustler way. They were working on proving things with the least amount of investment possible and then iterating, the same way we build software. Part of engineering is failure, other space companies seem afraid of failure while SpaceX embraces it, no doubt that emboldens their engineers further to push where others would be happy to settle.
The culture seems very pedal to the metal but otherwise good, as in engineers are empowered to do engineering rather than bogged down in minutia. To me that is the recipe for success, attracting the good engineers and then letting them do engineering.
I never understand why people are so obsessed crying about Starlink and Kessler Syndrome when any rational thought about it instantly suggest that this is practically impossible to happen.
Do you also worry Supervolcano anytime anybody digs a hole?
If a 300kg satellite at a 300 mile orbit becomes 20,000 pieces, those are pretty darn small pieces. Objects in space regularly get hit by <1cm micro-meteoroids. They may become disabled but they don't shatter. And by being so small their mass/area ratio becomes really small and they deorbit within 90 minutes from that altitude.
5 of those 6 were with debris. There is >500K pieces of debris in orbit bigger than 1cm in size, many of those in unknown orbits Adding 30K satellites in known orbits where debris cannot stay in orbit and required by law to have disposal plans before launch will not meaningfully change those odds.
Iridium 33 was active and capable of avoidance maneuvers. Both orbits were known. Despite this, they collided. It is clearly possible for this to get fucked up, and with 30k satellites in a shell, adding thousands of pieces of debris to the mix is clearly a non-zero risk. The exact magnitude of that risk may be debatable, but its existence cannot be waved away.
The low orbit reduces the long-term impact of such a chain-reaction - we wouldn't be locked out of space for a thousand years - but it would still be a serious disaster.
In the real world, we've had six satellite crashes, including at least one with basically the perfect mitigatable scenario; active satellite capable of avoidance, known orbits, large easily trackable objects.
There have been several notable collisions in the last decade. I think a full blown Kessler scenario is unlikely but it will definitely be a problem for satellite operators. Let alone the impacts on terrestrial astronomy.
No, certainly not in LEO. Debris in LEO falls back to Earth in only a few years so even if a shooting war started and shattered every satellite in LEO into a mist of deadly orbital speed bullets, a few years after the war ends LEO would be clear again. All of the other effects of such a large-scale shooting war would be far more concerning to everybody on the ground, space debris would be the least of the concerns for any survivors.
Satellite paths are only predictable in the short term. Predicting satellite paths beyond about a week is not possible unless you're comfortable with huge amounts of uncertainty.
Newtonian physics says that ideal two-body problems are predictable to any point in the future. But ideal two-body problems exist nowhere in the universe, especially in near-earth orbit.
If you actually know about this stuff, i would be very interested to hear the reasoning behind a cubic kilometre being a generous keep-out zone (and cubic kilometres even being a sensible unit for a keep-out zone). Since this is HN, my guess is you don't, but i would love to be wrong for once.
I'm on HN because the links are interesting. If there are real SpaceX employees who know about this, let's hear from them. The huge majority of comments on this piece right now are from people who know nothing about the subject - the same as on every post.
You need a lot more than a cubic kilometer per satellite, because you need an entire orbit around the planet.
You can't have one row of satellites orbit at the equator, and another row orbit at 40 degrees north latitude. A row is already difficult, they catch up with each other quickly just due to random perturbations and elevation differences.
Instead, each wrap of your ball of yarn crosses over the others. Each row intersects most other rows.
I'm thinking 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption and tsunami
"Southern Cross Cable reported that the eruption may have broken the Tonga Cable System, which connects Tonga to Southern Cross's trans-Pacific cable in Fiji.[196] Southern Cross cited a fault in the international cable 37 km (23 mi) from Nukuʻalofa, and a further fault in a domestic cable 47 km (29 mi) from Nukuʻalofa.[197] New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern had earlier stated that an undersea cable serving Tonga was affected, probably due to power cuts, and authorities were urgently attempting to restore communications.[198] The chair of the Tonga Cable System, Samiuela Fonua, stated that repair crews would not be cleared to access the site of the faults before volcanic activity ceased at Hunga Tonga; with additional preparation time necessary for the repairs, internet services could be unavailable for over two weeks after the eruption."
"Tongasat is the licensed agent of the Kingdom of Tonga responsible for making and coordinating Tonga's satellite filings to the International Telecommunication Union and then licensing those satellite filings to international satellite operators for their commercial use, in effect a flag of convenience for space. Tonga was the sixth-largest claimant of orbital slots due to Tongasat's efforts.[1] In 2002, Tongasat launched the Esiafi 1 satellite; as of 2015, a satellite in its spot was still in operation."
Starlink named this constellation ESIAFI II.
Starlink provided free internet services to Tonga last year after a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.
Wow, an extra 30 thousand satellites on top of the already planned 42 thousand starlinks! Well, since we can’t be the spacefaring civilization we dreamed of and we’re stuck on this planet, we might as well fill up the sky with a million satellites so that we can’t leave earth.
Space is big. We would have to put tens of millions of satellites up there to have any impact on our ability to leave Earth and even then the collision risk would be low.
It's sort of like the asteroid belt. You picture this belt of rocks, but in reality the distance between the rocks is so vast that it would take days, weeks, or months to travel between them even with powerful rockets.
All these new-generation communication satellites are intentionally placed in low somewhat unstable orbits too. This is done for two reasons. One is to minimize latency. You want them as low as they can possibly be to minimize distance between them and the ground. The other reason is so they will naturally deorbit after a while (when they are long past their design life). So even if the ability to intentionally deorbit them at EOL fails they will still not stay up there forever.
They do have a negative impact on terrestrial astronomy though. Astronomers using ground based telescopes need to ignore satellite tracks or remove them with post-processing.
> Estimates predict that there could already be over 100 trillion pieces of old satellites orbiting the planet that are untracked. This presents a major risk to other satellites. Hundreds of collision avoidance maneuvers are performed by satellites each year to avoid clashes that would not only cause damage to operational satellites or even destroy them, to would also generate even more space junk.
I wasn't arguing that orbital debris didn't matter, but my understanding (which could be wrong) was that these very low orbit satellites are not major contributors because they're low and deorbit.
The issue with space debris from satellites is well known and thank you for raising your voice, but some people don’t like being told the scientific truth. There is also the issue with astronomical observations being affected.
I’m not against satellite constellations, just wishing for a way to have them more organized and for having stricter rules on cleanup and deorbit.
I guess that’s why my original comment got downvoted :-(
All global aviation is less than 3% of global CO2 emissions. Rocket launches are a very small fraction of aviation.
The vast bulk of manmade CO2 emission is from coal burning for electricity, construction, and fossil fuel powered ground transport. The rest is a long tail. Aviation is small.
It doesn't make sense to focus that much on the long tail yet when huge improvements in CO2 emissions can more easily be achieved by focusing on phasing out coal for power generation, oil for cars, etc. Closing just a few coal burning power plants has a lot more impact than trying to stop people from flying.
Yes, technologically, this is amazing. But I honestly think it's sickening that a company controlled by one man is allowed to send 30,000 pieces of junk into space.
The fact that the one man who controls it is a billionaire demagogue (yes, by now Musk is a political leader) with his own media company just makes it worse.
Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga. There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less. We managed a global cooperate min. tax rate of 12.5% we can manage to also tax billionaires down to billion. Stock can be converted to voting only, don't let them borrow against their stock etc. etc.
Sharing this in a forum full of "billionaires temporarily down on their luck" is bold and not likely to end well; yet, I agree with you and GP. Hacking should not be synonymous with runaway capitalism, siphoning human energy, and plundering the earth.
This is such a pretentious, bad faith line that you’ve heard from someone else and are repeating. Yeah I heard it in philosophy class freshman year too. You gloss over the possibility that maybe other people just aren’t as hateful and jealous as you and believe that capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system. That doesn’t equate to those people believing they will one day create that much value and profit for it. Maybe stop projecting your mindset on others.
> capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system
Then let's try it in a different way, "less hateful and jealous"...
What is the net benefit to society of one individual having a net worth approaching $220,000,000,000? Or of ten individuals having a net worth of $1,200,000,000,000?
Explain the "efficiencies" of that with respect to the economic system as a whole.
The 220 billion is equity in companies that are growing at a ~50% 5 year compound annual growth rate. That is about 10x faster than the broader economy. The average Tesla factory worker has >40% higher total compensation than a UAW worker.
If Musk stops using his wealth to grow the economy and sells his shares then he gets taxed. His sales of Tesla shares to buy twitter were taxed at California rates and he paid 10 billion in tax.
If the government could replicate that record of growth and efficient allocation of capital I would be the first one in line to say tax successful capital allocators, but in this case you'd be giving up 10x the economic growth. The US government is incredibly inefficient and poor at doing their job. Just reforming the health care system to be in line with other western countries would free up >1 trillion annually and it wouldn't hamstring the country's growth. You don't see huge threads about that twice a week though. I wonder why.
You can't create a Star Trek economy without advanced technology like replicators and AGI, not to mention space ships. This is how we get to that future, by letting people build the technology and profit from it. They are using the profits to build more technology. There is direct evidence of this, look at Starship, the most advanced rocket in the whole world and literally the only hope of humanity becoming a spacefaring species. It makes 0 profits itself and was built with the profits made by the evil rocket man.
Star Trek economy is for worlds without scarcity. Given we have scarcity, we allocate finite resources to things we want. If someone does something a lot of people want, they get more money.
Some people get money in other ways (e.g. working in government and being extremely lucky in the stock market) but that seems different.
By the way, there is always some form of scarcity even in a Star Trek world that can create stuff out of thin air. Do you want a house on that very scenic spot of the coast? There are only a handful of them. Hope that only two or three families like the place.
> It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less.
You are constantly told about "billionaires" as though they actually have billions. They don't. They have shareholdings, which if they all sold at today's share price would equate to billions. In reality that will never happen, because the price would instantly start dipping.
You can take away their value without taking their voting power. The billions stay in the company not with an individual which can then take out a loan based on that value.
To a degree. However, they're also able to take out loans for liquid funds at near zero or zero interest rates (because the banks want their business) secured against stock holdings.
Just because you don't have access to 100% of your net worth in liquid cash today doesn't mean it's not worth anything/as much.
the whole point of the law is to avoid people being able to take their base insticts out on others. your feelings about what is "too much" are irrelevant.
SpaceX is an American company. They are regulated by both the FCC and the FAA. Those regulators are effective -- otherwise the second launch attempt of Starship would have happened at least a month ago.
Hundreds of millions if not billions of people gain absolutely no benefit from this yet they have the common good(night view of the sky) polluted by an American billionaire so he can make more money. I hate it with passion - as much as Starlink is amazing from a technological point of view and the nerd inside me loves it, I don't think it should be allowed, full stop.
that's not true, the technological innovations of yesterday have brought more wealth, less poverty, and more overall benefit to the entirety of humanity than saying "i don't like these inventors who make new things that make life easier for everyone, lets kill them"
the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work. we know now through economics that this is nonsense, and more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
there is easily going to be plenty of benefit for the future of this, you're trying to view it through the lens of "how does this benefit me or some rando on another continent right now". and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit, but for some reason you've mistaken it as that.
>>hat's not true, the technological innovations of yesterday have brought more wealth, less poverty, and more overall benefit to the entirety of humanity than saying "i don't like these inventors who make new things that make life easier for everyone, lets kill them"
That's sounds like trickle down economics to me - it benefits people in rich countries so it's fine, eventually it will make everyone better, right? A person in a country with no Starlink offering now cannot take clear pictures of the night sky because an American billionare wants to make even more money, but it's fine because "overall benefit to humanity" might be there?
>>more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
I don't see how that applies here at all. I wouldn't have any problem with Starlink(or similar constellations) if they were limited in their impact only to countries they are offered in - but for obvious reasons that's not possible, they impact everyone on Earth equally even if not everyone on Earth can access the service.
>>and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit
Oh but I have an answer - but I don't think the benefits outweight the disadvantages.
If you want to entertain a thought exercise for a second - imagine if an American corporation decided to use technology to increase rainfall everywhere on earth, so that they can increase harvests in US. Only they get the profit from it, but it impacts everyone on Earth. Sure you could argue that it's great, there is more food, there are more jobs being created, surely everyone will benefit at some point, right? But if I live in a country that is impacted by it, then I really don't care about this argument - your benefit doesn't balance itself against the negatives for me.
the trickle down argument isn't really catching with me, if someone makes a new, helpful, invention, they can proliferate it across the population. how that happens isn't really important. you're also saying benefit might be there, but its definitely there, and people want it. that's why they buy it.
i think a better argument you made was that satellites in general act to interfere with astronomical work on earth. and i hadn't heard of this before (its not my realm) so i looked into it.
the number of satellites in 2022 was ~8k, and about half are active. so the number musk is putting up there is definitely record breaking, and poses new levels of problems. he admits the trouble it might cause to astronomers and is trying to work on solutions such as a paint coating as well as data-level techniques to mitigate the problems. there are also a regulatory body, the ITU, that's looking to limit the frequency/bandwidths of what's used in satellites to help astronomers. none of this is perfect, but its acknowledged and with more technological development will likely come better compromises.
even despite that, i think people gain more from having internet than viewing the stars. and for organizations that seriously study the stars the best way around this seems to be to collect multiple shots when these satellites move. for amateur astronomers in their back yard, its probably not that important but they can use the same techniques.
the rain example is an interesting thought experiment, i don't think most people would disagree that causing this kind of effect is a serious misuse of technology. and surely something like that would run into regulation or agreements? Of which it has. The groups trying to green the sahara receive compensation from the brazilian government to not green the entire sahara. why? because the minerals that blow across the atlantic, from the sahara, help fertilize the amazon rainforest. So there's functional examples of this kind of problem that have already been solved, I haven't lost faith in humanity over this.
question: Who was the Roman emperor who was shown an invention and had the inventor executed?
answer from andrew kirk:
"I think you are thinking of Vespasian. An inventor came to him with a way to transport columns to the Capitol at a low cost—that is, he offered a labor-saving device. Vespasian turned him down, saying, “How will I feed my people?”
It highlights that the point of government works was to create jobs and distribute money; efficiency was not a priority. Vespasian thought it would just throw people out of work and create civil unrest.
This may be the main reason the Roman Empire never industrialized; they had plenty of inventions, but they didn’t put them into practice except in rare cases. The emperor was more interested in being the ultimate patron than advancing the economy, which was not really a concept anyway. You get money by taxing conquered lands, not by increasing efficiency.
By the way, he rewarded the inventor—hint, hint, give out money, show gratitude, etc. to be the best and greatest patron. He didn’t kill him."
The following is an ancient Roman story that Romans told each other about Rome. It is doubtlessly fictional but reveals the perception Romans had about their own society:
A man invented a new kind of glass that wouldn't shatter. He brought a challace made of this glass to the emperor for a demonstration, and threw it to the ground. Instead of shattering, it merely bent. Then he hammered it back into shape. The emperor was very impressed and asked if he had told anybody else the secret to making this glass. The inventor said he had not. Then the emperor ordered him killed on the spot.
Pliny the Elder tells this story. He says he doesn't believe it actually happened, but that it was a popular story in Rome.
A government organization (I know, cringe) would be better, IMO. It's one thing for DirecTV to have 10 satellites providing TV and internet, and another to have a company with what will soon be exceeding 30 thousand. Why not make it a shared resource, like so many countries do with infrastructure projects?
The federal government is incapable of efficiently allocating resources at scale, it's just the reality. Take a look at the defense industry. I have a friend who worked for a 3 letter agency, left and joined a private contractor and was assigned to the same team and project again but at 2x the pay. In practice the actual cost to the government is likely 3x factoring in the profits the contractor makes. Government pay scales also make it so that it makes no sense to work for the government if you're in a high demand / high pay field. That means the government tends to get the bottom of the barrel talent & then they end up massively overpaying for "butts-in-seats" contractors who do the same exact job at a way higher cost.
That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches hopefully without putting too much of a damper on innovation and progress while also protecting lives.
> The federal government is incapable of efficiently allocating resources at scale, it's just the reality.
The US is the Land of Middlemen. Government are capable of doing so (see 'medical care in much of the rest of the world'). That doesn't specifically change that it is generally better for the "common good" that large infrastructure projects are often better in the hands of an entity that is not corporate profit-seeking at all costs.
> That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches
SpaceX is using Tonga as a 'flag of convenience' for these launches, likely because Tonga has a far more lax regulatory oversight system - it's certainly not because of SpaceX's heavy connection to the Pacific island nation.
> last year Starlink were there helping restore internet access after the volcano
No, they weren't. Musk, et al, always have no shortage of people willing to pat them on the back for promises of future potentiality.
"SpaceX plans to establish a gateway ground station on Fiji".
"Last month, CEO Elon Musk mentioned the possibility of supplying Tonga residents with Starlink, if needed. Once a ground station is established in the South Pacific region"
"There’s no word on how long it’ll take for the company to get the ground station up and running. But the other obstacle is delivering Starlink dishes to residents in Tonga."
"In the meantime, the country still has access to other satellite internet providers"
That's a little "reaching" for 'being on the ground helping restore internet access'.
Even if that WAS the case, trying to connect that as "so now it makes perfect sense for us to apply for orbit slots from Tonga for eight times the volume of current Starling satellites as we currently have in orbit".
The government had more than 60 years to do this themselves, and haven't. They had a decades head start and squandered it. If the government were so competent then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
If you think there is something wrong with the American government specifically, which doesn't effect enlightened progressive European governments, then I direct your attention to France and Arianespace's own failure to innovate.
The pollution of the night sky with tens of thousands of satellites to provide a paid service. I only mention paid in there because I do think if it was free then at least it could be explained as a common good - but this isn't it, it's the opposite of a common good - it takes a resource available for ALL humans on Earth to make money for an American billionaire.
>>If someone else did this would it be fine?
No it wouldn't, I would be equally upset at any other constellations like this.
You should focus your anger more on airplanes, they will benefit far fewer people (and spread global disease to the poor) and there are far more of them.
Planes are not as focused in their benefits and impact as Starlink is - people literally everywhere in every country of the world take flights, and the profits from these flights(usually) stay local. Starlink is affecting everyone in the world but only available to select countries and the profits are all flowing back to US.
People will object to what you're saying but IMO there's a core truth in it. One person in control of this many things is capital B Bad, no matter who they are. Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not, this level of centralized control feels like a time bomb. Compared to technology like GPS it feels like we're backsliding.
I suspect if he does enough fucking around he will end up doing some finding out. And he's doing a lot of the former and annoying nation state and union level entities.
Because those people can be held accountable for their actions. e.g. if the US military decided to decommission GPS tomorrow morning the democratically elected government would be able to force them to change track.
Moreover these institutions are set up to make it very difficult for one single person to make a unilateral decision. Which is a good thing.
This would work if governments were empowered on a granular level, but they aren't. If you've decided (Republican|Democrat)s are evil then you'll always vote for the same party, and there is no accountability.
> Which describes some voters but certainly not all. You'll notice power changes quite often in the US, clearly some voters are changing their minds.
But not on individual issues like this, unless they are extremely important to many voters, and highly party-aligned (e.g. abortion). You vote for one party or the other, each of which having 1000s of positions like this.
> In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?
The endpoint is not thinking that democracy as it stands can reign a lot of things in, unless they become the issue for an election. Not every issue can become the battleground of an election, but there are alternatives to fighting.
The more people have to all independently agree that something is the right thing to do, the harder a lone nutter has to work to get a nutty thing done in the face of common sense.
It's certainly no silver bullet - bad actors have historically taken charge of companies, industries, governments, even entire countries and carried out insane and/or malicious policies with terrible results; a process which is demonstrably ongoing in huge chunks of the world right now.
But having at least some checks and balances on power generally works out better than having none at all.
>The more people have to all independently agree that something is the right thing to do, the harder....
It is for anything to get done.
I mean come on... This is giving the world access to the internet. They have worked on "Cloaking" the devices to ensure they are not interfering with astronomy, have utilized materials that are sure to burn up in the atmosphere, have contributed code to NASA to be able to track these objects.
What happened to people that they are so cynical nowadays? Is it just me, or does everyone just hate everything nowadays? Any kind of technological advances/ Space fairing adventure is met with criticism like this.
To the OP's comment, "How can one man controls so much?" Because without that man, this wouldn't exist for another 10-15 years. Also, "Control" here is "We don't want our satellites used for offensive operations and WAR...." This is the exact kind of man i would like to be in control of such resources.
It all sounds great, doesn't it? Benevolent dictators are great right up until they aren't. Putin was super popular when he was first elected; he stabilised the Russian economy and made life hugely better for most. Then he made himself a little echo chamber of yes-men and eventually came to believe his own propaganda; look where we are now. Certainly he's getting something done, but it is no good thing. Might things have turned out differently if he didn't have completely uncontested control?
Britain's first-past-the-post voting system is designed to create strong governments that can get things done. They certainly got things done: after parting ways with their biggest trading partner, a decade of mismanagement by increasingly brazen kleptocrats has completely tanked the economy. Might things have turned out differently if extremists couldn't unilaterally make enormous changes to a population's way of life?
Meanwhile, well, Trump. Aren’t we glad the system checked him from turning the most hare-brained of his ideas into reality?
Perhaps this is unfair; examples from politics are like shooting fish in a barrel. Let's look at super intelligent businessmen.
Just recently, a maverick who thought he was smarter than everyone else built a super innovative submarine. Might that story have had a different outcome if he'd had some sanity checks from someone whose opinion he actually respected?
Another one founded a cryptocurrency exchange and a trading firm, and decided he was smarter than everyone else and so it was fine for him to just quietly make huge bets using other people's money. Might that have had a different outcome if he wasn't given unconditional access to a $65bn credit line with no oversight? He's still claiming he did nothing wrong and is an effective altruist to boot. It's for the courts now.
Musk himself hasn't the best track record here; just look at Twitter. Musk's other holdings have teams of people whose full time job is to interact with Musk, translating his proclamations into sensible things; with Twitter, however, we get to see the man unfiltered. It's quite a sight.
There’s risk/reward to consider here. Experiments are good; change is risk, and no change for the better can happen without risking change for the worse. But if your experiment is of globally significant scale with potentially global consequences, maybe running it by some people willing to honestly speak their mind first isn’t such a terrible plan?
The US government has literally unlimited money, like they can print as much as they want. They can just put up their own satellite network and use it to wage wars on the other side of the world. Why is it the responsibility of a private entity to enable death and destruction in a country on the other side of the world?
Side note: How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?
> [The US government] can just put up their own satellite network and use it to wage wars on the other side of the world. Why is it the responsibility of a private entity to enable death and destruction in a country on the other side of the world?
The US military doesn't build their own hardware, they contract that out to companies. If the US government were buying a very large number of satellites, they'd be buying it from a company like SpaceX.
> How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?
I think both of those labels are way too generalistic. "I think people should cap out at a billion dollars" isn't anti-capitalistic. It's anti unrestrained capitalism.
Similarly, "we should aid Ukraine in defending itself against an invasion" isn't "pro-war". It's accepting of reality, i.e. there is a war no matter your feelings on it. And letting an aggressor do whatever they want is likely to lead to more war.
You're abusing the Kuleshov effect to make a dishonest point. Even your own link says something very different than what you are claiming: "Elon Musk Acknowledges Withholding Satellite Service to Thwart Ukrainian Attack."
Ukraine has always had access to Starlink. Musk proactively offered it for free when competitors' infrastructure was bricked by the Russians and basic communications were disrupted. He only decided "whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not" when it came to military operations, and rightfully so-- SpaceX would have become a military target itself. He's allowed to not want to declare SpaceX an enemy combatant without being labelled a despot. Russia started with a cyberattack and eventually started physically shelling ground stations. Being on the receiving end of a Howitzer is bad for business.
In no universe would doing otherwise have made sense in any goddamn context. Having his shit wrecked too would not have helped anybody. What he did allowed him to play the Red Cross card of neutrality, so SpaceX could continue operating in the area unmolested.
Musk sucks, but at least vilify him for things he's actually done and not invent made-up narratives.
> Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not
That's entirely the result of Ukraine getting the service pro-bono and not signing any kind of contract with SpaceX. The US government has signed contracts with SpaceX and it's perfectly fine like that. All of the hemming and hawing about Starlink's somehow ability to go outside of US law is rather silly and not endorsed by reality.
the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis
the political parties in control are also holding hands with media companies, and have no regulation on their own actions either personal or public, they can trade whatever stocks they want and move onto whatever job with a conflicting interest that they want afterwards.
musk has nothing compared to politicians, and much more oversight than any of them because he's spending his own money. it didn't fall from the sky, he has it because he's successful. unlike the politicians who print as much money as they want and retire with $100m+ and zero accountability for all of their failed and inefficient projects
> the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis
Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?
Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.
And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.
yes i am comparing that, its a legitimate comparison given the context. and i don't know what "lifestyle expenses" you're referencing, these are companies we're talking about. afaik musk doesn't even own a house
and i'd love to know how much bezos could afford if you could provide that link, it sounds interesting. because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k. that adds to my original point that the government spends way more. any "power" a billionaire has is truly just a drop in massive bucket.
He was living in a $50M mansion at the time, mostly by himself. Flying back and forth between California and Texas almost daily, private.
That the world's second or third richest person "doesn't even own a house" is something that beggars belief, made for a good soundbite. I'm sure he doesn't. I'm sure Elon Holdings VIII Inc. or similar owns plenty of property. Just like he "did everything possible to anonymize his private jet, so it was doxxing him to show its location"... when in reality it is registered to a company with a SpaceX-related name, whose company office is at 1 Space Drive in a city in California, whose address, when you enter it into Google says "Businesses associated with this address: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company". Very anonymous indeed.
> because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k.
I don't want to diminish Tacoma - I lived there once, but it is a city of 62 square miles and I really struggle to fathom the grandiosity you envision. What would be impressive to you? Seattle? Austin? Phoenix? Chicago?
Presumably he wouldn't be broke, because being the landlord of all those structures would provide rather significant income, no?
I got the data a few years ago, just from the City of Tacoma's tax records and assessed property values.
lol fair enough, i took elon's word for it but i guess i shouldn't be surprised that he owns a house through subsidiaries. he's got to sleep somewhere.
and i think a city of a million would be impressive, i've lived in cities of 100k, 200k, ~6m, 30k, and 350k. even at a million, that's still only ~0.003% of the US population.
while the example makes for a nice way of measuring wealth-to-power, so kudos on that, realistically it makes for a bad investment. you'd get a lot in rent but you'd get crushed in repair fees, insurance, and property tax. plus if someone else really wants to buy that property (or they dislike whoever bought it), its probably cheaper for them to sponsor state-level politicians to raise property tax in some obscure way on only people who own 100+ properties. forcing you to dump everything at once, thereby decreasing prices in the area.
I think perhaps the fact that you refer to advanced satellites, some of the most advanced and scientifically interesting objects humans have ever produced, as "junk" maybe reveals some personal bias.
It sucks that propaganda is producing people who are anti-science and anti-progress. As they say "Rocket man bad".
This is an ignorant take; your thoughts are clouded by hate. 30k satellites are not "pieces of space junk". When they reach end-of-life they will deorbit and burn up. Just because you don't like the man that would own them doesn't change this.
You can look at it this way if you want. Or you can look at it as people in rural areas and undeveloped countries are no longer slaves to the single telecom company that is out there charging them an atrocious amount of money for horrible service.
Tonga is 100,000 people. They could have aimed to Tuvalu, close to Tonga and only 10,000 people. Or Niue, same area and less than 2,000. I'm not sure Niue is an ITU member though.
First of all, its not even remotely junk. These are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they will in almost all cases not be junk. Its standard regulation that all sats deorbit themselves at end of live.
And even in the very few cases where the sat fails Starlink sats are low enough orbit they will only be junk for a very small amount of time.
> Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga.
Completely irrelevant statistics. Why don't you compare it to the Vatican City? Or you the local lemonade stand? Or to Apple?
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Except of course the tons of regulation that Starlink and SpaceX in general have to agree to in order to be allowed to operate.
Before you are allowed to launch you need to actually tell the regulator where you are gone deploy, what your end of life policy is. Of course lots of regulation about spectrum and so on.
You're missing the whole point of the free market system. Musk didn't start a billionaire, he got there by founding companies that created a lot of value, then he reinvested and did it again. The system is somewhat self regulating in that regard and it makes me pretty happy to see him getting richer and richer when he's doing it by taking things others thought too hard and making them reality (online payments, then electric cars, now, most spectacularly decimating launch costs and increasing launch capacity to space.) Spacex is building the factory now that will make all sorts of things possible in space just by the sheer volume of gear they will be able to pump up there, it's going to be amazing, we may actually end up a multiplanet species because of this guy (or my hope is he figures out planets are probably stupid and goes for whatever the latest, most feasible version of o'neill cylinders ends up being.)
Please try to follow the rules of this site... Calling operational satellites "junk" is not conducive to any kind of intelligent discussion.
> a company controlled by one man is allowed
We live in a country that (thank God) still allows (for now at least) people to run their own businesses and create products to sell to people. It'll be a sad day if that were to ever change.
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Getting the ITU license through Tonga does not suddenly make all regulation in the US disappear. They'll still be covered by the FCC, just like any other operator in the US.
> In terms of communications capability, W band offers high data rate throughput when used at high altitudes and in space. (The 71–76 GHz / 81–86 GHz segment of the W band is allocated by the International Telecommunication Union to satellite services.) Because of increasing spectrum and orbit congestion at lower frequencies, W-band satellite allocations are of increasing interest to commercial satellite operators, although no commercial project has yet been implemented in these bands.
Certain frequencies in the band seem to be used for near-distance radar:
> However, W-band radar, a relative newcomer in maritime navigation and operating at 76-77GHz, provides the most impressive imagery and accuracy, which is becoming increasingly crucial in the ever more cluttered environs of offshore, nearshore, and inland waterways. It has a range of 500m and is resistant to adverse weather conditions.
I chuckled at this, because 6 GHz was until recently widely used by the satellite industry (C-band) for ground to spacecraft uplinks. They've had to vacate it as the spectrum has been re-allocated for terrestrial use (LTE-A, WiFi 6E, etc.). This is a great thing, too - 4-6 GHz is pretty much ideal for terrestrial use. C-band was wasted in space.
Ka-band (18-30 GHz) used to be the new frontier for satcom - it was what everyone was excited about the last time I worked in the industry (2014). The advances in mm-wave devices over the last decade are mind boggling.
This makes me sick to the gut. Every creature and person shares this space and as Illogical or logical this may sound, I don't my "share" of the sky and universe to be polluted. I refuse to allow a company to bombard me with radio frequencies most of which is probably going to be used for nonsensical you/tube/porn, movies etc. I don't want anyone to pollute/do anything to my share of the planet/universe without me having a say in it.
Near-earth space is not that big, especially when it contains 50,000 objects whizzing around at 25,000 km/hour. Starlink had to make 25,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in just 6 months [0] -- and that's just Starlink. If you're a satellite operator, collision avoidance is a full-time job. And the likelihood of collisions increases exponentially with the number of satellites.
And the rest of the world should act in accordance to your totally irrational feelings?
> my share of the planet/universe without me having a say in it
You have a say in it. If you are in the US its regulated. And in space it regulated by a treaty between the US and everybody else. This is no different any other regulation that happen in a democracy.
By way of comparison, there are currently about 8900 total active objects (read: working satellites) in orbit around Earth and 35700 pieces of debris [0] or as-yet-unidentified junk [1].
That's only stuff at least 10cm in diameter, which is about the smallest object that can be tracked. There are several orders of magnitude more objects smaller than that.
So this plan would more than quadruple the number of active satellites in orbit. Not quadruple Starlink's satellites, but quadruple the total number of all satellites in operation. Ruining our view of the night sky -- as bad a problem as that is -- is nothing compared to Kessler Syndrome [2]. But we'll probably have to learn that the hard way.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the future. While now the sky is largely empty with an occasional plane, in the future it will be filled with drones. It already happened with cars. A century ago the land was mostly quiet, now you usually have a loud and busy street somewhere in the vicinity. And in the farther future, it will be spaceships in the solar system (and maybe beyond).
A network of satellites this large, if used for planetary defense from ICBMs, could prevent the destruction of humanity. It wasn't particularly feasible until Falcon 9 came along, but now, the only question is why not? Getting humans to another planet before we all vaporize ourselves is a stated goal of SpaceX.
ICBM detection by radar and satellite is old technology, and an essential part of the MAD doctrine. You’re proposal would only make sense if all actors have access to their own.
Also net incoming energy flux due to anthropogenic climate change, this year, is 2W/m*2.
I let you do the maths (multiplie by earth surface) but think it’s close to 20’000 megaton eq TNT per day.
Regarding space junk, can't we laser them out of existence? Or use laser to ablate their surface and put them into reentry orbit? That, I suppose, requires a orbit based laser.
No but you can use ground lasers to push things higher to avoid a collision. I guess you could do the same thing from space with a big laser. But that not really viable. If you already going for a space base based solution why use a laser in the first place? There are better solutions for that.
Last night, I looked into the night sky from southern California (not like a super bright night sky or anything) and saw 3-4 satellites going by. That used to feel so rare and special. Now it's like seeing airplanes.
Do the numbers work? For Starlink to be viable it has to compete with terrestrial connectivity. So, once they have enough inter-satellite-capable satellites up, they can cover the oceans and remote areas where ground stations are impractical.
What kind of TAM does that add up to?
ISPs in the US rank very low in customer satisfaction, but is that enough to get people to use satellites to replace normal terrestrial links?
Starlink is not intended to replace terrestrial connectivity. It is intended to provide service to everyone on the planet that can not get terrestrial connectivity, and those areas that can never get terrestrial connections, like oceangoing vessels and airplanes.
But let's crunch some back of the envelope numbers.
SpaceX currently are allowed to launch 7500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. A Falcon 9 can fit 22 of them in one launch, requiring ~341 launches. The satellites have a planned lifetime of 5 years, meaning the entire constellation would have to be replaced in that time frame.
So costs then. Musk has given out $15 million as best case marginal cost for Falcon 9 back in 2020. But let's be conservative and say $25m per launch currently. That's $8525m in total for launches.
The satellites themselves are estimated to cost between $200-300k each for the original v1, but the v2 probably costs a bit more, so let's say $500k each. That adds up to $3750m for the satellites.
So the totals then is $12275m over the span of 5 years, or ~$2.5 billion yearly.
The subscription cost is currently $110, but it fluctuates depending on the capacity in an area, so let's just use $100 as a simple round number. Each subscriber would bring in $1200 a year in revenue, so that means SpaceX would need ~2.1 million subscribers to cover the cost of replacing their currently allowed 7500 Gen2 satellites. It doesn't include the SpaceX operated ground stations that connect to the rest of the internet, but they're probably a smaller part of their total costs. The user terminals are now being sold at a profit.
As of last month, SpaceX announced they had over 2 million subscribers, and reports from earlier this year indicated that they have passed the operational break even point for Starlink, which means my conservative numbers are much higher than the real numbers.
There's also a lot of countries where it's not available yet, and given that it's a global system, the marginal cost for connecting a new country is very low, only requiring ground stations to be built.
So to conclude, yes, the numbers add up and they're in a good spot right now. Once they get Starship operational the numbers should change dramatically though, since launch costs are the main cost right now, and Starship would reduce that significantly.
198 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadLonger article: https://ts2.space/en/spacex-plans-to-deploy-thousands-of-sat...
[1] - https://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Starlink-Sc...
https://web.archive.org/web/20231012142827/https://re.public...
https://connectivity.esa.int/news/first-wband-transmission-s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_band
https://www.space.com/spacex-starshield-satellite-internet-m...
https://www.spacex.com/starshield/
Edit: it might be worse for signal propagation through the atmosphere though...
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...
Probably a bit like 2.4 GHz vs 5GHz WiFi.
> Arianespace, Astra, Axiom Space, Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin, Equatorial Space Systems, Firefly Aerospace, Galactic Energy, i-Space, Northrop Grumman, Redwire, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, United Launch Alliance, Virgin Galactic
Most of these have accomplished little and are destined to be forgotten (or never known by most people in the first place.) If SpaceX had fewer competitors, maybe engineer resources wouldn't be spread so thin and some of their competitors could actually compete in a meaningful sense.
But it's not just a problem of resources. Some of these companies have backers with deep pockets, and had every opportunity to accomplish what SpaceX has. Arianespace is backed by the French government; they've been in business for 20 years longer than SpaceX. They've built and flown hundreds of rockets. With that 20 year head start, extensive experience and backing of a powerful government, have they innovated? Nope. Ariane 6, still not flying, won't be reusable. Ariane Next should be, but they only started development on that a few years ago (2019-2021-ish) If it doesn't get delayed, Ariane Next will be a Falcon 9 competitor 20 years too late. Arianespace are so far behind SpaceX it physically pains me as a francophile.
Or Blue Origin. They were founded by Jeff Bezos in America two years before SpaceX was founded. They're a private company operating in the US backed by a billionaire with insanely deep pockets, just like SpaceX. They hired and have been hiring tons of great engineers with proven track records in the space industry. So what have they accomplished? They've put nothing put into orbit, ever. Not a single orbital test let alone fulfilled contract. They won a contract to sell engines to ULA for Vulcan, and subsequently caused Vulcan to be delayed for many years by their failure to deliver those engines on time. They may actually end up killing ULA like this; Atlas V and Delta IV / Heavy are end of life.. ULA needs Vulcan to continue fulfilling new contracts.
And why is ULA on the precipice? How could Blue Origin's failure do this to ULA? ULA were founded a few years after SpaceX, but as a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed and inherited their technology and engineering talent from those companies. They're a darling of the American military-industrial complex, the favored launcher of the Pentagon's most advanced and expensive satellites. So why haven't they innovated? Instead of innovating, they've wasted their time and money building the same old rockets they inherited. Instead of developing their own new engines, they decided to buy engines from the likes of Russia(!!!) and Blue Origin. ULA had all the opportunity in the world but they squandered it because of poor leadership.
Why does SpaceX succeed where the others flounder and fail? It's not because SpaceX had more time, money, or experience; they have several competitors with all of those in spades. It's not because of the regulatory environment SpaceX operates in, because they share that with at least some of the others as well. It's because SpaceX has more visionary leadership. I know a lot of you hate Elon Musk so you will hate this conclusion, but I challenge you to explain it any other way. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin each could have done what SpaceX is doing, but didn't because they have ineffective leadership with no vision for the future. Arianespace, ULA and Blue Origin wanted to plod along selling antique rockets at the speed of government molasses so they got blindsided by the company that's actually trying.
The culture seems very pedal to the metal but otherwise good, as in engineers are empowered to do engineering rather than bogged down in minutia. To me that is the recipe for success, attracting the good engineers and then letting them do engineering.
Do you also worry Supervolcano anytime anybody digs a hole?
> Do you also worry Supervolcano anytime anybody digs a hole?
No. The risk is not remotely comparable.
Do you still wonder? Probably you could put a few million up there before collision is a worry.
Space debris and blocking observatories is a much larger problem.
... and then have them run at 17,000 miles per hour.
If a collision does happen 2 objects become 20,000 objects in an instance.
That smash "created at least 1,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm (4 in)".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision alone made two thousand cataloguable fragments to track on new paths we didn't get to pick.
SpaceX's existing constellation (also in such a self-cleaning orbit) made 1,300 maneuvers in six months to avoid debris from a satellite explosion a year earlier. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/10/starlink-satellites-are-do...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT#1985_test destroyed a satellite at 345 miles. Debris from it persisted until 2004.
The low orbit reduces the long-term impact of such a chain-reaction - we wouldn't be locked out of space for a thousand years - but it would still be a serious disaster.
Something still hit it.
Again, non-zero. You can argue it's low; you can't argue it's zero.
No, certainly not in LEO. Debris in LEO falls back to Earth in only a few years so even if a shooting war started and shattered every satellite in LEO into a mist of deadly orbital speed bullets, a few years after the war ends LEO would be clear again. All of the other effects of such a large-scale shooting war would be far more concerning to everybody on the ground, space debris would be the least of the concerns for any survivors.
A cubic kilometre keep out zone is pretty generous, we could probably put in trillions if needed.
The system of airplane management is 1000x more complex.
Newtonian physics says that ideal two-body problems are predictable to any point in the future. But ideal two-body problems exist nowhere in the universe, especially in near-earth orbit.
Source: I watched a Scott Manley video once
Why are you on HN if you truly believe this? To talk shit on HN?
HN is the exact opposite. I can also say with 100% certainty, tons of SpaceX/Tesla employees browse HN to take breaks.
You can't have one row of satellites orbit at the equator, and another row orbit at 40 degrees north latitude. A row is already difficult, they catch up with each other quickly just due to random perturbations and elevation differences.
Instead, each wrap of your ball of yarn crosses over the others. Each row intersects most other rows.
Why did SpaceX do this? What's significant about Tonga?
"Southern Cross Cable reported that the eruption may have broken the Tonga Cable System, which connects Tonga to Southern Cross's trans-Pacific cable in Fiji.[196] Southern Cross cited a fault in the international cable 37 km (23 mi) from Nukuʻalofa, and a further fault in a domestic cable 47 km (29 mi) from Nukuʻalofa.[197] New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern had earlier stated that an undersea cable serving Tonga was affected, probably due to power cuts, and authorities were urgently attempting to restore communications.[198] The chair of the Tonga Cable System, Samiuela Fonua, stated that repair crews would not be cleared to access the site of the faults before volcanic activity ceased at Hunga Tonga; with additional preparation time necessary for the repairs, internet services could be unavailable for over two weeks after the eruption."
"Tongasat is the licensed agent of the Kingdom of Tonga responsible for making and coordinating Tonga's satellite filings to the International Telecommunication Union and then licensing those satellite filings to international satellite operators for their commercial use, in effect a flag of convenience for space. Tonga was the sixth-largest claimant of orbital slots due to Tongasat's efforts.[1] In 2002, Tongasat launched the Esiafi 1 satellite; as of 2015, a satellite in its spot was still in operation."
Starlink named this constellation ESIAFI II.
Starlink provided free internet services to Tonga last year after a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/musks-starlink-co...
It's sort of like the asteroid belt. You picture this belt of rocks, but in reality the distance between the rocks is so vast that it would take days, weeks, or months to travel between them even with powerful rockets.
All these new-generation communication satellites are intentionally placed in low somewhat unstable orbits too. This is done for two reasons. One is to minimize latency. You want them as low as they can possibly be to minimize distance between them and the ground. The other reason is so they will naturally deorbit after a while (when they are long past their design life). So even if the ability to intentionally deorbit them at EOL fails they will still not stay up there forever.
They do have a negative impact on terrestrial astronomy though. Astronomers using ground based telescopes need to ignore satellite tracks or remove them with post-processing.
> https://www.space.com/nasa-scientists-space-junk-treaty
Your dismissive attitude towards space debris is the polar opposite of leading scientists.
NASA and other space agencies have been lobbying to make politicians understand the immediate and long term dangers of orbital debris.
I’m not against satellite constellations, just wishing for a way to have them more organized and for having stricter rules on cleanup and deorbit.
I guess that’s why my original comment got downvoted :-(
The vast bulk of manmade CO2 emission is from coal burning for electricity, construction, and fossil fuel powered ground transport. The rest is a long tail. Aviation is small.
It doesn't make sense to focus that much on the long tail yet when huge improvements in CO2 emissions can more easily be achieved by focusing on phasing out coal for power generation, oil for cars, etc. Closing just a few coal burning power plants has a lot more impact than trying to stop people from flying.
The fact that the one man who controls it is a billionaire demagogue (yes, by now Musk is a political leader) with his own media company just makes it worse.
Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga. There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Also known as a lifetime.
Star Trek economy for all!
This is such a pretentious, bad faith line that you’ve heard from someone else and are repeating. Yeah I heard it in philosophy class freshman year too. You gloss over the possibility that maybe other people just aren’t as hateful and jealous as you and believe that capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system. That doesn’t equate to those people believing they will one day create that much value and profit for it. Maybe stop projecting your mindset on others.
This comes across as a saddeningly extreme armchair psychological evaluation and extrapolation to just attack my entire character.
Then let's try it in a different way, "less hateful and jealous"...
What is the net benefit to society of one individual having a net worth approaching $220,000,000,000? Or of ten individuals having a net worth of $1,200,000,000,000?
Explain the "efficiencies" of that with respect to the economic system as a whole.
If Musk stops using his wealth to grow the economy and sells his shares then he gets taxed. His sales of Tesla shares to buy twitter were taxed at California rates and he paid 10 billion in tax.
If the government could replicate that record of growth and efficient allocation of capital I would be the first one in line to say tax successful capital allocators, but in this case you'd be giving up 10x the economic growth. The US government is incredibly inefficient and poor at doing their job. Just reforming the health care system to be in line with other western countries would free up >1 trillion annually and it wouldn't hamstring the country's growth. You don't see huge threads about that twice a week though. I wonder why.
Some people get money in other ways (e.g. working in government and being extremely lucky in the stock market) but that seems different.
People who create the most value are the ones paid the least.
You are constantly told about "billionaires" as though they actually have billions. They don't. They have shareholdings, which if they all sold at today's share price would equate to billions. In reality that will never happen, because the price would instantly start dipping.
Just because you don't have access to 100% of your net worth in liquid cash today doesn't mean it's not worth anything/as much.
We should tax billionaires to pay for everything
But they don't have billions - they have equity!
Well they can take out loans!
So... what're we going to tax?
the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work. we know now through economics that this is nonsense, and more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
there is easily going to be plenty of benefit for the future of this, you're trying to view it through the lens of "how does this benefit me or some rando on another continent right now". and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit, but for some reason you've mistaken it as that.
That's sounds like trickle down economics to me - it benefits people in rich countries so it's fine, eventually it will make everyone better, right? A person in a country with no Starlink offering now cannot take clear pictures of the night sky because an American billionare wants to make even more money, but it's fine because "overall benefit to humanity" might be there?
>>more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.
I don't see how that applies here at all. I wouldn't have any problem with Starlink(or similar constellations) if they were limited in their impact only to countries they are offered in - but for obvious reasons that's not possible, they impact everyone on Earth equally even if not everyone on Earth can access the service.
>>and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit
Oh but I have an answer - but I don't think the benefits outweight the disadvantages.
If you want to entertain a thought exercise for a second - imagine if an American corporation decided to use technology to increase rainfall everywhere on earth, so that they can increase harvests in US. Only they get the profit from it, but it impacts everyone on Earth. Sure you could argue that it's great, there is more food, there are more jobs being created, surely everyone will benefit at some point, right? But if I live in a country that is impacted by it, then I really don't care about this argument - your benefit doesn't balance itself against the negatives for me.
i think a better argument you made was that satellites in general act to interfere with astronomical work on earth. and i hadn't heard of this before (its not my realm) so i looked into it.
the number of satellites in 2022 was ~8k, and about half are active. so the number musk is putting up there is definitely record breaking, and poses new levels of problems. he admits the trouble it might cause to astronomers and is trying to work on solutions such as a paint coating as well as data-level techniques to mitigate the problems. there are also a regulatory body, the ITU, that's looking to limit the frequency/bandwidths of what's used in satellites to help astronomers. none of this is perfect, but its acknowledged and with more technological development will likely come better compromises.
links on where i got this info:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223962-spacexs-starlin...
https://earthsky.org/space/how-satellites-harm-astronomy-wha...
even despite that, i think people gain more from having internet than viewing the stars. and for organizations that seriously study the stars the best way around this seems to be to collect multiple shots when these satellites move. for amateur astronomers in their back yard, its probably not that important but they can use the same techniques.
the rain example is an interesting thought experiment, i don't think most people would disagree that causing this kind of effect is a serious misuse of technology. and surely something like that would run into regulation or agreements? Of which it has. The groups trying to green the sahara receive compensation from the brazilian government to not green the entire sahara. why? because the minerals that blow across the atlantic, from the sahara, help fertilize the amazon rainforest. So there's functional examples of this kind of problem that have already been solved, I haven't lost faith in humanity over this.
This is news to me. Could you give at least an example?
https://www.quora.com/Who-was-the-Roman-emperor-who-was-show...
question: Who was the Roman emperor who was shown an invention and had the inventor executed?
answer from andrew kirk:
"I think you are thinking of Vespasian. An inventor came to him with a way to transport columns to the Capitol at a low cost—that is, he offered a labor-saving device. Vespasian turned him down, saying, “How will I feed my people?”
It highlights that the point of government works was to create jobs and distribute money; efficiency was not a priority. Vespasian thought it would just throw people out of work and create civil unrest.
This may be the main reason the Roman Empire never industrialized; they had plenty of inventions, but they didn’t put them into practice except in rare cases. The emperor was more interested in being the ultimate patron than advancing the economy, which was not really a concept anyway. You get money by taxing conquered lands, not by increasing efficiency.
By the way, he rewarded the inventor—hint, hint, give out money, show gratitude, etc. to be the best and greatest patron. He didn’t kill him."
so i was wrong about the killing part afaik
A man invented a new kind of glass that wouldn't shatter. He brought a challace made of this glass to the emperor for a demonstration, and threw it to the ground. Instead of shattering, it merely bent. Then he hammered it back into shape. The emperor was very impressed and asked if he had told anybody else the secret to making this glass. The inventor said he had not. Then the emperor ordered him killed on the spot.
Pliny the Elder tells this story. He says he doesn't believe it actually happened, but that it was a popular story in Rome.
10 DirectTV satellites pose a higher risk of causing Kessler than 30,000 satellites at a 300 mile orbit.
That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches hopefully without putting too much of a damper on innovation and progress while also protecting lives.
The US is the Land of Middlemen. Government are capable of doing so (see 'medical care in much of the rest of the world'). That doesn't specifically change that it is generally better for the "common good" that large infrastructure projects are often better in the hands of an entity that is not corporate profit-seeking at all costs.
> That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches
SpaceX is using Tonga as a 'flag of convenience' for these launches, likely because Tonga has a far more lax regulatory oversight system - it's certainly not because of SpaceX's heavy connection to the Pacific island nation.
They do have some connection: last year Starlink were there helping restore internet access after the volcano[0].
[0] https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/138575/spacexs-starlink-work...
No, they weren't. Musk, et al, always have no shortage of people willing to pat them on the back for promises of future potentiality.
"SpaceX plans to establish a gateway ground station on Fiji".
"Last month, CEO Elon Musk mentioned the possibility of supplying Tonga residents with Starlink, if needed. Once a ground station is established in the South Pacific region"
"There’s no word on how long it’ll take for the company to get the ground station up and running. But the other obstacle is delivering Starlink dishes to residents in Tonga."
"In the meantime, the country still has access to other satellite internet providers"
That's a little "reaching" for 'being on the ground helping restore internet access'.
Even if that WAS the case, trying to connect that as "so now it makes perfect sense for us to apply for orbit slots from Tonga for eight times the volume of current Starling satellites as we currently have in orbit".
I know this because I was part of an org that sent equipment to Fiji schools
If you think there is something wrong with the American government specifically, which doesn't effect enlightened progressive European governments, then I direct your attention to France and Arianespace's own failure to innovate.
>>If someone else did this would it be fine?
No it wouldn't, I would be equally upset at any other constellations like this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-st...
Moreover these institutions are set up to make it very difficult for one single person to make a unilateral decision. Which is a good thing.
Which describes some voters but certainly not all. You'll notice power changes quite often in the US, clearly some voters are changing their minds.
In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?
But not on individual issues like this, unless they are extremely important to many voters, and highly party-aligned (e.g. abortion). You vote for one party or the other, each of which having 1000s of positions like this.
> In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?
The endpoint is not thinking that democracy as it stands can reign a lot of things in, unless they become the issue for an election. Not every issue can become the battleground of an election, but there are alternatives to fighting.
It's certainly no silver bullet - bad actors have historically taken charge of companies, industries, governments, even entire countries and carried out insane and/or malicious policies with terrible results; a process which is demonstrably ongoing in huge chunks of the world right now.
But having at least some checks and balances on power generally works out better than having none at all.
It is for anything to get done.
I mean come on... This is giving the world access to the internet. They have worked on "Cloaking" the devices to ensure they are not interfering with astronomy, have utilized materials that are sure to burn up in the atmosphere, have contributed code to NASA to be able to track these objects.
What happened to people that they are so cynical nowadays? Is it just me, or does everyone just hate everything nowadays? Any kind of technological advances/ Space fairing adventure is met with criticism like this.
To the OP's comment, "How can one man controls so much?" Because without that man, this wouldn't exist for another 10-15 years. Also, "Control" here is "We don't want our satellites used for offensive operations and WAR...." This is the exact kind of man i would like to be in control of such resources.
Britain's first-past-the-post voting system is designed to create strong governments that can get things done. They certainly got things done: after parting ways with their biggest trading partner, a decade of mismanagement by increasingly brazen kleptocrats has completely tanked the economy. Might things have turned out differently if extremists couldn't unilaterally make enormous changes to a population's way of life?
Meanwhile, well, Trump. Aren’t we glad the system checked him from turning the most hare-brained of his ideas into reality?
Perhaps this is unfair; examples from politics are like shooting fish in a barrel. Let's look at super intelligent businessmen.
Just recently, a maverick who thought he was smarter than everyone else built a super innovative submarine. Might that story have had a different outcome if he'd had some sanity checks from someone whose opinion he actually respected?
Another one founded a cryptocurrency exchange and a trading firm, and decided he was smarter than everyone else and so it was fine for him to just quietly make huge bets using other people's money. Might that have had a different outcome if he wasn't given unconditional access to a $65bn credit line with no oversight? He's still claiming he did nothing wrong and is an effective altruist to boot. It's for the courts now.
Musk himself hasn't the best track record here; just look at Twitter. Musk's other holdings have teams of people whose full time job is to interact with Musk, translating his proclamations into sensible things; with Twitter, however, we get to see the man unfiltered. It's quite a sight.
There’s risk/reward to consider here. Experiments are good; change is risk, and no change for the better can happen without risking change for the worse. But if your experiment is of globally significant scale with potentially global consequences, maybe running it by some people willing to honestly speak their mind first isn’t such a terrible plan?
Someone posted this on Tumblr about a person who's a notorious micromanager.
It doesn't make any sense to me but it does to people who want to believe.
See this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859707 comment denying something that I know about first hand.
Side note: How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?
The US military doesn't build their own hardware, they contract that out to companies. If the US government were buying a very large number of satellites, they'd be buying it from a company like SpaceX.
(Spoilers: they are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities)
I think both of those labels are way too generalistic. "I think people should cap out at a billion dollars" isn't anti-capitalistic. It's anti unrestrained capitalism.
Similarly, "we should aid Ukraine in defending itself against an invasion" isn't "pro-war". It's accepting of reality, i.e. there is a war no matter your feelings on it. And letting an aggressor do whatever they want is likely to lead to more war.
Ukraine has always had access to Starlink. Musk proactively offered it for free when competitors' infrastructure was bricked by the Russians and basic communications were disrupted. He only decided "whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not" when it came to military operations, and rightfully so-- SpaceX would have become a military target itself. He's allowed to not want to declare SpaceX an enemy combatant without being labelled a despot. Russia started with a cyberattack and eventually started physically shelling ground stations. Being on the receiving end of a Howitzer is bad for business.
In no universe would doing otherwise have made sense in any goddamn context. Having his shit wrecked too would not have helped anybody. What he did allowed him to play the Red Cross card of neutrality, so SpaceX could continue operating in the area unmolested.
Musk sucks, but at least vilify him for things he's actually done and not invent made-up narratives.
That's entirely the result of Ukraine getting the service pro-bono and not signing any kind of contract with SpaceX. The US government has signed contracts with SpaceX and it's perfectly fine like that. All of the hemming and hawing about Starlink's somehow ability to go outside of US law is rather silly and not endorsed by reality.
30,000 pieces of junk to you, a life changing technology for lots of people all over the world. Check your privilege.
the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis
the political parties in control are also holding hands with media companies, and have no regulation on their own actions either personal or public, they can trade whatever stocks they want and move onto whatever job with a conflicting interest that they want afterwards.
musk has nothing compared to politicians, and much more oversight than any of them because he's spending his own money. it didn't fall from the sky, he has it because he's successful. unlike the politicians who print as much money as they want and retire with $100m+ and zero accountability for all of their failed and inefficient projects
Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?
Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.
And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.
and i'd love to know how much bezos could afford if you could provide that link, it sounds interesting. because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k. that adds to my original point that the government spends way more. any "power" a billionaire has is truly just a drop in massive bucket.
This trope is old, and was never really accurate.
He was living in a $50M mansion at the time, mostly by himself. Flying back and forth between California and Texas almost daily, private.
That the world's second or third richest person "doesn't even own a house" is something that beggars belief, made for a good soundbite. I'm sure he doesn't. I'm sure Elon Holdings VIII Inc. or similar owns plenty of property. Just like he "did everything possible to anonymize his private jet, so it was doxxing him to show its location"... when in reality it is registered to a company with a SpaceX-related name, whose company office is at 1 Space Drive in a city in California, whose address, when you enter it into Google says "Businesses associated with this address: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company". Very anonymous indeed.
> because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k.
I don't want to diminish Tacoma - I lived there once, but it is a city of 62 square miles and I really struggle to fathom the grandiosity you envision. What would be impressive to you? Seattle? Austin? Phoenix? Chicago?
Presumably he wouldn't be broke, because being the landlord of all those structures would provide rather significant income, no?
I got the data a few years ago, just from the City of Tacoma's tax records and assessed property values.
and i think a city of a million would be impressive, i've lived in cities of 100k, 200k, ~6m, 30k, and 350k. even at a million, that's still only ~0.003% of the US population.
while the example makes for a nice way of measuring wealth-to-power, so kudos on that, realistically it makes for a bad investment. you'd get a lot in rent but you'd get crushed in repair fees, insurance, and property tax. plus if someone else really wants to buy that property (or they dislike whoever bought it), its probably cheaper for them to sponsor state-level politicians to raise property tax in some obscure way on only people who own 100+ properties. forcing you to dump everything at once, thereby decreasing prices in the area.
It sucks that propaganda is producing people who are anti-science and anti-progress. As they say "Rocket man bad".
Think of starlink as a far smaller network of planes that are a bit higher but are also slowly falling down to earth.
First of all, its not even remotely junk. These are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they will in almost all cases not be junk. Its standard regulation that all sats deorbit themselves at end of live.
And even in the very few cases where the sat fails Starlink sats are low enough orbit they will only be junk for a very small amount of time.
> Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga.
Completely irrelevant statistics. Why don't you compare it to the Vatican City? Or you the local lemonade stand? Or to Apple?
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Except of course the tons of regulation that Starlink and SpaceX in general have to agree to in order to be allowed to operate.
Before you are allowed to launch you need to actually tell the regulator where you are gone deploy, what your end of life policy is. Of course lots of regulation about spectrum and so on.
Please try to follow the rules of this site... Calling operational satellites "junk" is not conducive to any kind of intelligent discussion.
> a company controlled by one man is allowed
We live in a country that (thank God) still allows (for now at least) people to run their own businesses and create products to sell to people. It'll be a sad day if that were to ever change.
> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.
Getting the ITU license through Tonga does not suddenly make all regulation in the US disappear. They'll still be covered by the FCC, just like any other operator in the US.
> In terms of communications capability, W band offers high data rate throughput when used at high altitudes and in space. (The 71–76 GHz / 81–86 GHz segment of the W band is allocated by the International Telecommunication Union to satellite services.) Because of increasing spectrum and orbit congestion at lower frequencies, W-band satellite allocations are of increasing interest to commercial satellite operators, although no commercial project has yet been implemented in these bands.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_band
Certain frequencies in the band seem to be used for near-distance radar:
> However, W-band radar, a relative newcomer in maritime navigation and operating at 76-77GHz, provides the most impressive imagery and accuracy, which is becoming increasingly crucial in the ever more cluttered environs of offshore, nearshore, and inland waterways. It has a range of 500m and is resistant to adverse weather conditions.
* https://www.ship-technology.com/comment/why-w-band-radar-is-...
Automotive applications too:
* https://www.mtu.edu/mtri/research/project-areas/transportati...
Ka-band (18-30 GHz) used to be the new frontier for satcom - it was what everyone was excited about the last time I worked in the industry (2014). The advances in mm-wave devices over the last decade are mind boggling.
[0] https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-conjunction-increas...
> my share of the planet/universe without me having a say in it
You have a say in it. If you are in the US its regulated. And in space it regulated by a treaty between the US and everybody else. This is no different any other regulation that happen in a democracy.
I'd recommend reading more on the subject from non-emotionally charged sources.
That's only stuff at least 10cm in diameter, which is about the smallest object that can be tracked. There are several orders of magnitude more objects smaller than that.
So this plan would more than quadruple the number of active satellites in orbit. Not quadruple Starlink's satellites, but quadruple the total number of all satellites in operation. Ruining our view of the night sky -- as bad a problem as that is -- is nothing compared to Kessler Syndrome [2]. But we'll probably have to learn that the hard way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris
[1] https://www.space-track.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Also net incoming energy flux due to anthropogenic climate change, this year, is 2W/m*2.
I let you do the maths (multiplie by earth surface) but think it’s close to 20’000 megaton eq TNT per day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
What kind of TAM does that add up to?
ISPs in the US rank very low in customer satisfaction, but is that enough to get people to use satellites to replace normal terrestrial links?
Starlink is not intended to replace terrestrial connectivity. It is intended to provide service to everyone on the planet that can not get terrestrial connectivity, and those areas that can never get terrestrial connections, like oceangoing vessels and airplanes.
But let's crunch some back of the envelope numbers. SpaceX currently are allowed to launch 7500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. A Falcon 9 can fit 22 of them in one launch, requiring ~341 launches. The satellites have a planned lifetime of 5 years, meaning the entire constellation would have to be replaced in that time frame. So costs then. Musk has given out $15 million as best case marginal cost for Falcon 9 back in 2020. But let's be conservative and say $25m per launch currently. That's $8525m in total for launches. The satellites themselves are estimated to cost between $200-300k each for the original v1, but the v2 probably costs a bit more, so let's say $500k each. That adds up to $3750m for the satellites.
So the totals then is $12275m over the span of 5 years, or ~$2.5 billion yearly. The subscription cost is currently $110, but it fluctuates depending on the capacity in an area, so let's just use $100 as a simple round number. Each subscriber would bring in $1200 a year in revenue, so that means SpaceX would need ~2.1 million subscribers to cover the cost of replacing their currently allowed 7500 Gen2 satellites. It doesn't include the SpaceX operated ground stations that connect to the rest of the internet, but they're probably a smaller part of their total costs. The user terminals are now being sold at a profit.
As of last month, SpaceX announced they had over 2 million subscribers, and reports from earlier this year indicated that they have passed the operational break even point for Starlink, which means my conservative numbers are much higher than the real numbers. There's also a lot of countries where it's not available yet, and given that it's a global system, the marginal cost for connecting a new country is very low, only requiring ground stations to be built.
So to conclude, yes, the numbers add up and they're in a good spot right now. Once they get Starship operational the numbers should change dramatically though, since launch costs are the main cost right now, and Starship would reduce that significantly.