12 ms·
One off the satellites where apparently already dead and would not respond to commands when they got it mounted on the rocket. But they launched it anyway.
by callesgg 7y ago
One off the satellites where apparently already dead and would not respond to commands when they got it mounted on the rocket.
But they launched it anyway.
- markdown 7y agoSome lawyer is kicking themselves for writing a shitty contract.
- ianai 7y agoProbably didn’t anticipate the delta in load in the flight plan?
- greglindahl 7y agoThe satellites stack, so the speculation is that they would have had to spend days to unstack and restack everything.
- londons_explore 7y agoIf they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again.
- zrail 7y agoPretty sure SpaceX's "planning ahead" for this case is exactly what they did, i.e. proceed with the launch and rely on Starlink's low orbit to rapidly deorbit the failed unit. SpaceX is going for vast scale with this project. Failures up to and including the loss of a launch vehicle can't derail the rest of it.
- awalton 7y ago> If they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again. My guess is that they did a cost benefit analysis of doing this, and realized it was worth more to them to launch a dead satellite and verify it deorbits as planned than it was to miss a launch deadline, take apart the stack, fix the bum satellite, reintegrate the stack, put it back on the rocket, and schedule a new launch date. The satellite's cheap - that's literally the point. Verifying failure modes with NASA and the USAF? Now that's expensive. It's worth more as a science experiment than a time sink.
- jfrankamp 7y agoAll of that, then, testing the entire stack again. Unstacking and manipulating them after packaging is a nonzero risk to all of them.
- londons_explore 7y agoNot knowing why that one satellite failed is also a big cost though. There could be some systematic failure that affects them all, and just this was the first to fail. If the rest fail over the next 2 weeks, that will be a big goof.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoBut they took that cost, haven't they? PS: besides, who said they don't know the reason?
- Havoc 7y ago59/60 seems reasonable to go anyway. Launch windows are small and delays are hella expensive
- tim58 7y agoIt's really impressive that we've reached a point where missing a launch window is more expensive than 1/60th of the payload.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoThey are going for scale, where missing launch window is more expensive than just launching the rest of the payload. https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1193687615528042496 https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1193687615528042496 And in this case, if dead, the satellite will be used as a science experiment
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThat's interesting that they say 100% of the components will burn up on reentry— is this an updated design? That wasn't true for the previous batch
- jws 7y agohttps://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/satellites/spacex-claims-to-have-redesigned-its-starlink-satellites-to-eliminate-casualty-risks https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/satellites/spa... There is an annoying interstitial ad, but the URL really says it all. From March 21, 2019. They say the first 75 have iron thruster parts and steel reaction wheels which can survive reentry, but that in subsequent builds no parts will come down with lethal energy.
- apendleton 7y agoYes, this is apparently an upgraded version: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/11/10/spacex-readies-upgraded-starlink-satellites-for-launch/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/11/10/spacex-readies-upgrade... that has gone from 95% to 100% demisable, and also has Ka band antennas in addition to Ku.
- jessriedel 7y agoWill this still be true when the versions with inter-satellite laser links are launched next year? I heard that, at least initially, the links may require hardware that will not fully burn up.
- Paul-ish 7y agoIf this becomes really common, do any of the materials on the satellites present a health or environmental concern?
- zecken 7y agoWhat's the source on this information? I haven't seen anything that says one was dead.
- mlindner 7y agoSpaceX's twitter and also mentioned during the webcast.
- bane 7y agoI've been having this hard to articulate notion that humanity hasn't really begun to fathom the changes that will come with "cheap" launch vehicles. We have better than half a century where space launch was so expensive, and so rare, that this had an impact on the payloads themselves. Perversely it caused the payloads to become so highly engineered (for a variety of reasons) that they also became ultra-expensive in-line with the launch vehicle and launch opportunity cost. This also created a negative feedback loop that because the payload was expensive, the launch vehicle had to be extra reliable and thus cost more. Think of the entire lifetime program expense (R&D, launch, repair, etc.) for the Hubble program, billions upon billions of dollars to basically put a large 1 MP sensor at the end of a tube with a digital radio for communications. What would happen if this program cost went into hundred of launches, every month, for decades? We could launch not only an equivalent, but technologically improving payload every month? Why not make the device cheaper? Experiment a bit? Who cares if one fails? Maybe launch 2, 3, 4 at a time? Have constellations of Hubbles spread throughout the system? What if Hubble was 300 telescopes with massive 20MP sensors clustered into a distributed virtual telescope the size of the orbit of Mars? When the launch costs, and cadence drop so low, it doesn't really matter if your satellite doesn't work because you didn't spend 15 years of R&D, and a billion dollars putting up as technologically "perfect" a device as possible, you fab another one, maybe with better parts, and put it up next month instead and write-off the couple hundred thousand as cost of doing business. It's all still cheaper than the alternative. Smallsats were a kind of way to try to squeeze costs down by simply cutting capability, size, and power. But the cost of a smallsat in orbit was still dominated by the cost of the launch. What if you could launch a fully capable space platform (not a compromised small sat) for less than the cost of a shared-ride smallsat. With the tonnage going up comes more capability as a by-product. The ISS took over 40 flights to get ultra expensive space hab parts into orbit. A SpaceX Starship might be able to life equivalent mass in 5 launches, at a fraction of the cost. What if, instead of one space station every 20 years, we get two per year? We have no idea what's about to happen in the next decade.
- wmf 7y agoDuring the height of the cold war the US launched ~20 disposable film-based spy satellites per year; I wonder if they got meaningful cost reduction.
- caconym_ 7y agoIs this another record? The first individual spacecraft launched into space despite prior knowledge of the fact that it was inoperable?
- dotancohen 7y agoMany payloads have been launched with known issues to meet a launch window or mass specification. Notably, I think the Mars Curiosity rover had disabled hardware (microphones) on board because its mass (all 80 grams of it) had been factored into the launch vehicle and spacecraft burns and EDL maneuvers.
- caconym_ 7y agoYeah, that's why I specified individual spacecraft. Presumably the rationale is similar, but it's interesting that this time it's not just a defunct subsystem but rather an entire independent spacecraft.
- pbreit 7y agoRough seas also prevented recovery of the substantially more expensive fairings.