Starlink Thread (split from SpaceX)

[Nothalogh]

11 hours ago, G'th said:

As noted earlier Kessler Syndrome is a vastly overblown non-issue.

It's the "5G" of spaceflight forums

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, it got me wondering why they applied for the 30,000 more sats... is there a solution using low power omni antennas for sat to sat relay vs lasers that is easier, or are they for added capability, or are they for replacements, etc.

Think they have to use laser or narrow microwave signals. You would need so send a lot of data and don't want the satellites to interfere with each others. 
With 30.000 satellites they would need lots of hubs even if they talk to lots of satellites and these hubs has to talk to each others hubs 

[tater]

14 hours ago, G'th said:

Topics like these make me wish Gravity was about literally anything else. 

As noted earlier Kessler Syndrome is a vastly overblown non-issue. Even in the most catastrophic scenario, any debris cloud would be -easily- avoidable by any given rocket launch, especially if its in a relatively low orbit like Starlink would be. 

And even in the most Gravity-like sci-fi disaster film nonsense scenario, at worst Earth can't launch rockets for a couple years while the debris cloud de-orbits naturally. 

In other words, we handle it by not handling it. 

Yeah, but it's the only Starlink thread I found by itself.

An actual concern about Starlink would be the impact on the night sky (visual astronomy), and all the time (radio).

[tater]

 

Maybe @kerbiloid can change the thread title to be more generically Starlink (or "Starlink concerns") without the Kessler stuff (collisions are still concerning with so very many spacecraft, but chain reactions don't have to be a thing).

[kerbiloid]

Just now, tater said:

Maybe @kerbiloid can change the thread title to be more generically Starlink (or "Starlink concerns") without the Kessler stuff (collisions are still concerning with so very many spacecraft, but chain reactions don't have to be a thing).

That's a Mod-given name, when the thread was separated.
Please, write a proper title to copypaste..

[tater]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

That's a Mod-given name, when the thread was separated.
Please, write a proper title to copypaste..

Starlink (updates and concerns)

 

That seem reasonable?

Or updates and discussion

 

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Starlink (updates and concerns)

Done.

[tater]

 

Regarding launch updates, there are currently 4 NET launch dates still this year (to be determined) for Starlink. The next one (November?) is supposed to use a core for the 4th time (a first). I wonder if they will try some rapid booster turn arounds at some point with Starlink flights...

[G'th]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, but it's the only Starlink thread I found by itself.

An actual concern about Starlink would be the impact on the night sky (visual astronomy), and all the time (radio).

Care to elaborate more on the radio aspect? Haven't heard of that. 
 

[tater]

21 minutes ago, G'th said:

Care to elaborate more on the radio aspect? Haven't heard of that. 

The VLA here in NM (was chatting with one of the resident astronomers there the other day) is actually communicating with SpaceX about ways to mitigate radio interference (maybe literally shutting them off as they pass over the VLA). The VLA operates at both K_a and K_u bands, so it is concerning given telescope sensitivity, and brightness of the sats broadcasting (as he said, a cell phone on the Moon would be the brightest radio object in the sky by a wide margin).

[tater]

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-very-big-deal/

Really interesting.

[Listy]

The big challenge for Starlink if it really does want to expand beyond serving rural westerners, is that mobile internet in the developing world (in Asia at least, which is by far the most affluent and populous 'developing' region) is already pretty fast, almost ubiquitous, and insanely cheap (cents per gigabyte cheap). Plus, you don't need to buy and carry a special base station around with you. The idea that there are billions of people just waiting to get online in the developing world but can't because there's no phone line nearby doesn't reflect today's reality - everywhere in the world, most people almost certainly live within the range of a phone tower these days. Today it's much more likely that people who remain offline either see no need for the internet, or they can share a phone with a family member who does have internet, or its simply unaffordable - in which case, they won't be able to afford Starlink either.

Telecommunication companies outside the west also tend to be fairly young and a lot more dynamic than the dinosaurs we are used to - much like a certain upstart rocket company that's popular around here in fact . Certainly in Asia, if Starlink comes close to being competitive, those companies wont just sit still - they'll respond by dropping prices even more, and rolling out thousands of new phone towers faster than Elon can chuck satellites in the sky. If that happens it will be a win for consumers, but it might not be a win for Starlink.

[tater]

This is fascinating.

 

Read the whole thread.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

"The Near Miss achievement is obtained twice.
You gain the silver achievement ribbon."

 

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, tater said:

This is fascinating.

 

Read the whole thread.

Best answer:

 

[magnemoe]

On 11/5/2019 at 12:35 AM, Listy said:

The big challenge for Starlink if it really does want to expand beyond serving rural westerners, is that mobile internet in the developing world (in Asia at least, which is by far the most affluent and populous 'developing' region) is already pretty fast, almost ubiquitous, and insanely cheap (cents per gigabyte cheap). Plus, you don't need to buy and carry a special base station around with you. The idea that there are billions of people just waiting to get online in the developing world but can't because there's no phone line nearby doesn't reflect today's reality - everywhere in the world, most people almost certainly live within the range of a phone tower these days. Today it's much more likely that people who remain offline either see no need for the internet, or they can share a phone with a family member who does have internet, or its simply unaffordable - in which case, they won't be able to afford Starlink either.

Telecommunication companies outside the west also tend to be fairly young and a lot more dynamic than the dinosaurs we are used to - much like a certain upstart rocket company that's popular around here in fact . Certainly in Asia, if Starlink comes close to being competitive, those companies wont just sit still - they'll respond by dropping prices even more, and rolling out thousands of new phone towers faster than Elon can chuck satellites in the sky. If that happens it will be a win for consumers, but it might not be a win for Starlink.

Mobile internet is fast there its plenty of people around, not there its not. 
Guess 3rd world are less strict on coverage rules too, like in Norway it was an demand that you had to cower areas who was not profitable.
But you are correct in one part, Starlink does not provides cell phone services so they do not compete in that market. 
The only overlap is cases there you only have expensive or slow mobile internet but can afford an starlink antenna 

One major use case of initial starlink is actually to link up cell towers not connected to the backbone. 

[Listy]

Saw the Starlink-2 train pass almost directly overhead tonight. Was able to see about 30 of the 60 satellites during the ~10 minute pass - the sun had only recently set so the sky was still quite bright. Most satellites that I saw were spread out with 20-30 second gaps between each one that I could see, but there were a few clumps of 3-4 close together still. Most seem to be slowly spinning/tumbling at the moment, with brightness varying from invisible/very dim to fairly bright (4-5 reached Sirius level bright) over about a 10-20 second period.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

30 000 bright sats in the sky can be used as a heliograph network.

 

[Jacke]

StarLink is already wrecking Astronomy.  I fear nothing will be done about it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/20/this-is-how-elon-musk-can-fix-the-damage-his-starlink-satellites-are-causing-to-astronomy/

[Raven Industries]

59 minutes ago, Jacke said:

StarLink is already wrecking Astronomy.  I fear nothing will be done about it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/20/this-is-how-elon-musk-can-fix-the-damage-his-starlink-satellites-are-causing-to-astronomy/

If I recall correctly, all the issues with astronomy and the Starlink satellites have occurred while the offended satellites were still raising their orbits, right? Regardless, the article seems to be complaining about problems that SpaceX has said they're working on fixing, but then it whines that they haven't been able to instantly implement those fixes. One of it's proposed solutions is literally something Elon Musk has said they're trying to do (reduce reflectivity). The concerns are valid, but it sort of completely ignores that SpaceX has had their head honcho directly respond to those concerns and offer some solutions they're working on. 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Jacke said:

StarLink is already wrecking Astronomy.  I fear nothing will be done about it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/20/this-is-how-elon-musk-can-fix-the-damage-his-starlink-satellites-are-causing-to-astronomy/

There are some legitimate concerns for ground-based astronomy, particularly wide field work.

21 minutes ago, Raven Industries said:

If I recall correctly, all the issues with astronomy and the Starlink satellites have occurred while the offended satellites were still raising their orbits, right? Regardless, the article seems to be complaining about problems that SpaceX has said they're working on fixing, but then it whines that they haven't been able to instantly implement those fixes. One of it's proposed solutions is literally something Elon Musk has said they're trying to do (reduce reflectivity). The concerns are valid, but it sort of completely ignores that SpaceX has had their head honcho directly respond to those concerns and offer some solutions they're working on. 

Some of the issues can be dealt with, but it's really a matter of reducing their albedo, not eliminating it. If they can get them nominally to 6.5 mag, then they are not visible---to the naked eye. Astronomers will be able to see them almost regardless of mitigation (it'll depend on illumination, integration time on the sensors, etc).

All that said, I think this was bound to happen eventually assuming it's the only way to have low latency comms worldwide at low cost. Yeah, we could bury fiber everywhere, but how much would that cost? If sat constellations are the solution that physics allows, and that simultaneously reduces cost, it's inevitable. We'll need more space telescopes. The usual answer to this is that we have many, many terrestrial telescopes, and just the one space telescope, so adding another, or 2, etc, doesn't solve the issue. I think the solution is to have as many as we need such that people can easily use them. Maybe they can be cheaper if launch costs are almost nothing.

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

Maybe they can be cheaper if launch costs are almost nothing.

This. 

In order to work at all economically, Starlink needs radically reduced launch costs. Those same radically reduced launch costs will allow lofting many "cheap" space telescopes, maybe even based on the Starlink buss itself (coulda sworn I saw this mentioned somewhere).

One way or another, the world will be a very different place in a hundred years, or a thousand. Sooner or later it'll just end up looking like Coruscant anyway. 
If we don't nuke ourselves into Tatooine first...

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, Raven Industries said:

The concerns are valid, but it sort of completely ignores that SpaceX has had their head honcho directly respond to those concerns and offer some solutions they're working on. 

If I had a dime for every time some corporation CEO promised they were working on fixing something that never ended up getting fixed, I would already be retired and driving around in my Ferrari.

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

driving around in my Ferrari.

Only when they fix it.

[Wjolcz]

12 hours ago, tater said:

We'll need more space telescopes.

This.

Edited December 5, 2019 by Wjolcz