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FCC Issues Warning in Wake of Swarm's Unauthorized Launch
- 2close4comfort 9y agoWhat happened to allowing the industry to regulate itself?
- gcbw2 9y agoit's working. we just have to wait for the regulation to trickle down to the start ups. :)
- greglindahl 9y agoThe overwhelming majority of the industry is in favor of these regulations being formal. No one wants space debris.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoWhat does that look like, exactly? Should SWARM have been "allowed" to launch? Who is the "allowing" body? What rules do they all follow? I'd say this is a case where the industry didn't regulate itself.
- Confusion 9y agoExternalities happened.
- exabrial 9y agoThis is incredibly reckless of the company. Objects this small present a danger to human flight in space because we can't track them with Radar. I hope they are fined into the ground and I hope no one is injured as a result of their intentionally brash actions.
- GCU-Empiricist 9y agoIANAL but my TLDR is Swarm applied for US licencing to launch, got told no, because there devices are too small for some ground based tracking systems, but launched anyways because they already had bought space on an Indian launch and they didn't have time to move ownership to a better regulatory body. On the plus side it's time to look at who owns the support & development contract for the air-forces satellite radar, probably LockMart, because they will probably get a contract to improve to a 5cm or less resolution.
- dboreham 9y agoLike this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FPQ-16_PARCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FPQ-16_PARCS ? Disclosure : I've been inside that building (before 9/11 security-tightening epoch).
- om42 9y agoYup! Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract a few years ago: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/space-fence.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/space-fence.ht...
- novalis78 9y agoWhy does reading this sound like a prequel to 1984? I wonder how the first pioneers of aircraft would have ever gotten off the ground had they lived in a similar stringent ‘regulatory environment’
- tptacek 9y agoWhy would there have been any air traffic regulation? There were no aircraft at the time. There are now.
- novalis78 9y agoCheck out Glenn Martin in ‘To raise heaven ans Earth’. The amount of freedom these inventors needed and took advantage of would be much harder to achieve today. That’s exactly the point - they were able to test, build, fly, improve their ‘dangerous experiments’ without local, state or Federal government stepping in.
- i_cant_speel 9y agoBecause they were only a risk to themselves.
- lovich 9y agoThinking that the government shouldn't step in so that businesses can experiment with whatever they want is an interesting viewpoint when the regulation your pointing out as bad is one to keep this business from hurting others. When the Wright brothers tested their plane they only put their own bodies at risk. When swarm is throwing up satellites too small to track they are threatening every other satellite and space station in orbit. Should chemical companies be allowed to ditch their experiments into the local river because it let's them iterate faster? If the answer to that is no, then why should swarm be allowed to throw anything they want into a position to damage other orbital craft?
- novalis78 9y agoI get your point I truly do. But a nefarious state (fascist, communist, dictatorial) will always use ‘safety’, ‘security’ as a concern and an argument to block and jail.
- everdev 9y ago> Swarm applied for an FCC license, but was denied on concerns that its spacecraft, being "smaller than 10 cm in one of their three dimensions," couldn't be reliably tracked by the Air Force's Space Surveillance Network. And what is the concern around tracking them, inability to divert a spacecraft or satellite that might collide with a swarm of small objects?
- piker 9y agoYes, but not only a swarm, even just a single satellite is a tiny missile that is otherwise invisible in LEO.
- everdev 9y agoThen yeah, that seems pretty irresponsible to put other people's property in danger and potentially lives if they're within distance of the ISS.
- outworlder 9y agoAnd what is it made of? These satellites are tiny. Unless they are made of more exotic materials, they will not survive reentry.
- DrScump 9y agothey will not survive reentry That's like saying that stray bullets aren't a problem because they'll stop the first time they hit anything.
- stephengillie 9y agoJust what we need - more heavy metals polluting our air, forming oxides with members of the Actinide and Lanthanide groups from their vaporized processors.
- cbanek 9y agoMost spacecraft/satellites don't have onboard radar or other local scanning equipment, and "diverting" a spacecraft is actually a pretty complicated thing. This would involve multiple delta-v (using thrusters), both to avoid the object and then go back into their normal orbit. That could eliminate years of useful lifetime of a satellite, because those thrusters are usually used just for stationkeeping. Also, whatever orbit they are in is usually related to what the satellite is doing, so it might affect performance/reception/scanning/etc. Just like the movie Gravity, if there was an explosion in space and you had a lot of small objects floating around in a cloud you can't detect, that could snowball into destroying more things in orbit, making the problem even worse. Right now there's no way I know of to clean up space junk in orbit other than waiting for it to burn up, which could take years or tens of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping
- dswiese 9y agoIs anyone surprised a startup ignored the ruling of a regulatory body and did what they wanted anyways?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 9y agoBut... but... but... being "disruptive" is a good thing! Move fast and break [laws]. It's the SV way.
- mfoy_ 9y ago"Move fast and break things" is a problematic motto if it applies equally to your product and work culture.
- chasing 9y agoAnd to the health and safety of those around you...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoIt's a problem if your product is anything that actually matters. (Which is why several medical start-ups have wound up neck deep in shit in the last few years.)
- stcredzero 9y agoMove Fast and Start a Kessler Syndrome Cascade?
- ixtli 9y agoMove fast and break other people's safety.
- testplzignore 9y agoRegulating launches is a losing battle. If someone wants to put something into space, they'll just go to a country without regulations. And for cases like this where a US company does it, the company will just move elsewhere, or have a subsidiary or contractor "own" the satellite. I don't see how the FCC even has jurisdiction over this. I guess they have jurisdiction over communications with satellites within the US, but not over the satellites themselves. And practically speaking, they have no enforcement capabilities in this realm.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Regulating launches is a losing battle. If someone wants to put something into space, they'll just go to a country without regulations. There aren't that many countries launching commercial payloads, none who will do so in violation of ITU rules. > they have no enforcement capabilities in this realm The ITU has enforcement mechanisms. Rogue satellites are a threat to astronauts, every country's space infrastructure and future launches. Furthermore, Swarm is an American company breaking American law. Normal law enforcement vectors are available.
- craftyguy 9y ago> none who will do so in violation of ITU rules. I bet North Korea doesn't give a shit about the ITU rules.
- djrogers 9y agoSetting aside the dubious wisdom of entrusting your launch payload to North Korea, it would be against several laws for a US company to do that - even through proxies and subsidiaries.
- username223 9y agoOr human rights, or nuclear non-proliferation, or treaties against using chemical weapons, or... I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Amoral autocrats ruling medieval slave states will keep doing what they do. Should Swarm relocate from SV to NK?
- danesparza 9y agoHold on -- is the FCC an international body? I'm struggling to understand what Swarm did wrong here -- they launched from an INDIAN launcher after they didn't get permission to launch in the USA. Seriously -- what power does the FCC hope to exert at this point? We live in a world where launchers exist in other countries ...
- kingbirdy 9y agoThey're an American company, they follow American laws, including FCC regulations
- criddell 9y agoSo, would an American company selling Kinder Eggs in Poland be in trouble for breaking FDA regulations?
- mikeyouse 9y agoNo because there's no law that says that American companies can't sell Kinder Eggs in Poland. There is a law that says they need FCC permission to launch satellites though.
- c3534l 9y agoCompanies can be fined for what they do overseas. A prime example is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which makes it possible to punish American companies for bribery overseas, even in countries where bribery isn't illegal or where the line between bribes and processing fees is blurred. Additionally, I know it's also possible to sue a foreign company for something they did in a foreign land. The US in that case may freeze assets associated with company or the country as a whole if the they're pissed off enough.
- throwawayjava 9y ago> Hold on -- is the FCC an international body? Do all employees of Swarm live in international waters?
- 9y ago
- mfoy_ 9y agoObligatory plug for Planetes, a great sci-fi story about space debris. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes)
- gesman 9y agoI'm with FCC on this. We don't need more garbage in space. Enough of this in the oceans.
- ovrdrv3 9y agoAs a naive bystander, can you please explain why it would be bad to "pollute" space? Do things fall back into the atmosphere and burn up and sprinkle ash back onto the earth? I thought that objects once past the gravitational pull of the earth will just continue to drift away into the nothingness of space, and no matter the volume, it would be an insignificant amount to cause any harm to our planet or view of the stars.
- evgen 9y agoWhere do you think the "gravitational pull of the earth" ends? Hint: the moon is inside the gravitational pull of the earth... The danger is that things in orbit have velocity. A lot of velocity. Taking that nice F=mv^2 equation in mind you can imagine what would happen if a piece of space junk were to hit something we care about (or hit something we don't care about and create a lot more little pieces of junk that are now spreading out to cause more mayhem.) Space is big, and earth orbit is also a very big place, but there is still a lot of junk whizzing around up there and increasing the odds that something you forgot about will hit something you care about is counter-productive.
- tajen 9y agoI wonder as well what is the zone he’s talking about, but he talked about the zone in 9m/s2, not F=mv^2. I guess the first one extends up to 100km altitude, where I think geostationary satellites are, and indeed is very closeby. Edit : Low earth orbit is 180+km, for weather satellites because they revolve in 99 minutes. Geostationary orbit seems to be around 36000km with a speed of 3000m/s. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/
- greenhouse_gas 9y agoJust to emphasize: There is no limit to the earth's gravitational pull. The formula is F=G*sqrt(m1m2)/r^2. So as r (the distance between the center of the earth and your satellite) increases, F decreases. But it never hits zero. Though after a while (a Sun-Earth L point, is it?), the influence of the sun will be greater (by orders of magnitude) than the earths.
- zelon88 9y agoI'm inclined to agree with those who think the FCC is overstepping it's boundaries, although I understand the logic of those who explain why they're not overstepping their boundaries. To me it seems to be a question of capability. America in this situation sounds like a skrawny lifeguard yelling at big burly surfer dudes to stay out of the deep end. We want the authority to regulate across borders and to maintain our margin of superiority, but do we have that ability? If we don't have the ability to lead this industry, we shouldn't be granted the authority to regulate it either. At least not globally from within a vacuum. If America wants to regulate what other countries put into space, maybe we should have enough of a presence in space to be an authority figure. I haven't seen the U.S. government put a fair proportion of their effort into space technology in decades, yet we still expect to be the global harbinger of regulation. If a private company can make a 5cm X 5cm X 5cm satellite and we can't track it maybe the responsibility should be on us to improve our tracking abilities rather than sangbaggging everyone else to support our faux superiority.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> We want the authority to regulate across borders A U.S. regulator regulating an American satellite, made in America by American engineers working for an American company, whose orbital damages are the liability of the American taxpayer, is being too internationally ambitious? > I haven't seen the U.S. government put a fair proportion of their effort into space technology in decades We're the largest backers of the ISS, have the largest civil and military launch industries, have the largest concentration of private launch and satellite companies and are one of a handful of countries in the world with a civil space agency. Literally yesterday, a reusable American rocket (the only of its kind on the planet) put a NASA exoplanet survey satellite into orbit [1]. [1] https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov
- zelon88 9y ago> We're the largest backers of the ISS, have the largest civil and military launch industries, have the largest concentration of private launch and satellite companies and are one of a handful of countries in the world with a civil space agency. And while we're #1 in overall spending we're second to Russia in terms of percentage of GDP. Considering our military budget is more than the next 10x countries combined and considering we pay into that budget regardless of our GDP I'd say we're putting in minimal effort. You're also giving credit to the US government for research, engineering, and labor that was done by private industry. That's where this problem becomes a problem. Our government can't keep up with private innovation. We've got a car company who can make a car that gets 120 MPG but the DOT won't let it through the red tape because their required emissions testing equipment isn't sensitive enough to read it's emissions. So you deny the car and tell the company to come back with a shittier one they can read. So instead of letting innovation happen, we're going to stifle it because we, ourselves, don't want to do our part to regulate it properly and in a timely fashion. > A U.S. regulator regulating an American satellite, made in America by American engineers working for an American company, whose orbital damages are the liability of the American taxpayer, is being too internationally ambitious? So when your private sector tech outpaces your public sector's ability to regulate it you just disallow advanced technology and keep regulating the same way you've always done? That sounds exceedingly bureaucratic.
- stevespang 9y agoBottom line, SWARM should just move offshore and use offshore launch providers as they already did, then the FCC has no standing.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoLots of great thoughts / comments. I'm stuck trying to figure out how no one at Swarm knew (or cared?) about the size requirement. It's seems like it should be obvious / common knowledge. Am I missing something?
- fuscy 9y agoThey can track things bigger than 10 cm and yet they somehow misplaced the classified military satellite delivered by SpaceX.
- apple4ever 9y agoBan the FCC.