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SpaceX Smallsat Rideshare Program
- alephnan 7y agoEngineers are capable of launching things into space, but the hamburger menu is only half visible on my IPhone XS running safari. What’s harder and more complex these days, rocket science or front-end development?
- ntpeters 7y agoSpaceX has one deployment target, how many do front-end devs have? :P
- dotancohen 7y agoVariables: time, weather, fuel temp, manufacturing tolerances, turbopump response time to commands, gimbal response time to commands, etc. Targets: inclination, semimajor axis of altitudes, orbital eccentricity, longitude of the ascending node, true anomaly adjusted for launch time and ascent profile, argument of the periapsis. So that's six deployment targets per satellite deployed, on hardware that is exposed to vacuum, variable 0-3 G's acceleration between both stages, heavy vibration and acoustical forces, temperature swings, radiation, etc. However, I concede, SpaceX spaceflight engineers do _not_ have to target IE 6 anymore.
- paxys 7y agoHow much money is SpaceX putting into rocket science vs front-end development?
- drinchev 7y agoI doubt that all the problems in the world are fixed with money :) I've been to rich companies with crappy websites way too many times. I assume the company has put the focus on the rockets ( as it should ) instead of the marketing, although they ( probably ) pay enough for developers / QA that can deliver the task right.
- paxys 7y agoThis problem in particular is directly related to the resources you are putting into solving it. More/better FE devs, better QA, more time to develop etc. There's a reason you will rarely see a broken hamburger menu on a Google or Facebook site, even though those companies aren't launching rockets.
- penagwin 7y agoThe Engineers are clearly busy making rockets :P
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI'll bite; the cpu power needed to operate and render that hamburger menu is many times more than was used on the Apollo missions to the moon. :p We've been going into space for 60 years, we've only gone to cyberspace for 30.
- stcredzero 7y agoI'll bite; the cpu power needed to operate and render that hamburger menu is many times more than was used on the Apollo missions to the moon. :p Is that because the problem is hard, or because the programmers have iteratively built up their laziness?
- pkaye 7y agoAt the time of Apollo missions computers were heavy so a simple one was put on the craft and a larger one on earth did the bulk of the computations. And even the ones on earth were limited due to technology at that time.
- JabavuAdams 7y agoWe don't code to the metal anymore, because we're optimizing for developer time (supposedly). So, there are many more moving parts and it's harder for someone to understand the full stack. Also, the whole dev process for a non-life-critical website is different than for safety-critical software (hopefully).
- dotancohen 7y ago> there are many more moving parts It's actually many more layers of abstraction. My current PM would code in ABL in the 1980s. Adding a field to a database and a CRUD app would take about two months, running on terminal hardware that the actual worker using it could not afford if he were to save up for an entire year. Today, I add a field and an interface in about an hour, including automated testing for regressions, on hardware that the actual worker using it could purchase on a whim.
- tehlike 7y agoCss is hard, by proxy, ui is hard :)
- jonplackett 7y agoHaha. I had the exact same thought. Lots of images with blocks of white behind white text. And the font is horrible. I guess sacrifices have to be made somewhere when you’re changing the world.
- mholt 7y agoI've asked the same thing about HTTPS vs. going to the moon: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1126717673620922369 https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1126717673620922369
- ideasRgood 7y agoThe hard part about rocket science is fluid Dynamics, and it's only hard to land. But my God do the engineering equations for fluid Dynamics are nuts when you have an open, changing, turbulent system.
- cobalt 7y agoi mean material science, computer science/ee (guidance) and many other disciplines are important to launching a useful rocket
- inamberclad 7y agoThere's a great video from a few years ago on how SpaceX accelerates their CFD with image compression based algorithms and some GPU tricks.
- ExodusOrbitals1 7y agoThey are definitely in the need of extra cash from smallsat market.
- rtkwe 7y agoThe transferable nature of the ride seems like a big gamble pared with their statement that launches won't be held up by co-passengers. Guess they're just counting on the odds that enough passengers will drop out to make the launch uneconomic will be fairly low.
- ortusdux 7y agoIt makes me wonder if they have any projects planned that they can throw in if there are empty slots.
- rtkwe 7y agoMaybe that would help the economics quite a bit but I'm not sure what they'd be planning to use it for. SSO is a lot of earth observation (or sun observation for some specific SSO orbits that ride the terminator) and that doesn't really fit anything they're doing and there's already a couple companies in the low cost earth observation game.
- foota 7y agoMaybe they're planning to fill vacancies with their own payloads that are not time sensitive?
- b_tterc_p 7y agoIs rideshare an industry standard term or is it just clever?
- mholt 7y agoPretty standard. Rocket Lab:https://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ https://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/
- _Microft 7y agoA rocket launch company website with an order form and fields labelled "Desired orbit", "Launch date" and "Payload mass". What time to be alive :)
- garmaine 7y agoIndustry standard, and in fact predates Uber.
- ortusdux 7y agoWhat does L-12 and L-6 from the pricing section refer to?
- ExodusOrbitals1 7y agoLaunch date minus 12 or 6 months.
- unixhero 7y agoNot Lagrange points?
- ortusdux 7y agoI was thinking Launch number.
- unspecified 7y agoThere are only five Lagrange points, so L-6 and above are not Lagrange points. :-)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 7y agoWith these prices it looks like they're not targeting cubesats, which I'm sure is a relief to the existing rideshare companies. It will be interesting to see how good they are at launching on time. Since SpaceX can shift around Starlink launches to help their schedule, they might have a bit of an advantage over conventional rideshare companies. >For payloads who run into development or production challenges leading up to launch, SpaceX will allow them to apply 100% of monies paid towards the cost of rebooking on a subsequent mission (rebooking fees may apply). Without knowing the magnitude of the rebooking fees this isn't a very informative statement.
- tlrobinson 7y agoHow large is the CubeSat launch market? Also, they do say this: > Cubesats can be aggregated and launched on a customer provided, ESPA-compatible deployer.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoRelatively small but very rapidly growing (like the smallsat market in general). A decade ago there were a dozen or so cubesats launched per year. Now there's a few hundred, and that number is projected to continue to grow [1]. Personally I do think that the small launcher market is a bit of a VC-subsidized bubble— I suspect that a lot of the companies in the space are going to fold over the next few years. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat#/media/File:Nanosatellites_launched_by_years.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat#/media/File:Nanosatell...
- varjag 7y agoHeliosync orbit suggests focus on visual Earth observation and surveillance type missions.
- garmaine 7y agoI think you are thinking of geosync?
- wmf 7y agoNo. Geosynchronous orbits are so far away that cameras can't see much detail. Sun-synchronous low earth orbits are much closer and they always pass over the light side of the planet allowing for consistent observation.
- garmaine 7y agoAh I misread and was thinking this was heliocentric orbits.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- philip1209 7y agoBecause they are posting pricing, I'm curious about the details. What happens if the rocket fails and loses the payload? Is there insurance included/available? Does the customer get a refund?
- greedo 7y agoAs with a regular satellite launch, the customer usually buys their own insurance? SpaceX would be on the hook for the launch costs though.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoI think that's on a contract-by-contract basis. IIRC NASA still had to pay 80% of the costs for CRS-7, but Spacecom got a free launch after their payload was destroyed (that was kind of a weird case since the explosion happened before the point where their launch insurance would've kicked in, and the damage to the company was much larger than just the cost of replacing the payload)
- JshWright 7y ago> Spacecom got a free launch after their payload was destroyed s/got/are getting/ It's actually scheduled to launch tomorrow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZh82-WcCuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZh82-WcCuo
- hobofan 7y agoIf I'm not mistaken, the company supplying the payload usually has to insure the payload, and depending on the launch companies track record (and therefore risk) they get better/worse conditions. Of course the insurance company will then try to get their money from the launch company in the case of failure.
- greglindahl 7y agoI don’t think insurers ever get money from launch providers.
- _Microft 7y agoEric Berger (Ars Technica) on this: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/spacex-enters-competition-for-smallsat-launch-contracts-with-a-low-low-price/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/spacex-enters-compet...
- dnjdrbdhdbs 7y agoWhat is the rough breakdown of applications for all these cubesats and other satellites?
- pardavis 7y agohttps://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/swartwout/cdw2019 https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/swartwout/cdw2019
- vonseel 7y agoAlso curious what the rough breakdown of applicTions is... somehow you have several replies and most about a hamburger menu. What are satellites even used for these days besides navigation and espionage (limited to a handful of large players, I assume)?
- duskwuff 7y agoCommunications is a huge one. Think satellite TV, telephone, and Internet services. From the governmental side, another major application is Earth observation, both for science and for weather forecasting.
- bobbles 7y agoThe page talks about launching for a fraction of prior costs. Does anyone know what a traditional cost would be vs the $2.25M quoted?
- tzfld 7y agoPegasus can lift ~300 kg into SSO of that altitude (https://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/Pegasus/Documents/Pegasus_Factsheet.pdf https://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/Pegasus/Documen...) and it costs over $50 million. But it is known for the unusual high price even among old style launchers.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoSun-Synchronous Orbit... huh, that one you can't do in Kerbal Space Program. Turns out SSO is exploiting the fact that Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and so you can use the non-spherically-symmetric gravity field to induce precession in your orbital plane. If you tune the precession go 360° per year, you get a Sun-Synchronous Orbit. Decent. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit#Technical_details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit#Technica...
- EdwinHoksberg 7y agoIndeed it doesn't work in stock KSP, but it works using a mod called Principia[1] which implements N-body physics! -- [1] https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/162200-wip151-161-17x-principia—version-ferrari-released-2019-08-01—n-body-and-extended-body-gravitation-axial-tilt/ https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/162200...
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> This initial configuration also includes J2 for the Sun, the planets, the Moon, and Vesta, so the resulting effects are felt (precession of Earth orbits, the possibility of heliosynchronous orbits, etc.). Wow <3. I though the mod only did n-body physics, but it seems it goes beyond that. Thanks!
- eznoonze 7y agoUberSat LyftSat