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The satellites stack, so the speculation is that they would have had to spend days to unstack and restack everything.
by greglindahl 7y ago
The 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?