totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[HebaruSan]

7 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Thats 2000 Falcon 9 launches...

9 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

They’re going to launch dozens, maybe hundreds at a time. Eventually.

 

[Rakaydos]

15 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Wait, what?  How are they going to launch 12,000 satelites if they only do two at a time?  

They arnt. These first two are hitchhikers on a paid flight to orbit, to test that the satelites work before starting mass production.

if they dont, the redesign and send 2 more. If they do, Starlink will start chartering whole falcons to put 25 or 50 up at a time.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

If they put a lamp on each of 12000 sats, they will make a new star sky.
This is useful for constellation names renting.
There will be constellations of Cola Major (Big), Cola Minor (Small), KFC+345875 cluster, Burger Rex (King), Marvels (like Hyades), etc.
And the constellations can be changed depending on payments.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

If they put a lamp on each of 12000 sats, they will make a new star sky.
This is useful for constellation names renting.
There will be constellations of Cola Major (Big), Cola Minor (Small), KFC+345875 cluster, Burger Rex (King), Marvels (like Hyades), etc.
And the constellations can be changed depending on payments.

 

As it is, that many LEO birds with big, reflective solar panels are gonna be pretty obvious. 

[IncongruousGoat]

Just now, CatastrophicFailure said:

As it is, that many LEO birds with big, reflective solar panels are gonna be pretty obvious. 

Good. Gonna make it harder for people to deny that artificial satellites are real. Plus, they'll make the night sky more interesting. As it is, it's kind of static.

[Delay]

It will make spotting the ISS a lot more boring, though. Instead you constantly see some satellite fly past.

[sh1pman]

Can't help thinking that this whole 12,000 sat project is just a cover-up for some sort of secret doomsday weapon. Like mind-controlling every human on the planet with brain wave-generating satellites or something even crazier.

 

Hmm, I think Elon said something about zombie apocalypse...

 

Edited February 15, 2018 by sh1pman

[CatastrophicFailure]

44 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Good. Gonna make it harder for people to deny that artificial satellites are real. Plus, they'll make the night sky more interesting. As it is, it's kind of static.

My dude. Listen to yourself. You cold take any of “those people” right to the moon and rub their noses right in the gunpowder-smelling regolith and they’d still swear it was all smoke and mirrors. Right before they disappeared in a puff of logic. Or just asphyxiated. One of those.  

 

43 minutes ago, Delay said:

It will make spotting the ISS a lot more boring, though. Instead you constantly see some satellite fly past.

If you’re in a nice, dark place you can already look up at any time and constantly see some satellite or bit of space junk fly past. I don’t think any of these new smallsats will come anywhere near the ISS in terms of brightness. Once you’ve seen that baby you wonder how you ever didn’t. 

[KSK]

32 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Good. Gonna make it harder for people to deny that artificial satellites are real. Plus, they'll make the night sky more interesting. As it is, it's kind of static.

Slightly off-topic but it's also going to be a PITA for asteroid hunters though, at least for ground based observation programs. Space based ones are presumably using higher orbiting assets.

Spotting asteroids 101. Image a fixed piece of sky at regular intervals over time. Compare the images and pick out dots that move. If they move in a straightish line you might have spotted an asteroid. Or a planet. Or a comet. Or aliens (probably not these). This is pretty easy when you've got one moving object in your piece of sky but gets exponentially harder the more moving objects you have to contend with because you're basically trying to find the correct straight lines to draw over a cloud of points. Simple example:

o        o

o        o

Is that two asteroids moving along parallel trajectories or two asteroids moving along intersecting trajectories? LEO comsats are basically going to add a whole bunch of noise to the images. 

Then you get artefacts caused by relatively big bright objects moving relatively quickly (not sure if lens flare is a physically accurate analogy but visually I believe it's quite apt), which apparently can be a real pain to deal with too.

 

[sevenperforce]

The solution is simple. The Starlink satellites should just turn their lights off whenever anyone is looking at them.

[DAL59]

35 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

If you’re in a nice, dark place you can already look up at any time and constantly see some satellite or bit of space junk fly past. I don’t think any of these new smallsats will come anywhere near the ISS in terms of brightness. Once you’ve seen that baby you wonder how you ever didn’t. 

You can actually see it in day time if you squint.

12,000 satellites... that sounds bad for kessler sydrome.  

Actually, they are in very low orbit, so they would decay in a few months if they broke.

How long is their lifetime(before they run out of manuevering fuel and decay)?  Will they use ion engines like has been proposed for the ISS
?

[_Augustus_]

1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

Hmm, I think Elon said something about zombie apocalypse...

 

My boss thinks Elon's just a sleazy businessman out to make money. I seriously don't believe that, especially when the man says stuff like this.....

[sevenperforce]

From the FCC license: the two satellites will be inserted at 514 km but will move to a circular 1125-km orbit under their own propulsion. Inclination is 97.4 degrees.

[Rakaydos]

42 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

How long is their lifetime(before they run out of manuevering fuel and decay)?  Will they use ion engines like has been proposed for the ISS
?

Last thing I read said 5-6 year lifespan. That way they naturally get updated as technology improves.

[PB666]

45 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

You can actually see it in day time if you squint.

12,000 satellites... that sounds bad for kessler sydrome.  

Actually, they are in very low orbit, so they would decay in a few months if they broke.

How long is their lifetime(before they run out of manuevering fuel and decay)?  Will they use ion engines like has been proposed for the ISS
?

There a milliions of pieces of space junk most tiny working their way slowly to decay.

[CatastrophicFailure]

37 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

From the FCC license: the two satellites will be inserted at 514 km but will move to a circular 1125-km orbit under their own propulsion. Inclination is 97.4 degrees.

@DAL59 there’s your answer, re: Kessler syndrome. That high an orbit is still “low” but puts them well above the ISS and most other LEO things. Not likely to decay quickly, either. Presumably the sats carry enough fuel to de-orbit or otherwise “safe” themselves at EOL. And if there is a breakdown, before we all go screaming “Kessler syndrome” let us not forget that space is big. Like, really, really big. And it effectively gets bigger the higher you go. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

In other SpaceX news, HispaSat/TESS delayed. 

TESS NET April 16 now, I think. 

Edited February 15, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[sevenperforce]

51 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@DAL59 there’s your answer, re: Kessler syndrome. That high an orbit is still “low” but puts them well above the ISS and most other LEO things. Not likely to decay quickly, either. Presumably the sats carry enough fuel to de-orbit or otherwise “safe” themselves at EOL. And if there is a breakdown, before we all go screaming “Kessler syndrome” let us not forget that space is big. Like, really, really big. And it effectively gets bigger the higher you go. 

And, for anyone wondering, the round-trip speed-of-light lag at 1125 km is 7.5 milliseconds.

[sh1pman]

1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:

And, for anyone wondering, the round-trip speed-of-light lag at 1125 km is 7.5 milliseconds.

It takes two round trips. One is between you and the sat, the other is between the sat and the server you’re trying to reach. That’s 15 ms.

[sevenperforce]

17 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

It takes two round trips. One is between you and the sat, the other is between the sat and the server you’re trying to reach. That’s 15 ms.

Depends on what type of exchange you're dealing with. Server pings would be 15 ms, but streaming lag direct from the server to you is just 7.5 ms.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Can't help thinking that this whole 12,000 sat project is just a cover-up for some sort of secret doomsday weapon. Like mind-controlling every human on the planet with brain wave-generating satellites or something even crazier.

 

Hmm, I think Elon said something about zombie apocalypse...

 

Simpler its an counter to the end of net neutrality. Google and Facebook plans was more obvious. It was never about internet in the 3rd world, it was an way to write of the expenses.
Increasing the number of operational satellites by 8x as other noted more visible. 
You ask the other side to do their move then you launch an yellow submarine into orbit on the first BFR test. 
 

[StrandedonEarth]

15 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

It takes two round trips. One is between you and the sat, the other is between the sat and the server you’re trying to reach. That’s 15 ms.

That is an up and down trip, 7.5ms. The return trip is another 7.5ms, so yeah, 15ms return ping.

Which brings up the interesting question of how this sort of system works.How many ground station / backbone connections do the netsats (websats?) have? I assume the signal bounces from netsat to netsat until it finds a ground station (probably necessary in remote areas), but how many bounces would there be on average? And how much latency does a "bounce" have?

[insert_name]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

In other SpaceX news, HispaSat/TESS delayed. 

TESS NET April 16 now, I think. 

Orbital ATK has confirmed

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfPNkW0Foso/

[Kerbal01]

Reddit has gone too far

 

[DAL59]