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SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks
- agency 6y agoAs someone stuck on old (HughesNet) satellite internet and waiting on my Starlink pre-order, this is great news. I didn’t get into the beta sadly, though I was signed up and in the eligibility area since day 1.
- aero-glide2 6y agoDid you sign up for the $99 deposit which puts you in the queue?
- agency 6y agoYep, did so the day I was able to. I was pretty bummed not to get into the beta, especially after torturing myself by periodically checking /r/Starlink which was just wall-to-wall posts of people celebrating their invites. Just glad to have a spot in line at this point.
- gdubs 6y agoYou’re not alone. Signed up for the beta almost right at the beginning. In a good zone. Nothing. Also signed up for the pre order. Very eager to ditch my patchwork of expensive cellular and traditional satellite.
- BooneJS 6y agoMy high school daughter has really gotten into astronomy and space in the last few years, and is torn between celebrating the 9th use of the same first-stage rocket and hating the pieces of space junk it’s delivering to low earth orbit.
- mlindner 6y agoWhat's with this ridiculous new trend of calling active controlled satellites "space junk"? Your bias is a bit ridiculous and hopefully you educate your daughter as well... Is Hubble Space Telescope "space junk" now too?
- bombcar 6y agoIsn’t low earth orbit the best place for space junk as it burns up relatively easily?
- Robotbeat 6y agoYeah, and SpaceX has gone through extraordinary lengths to reduce the visibility of Starlink satellites. However, the astronomy community overall hates it and it’s kind of a meme now.
- BooneJS 6y agoLike most engineering projects with continuous improvement, the newer satellites are less reflective than the older ones.
- dcgoss 6y agoIt’s not space junk. When they’re ready to be decommissioned or they fail, the thrusters turn off and the whole thing descends into the atmosphere and burns up.
- BooneJS 6y agoI think terminology can mean different things to different people. Typically space junk refers to decommissioned or otherwise useless satellites. But if you’re a ground-based astronomer taking long exposure photographs, the trails of reflective satellites are of no use to you.
- missedthecue 6y agoI wonder how much rare earth material will get incinerated over the next few decades with thousands of these things burning up annually. Hope we figure out space mining quick.
- Magodo 6y agoI'm keen to see Starlink deals with government censorship requests. Can a country even effectively enforce their requests? How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance?
- kiba 6y agoChina will just confiscate any satellite dishes. SpaceX will comply if they want the market, or someone else will.
- rfrey 6y agoI think the "if Amazon/Google/FB don't comply, someone else will take their place" argument is weaker when replacement requires a constellation of thousands of satellites.
- Roritharr 6y agoI wonder if the USG would consider the shooting down of Starlink Satellites as an act of war after SpaceX refuses to comply with chinese regulations. It's probably all moot as China would probably simply halt Tesla Sales, as they are not bound by the logics of legality.
- postingawayonhn 6y agoI don't think anyone has the ability to shoot down enough Starlink satellites to make a difference. Musk's biggest risk in China is the CCP confiscating the Tesla factory in Shanghai.
- Havoc 6y agoThat’s really cool - essentially mission accomplished for reusability. Clearly they’re not degrading fast so with optimisation more will be possible
- _ph_ 6y agoAmazing times, when a private company can launch 3 flights in two weeks, not even counting the Starship tests :). It is faszinating to see, how quickly Starlink is progressing, we are on the brink of global satellite broadband internet. This could be a substantial change especially in all the countries without a wide broadband availability. It will be interesting to see whether SpaceX can generate enough revenue to be able to finance large space projects on their own. Of course there is Mars, but also the Moon, perhaps a space station or asteroid mining.
- taf2 6y agoI agree I want to see Venus havoc mission. Floating a blimp in the atmosphere seems so cool
- aero-glide2 6y agoThe Soviets sent a balloon to Venus, floated for a few hours I think. Would love to see such missions in HD.
- m4rtink 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon Two balloons, about 46 hours of endurance, limiting factor apparently being running out of battery power.
- nickik 6y agoWould be cool, but SpaceX is not gone finance something like that. The next decadal survival is happing pretty soon. Unfortunately its unlike a large scale Venus mission will be picked. That said, there very well might be a couple small and maybe one medium class missions picked. Don't think it would be a blimp, more likely an Orbiter. Priority might end up being an lander for Europe style moon as a flagship. And further Moon and Mars exploration. My hope honestly is that we do a serious rethink and go back to the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter but for Neptune or Uranus. A flagship mission, multiple launches, large nuclear reactor, massive amount of propellant, launched on specialised Starship to get there faster. With some real large radar on it, and maybe multiple smaller landers. Should be able to operate for 20-30 years in those systems. This is how we need to think now for flagship missions. I also hope for further study of a Dark side of the moon radio telescope built from moon resources.
- immmmmm 6y agoam i the only person thinking that there should be laws to prevent rich individuals to increase the mass in LEO by a factor 10 in less than 10 years? i understand the enthusiasm but shouldn't these decisions let to the people, countries, for instance an intergouvernemental agency. also: is the dark coating working? without it those are quite visible, and make radio and optical astronomy much harder (especially large sky surveys).
- Strom 6y agoWould it apply only to the rich or to everyone? If everyone, then why bring out the richness? Do you want to prevent satellites existing completely or just keep it at some threshold that has been crossed? Most importantly, what's the actual problem here? You haven't pointed out any downsides of having increased mass in LEO.
- immmmmm 6y agothis applies to everyone but only the rich has the money. the technology almost didn't change since von Braun in 1940, go have a look at a V2 turbopump and compare with the latest Barber-Nichols models. sure metal alloys changed a bit, ball bearings are better, etc... "Rocket Science" is still the same as 80 years ago: fine engineering and a lot of testing. there are a lot of useful satellites: for instance for Earth monitoring, it happens we are on a climate transient, those are very relevant. not saying that ppl in rural areas do not deserve internet, but Musk was clear that Starlink was more to finance his mars dream first and foremost. the problem is pollution and deregulation. and kessler syndrome that might knock out essential satellites in the long run.
- jonplackett 6y agoI mean, they had to apply for a license to do it, and it was granted.
- immmmmm 6y agoby whom? the FCC. i live in switzerland, does USA own LEO?
- joezydeco 6y agoSo where is Amazon in relation to all of this? I got pinged by a recruiter from Kuiper the other week and all I can see is that there's no way they're on track to be working in 5 years. They don't even have a stable launch platform. Would Musk sell Bezos the ride?
- MetaWhirledPeas 6y agoBezos is in it only because he too has a rocket company. If he wanted to be in the business of feeding on the scraps of others he'd release his own terrestrial internet service.
- Robotbeat 6y agoThat’s why Elon’s in it with Starlink. From Elon’s perspective, if Starlink merely breaks even, it will be more than worth it as it has drastically increased launch demand, enabling high flight rate reusable rockets.
- shantara 6y agoNot just increased launch demand, Starlink launches serve SpaceX as a testbed for reusability and refurbishment techniques they want to experiment on themselves without risking customer hardware. For example, they intentionally swap hardware components between reflown boosters to better understand their behavior after multiple reuses, to the point they have individual modules that have flown more times than the current maximum number of reuses of any booster as a whole (currently at 9). Another example, they've stopped having static fires for flight proven boosters first for Starlink, then for customer payloads too, unless the customer explicitly requests it. It's unbelievable that "flight proven booster" turned out to be really what it says on the tin, and not just a piece of marketing speak.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> It's unbelievable that "flight proven buster" turned out to be really what it says on the tin, and not just a piece of marketing speak. That's a thing to love about SpaceX. When they first started using this phrase, it was tongue-in-cheek in a pretty obvious way. Three years later, it was no longer a joke.
- mempko 6y agoOn my early morning walk I can see the satellites as very bright (much brighter than the stars) line across the sky. It's clear they didn't do enough about the reflectivity issue. Edit: Already downvoted for stating a fact. Amazing. Edit: Changed 'did nothing' to 'didn't do enough' Edit: Looks like experts still believe reflectivity is still a problem: https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-coated-starlink-satellites-are-better-but-not-perfect-say-astronomers/ https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-coated-starlink-satellites-a...
- jws 6y agoWhen the satellites are transitioning to their service orbits they are not in the low reflectivity orientation.
- _Microft 6y agoThey only adjust to an orientation in which reflectivity is reduced once they have reached their proper orbits. You most likely observed them while they were still boosting themselves to these orbits. The statement that you saw a "bright line" makes it sounds like they were launched recently as they spread out after a while. The boosting process takes a few weeks.
- coiledsnake 6y ago> On my early morning walk I can see the satellites as very bright (much brighter than the stars) line across the sky. No you do not. Satellites, when visible by the naked eye, are seen as point sources of light. Dots, not lines. One of two things has happened here: Either you saw meteor showers and mistook them for satellites (meteors move fast enough to be seen as lines, not points of light) or you saw long-exposure photographs of satellites online, assumed that is what it would look like through your eyeballs as well, and BSed your story about seeing them yourself. > Edit. Already downvoted for stating a fact. More likely you were downvoted for either being mistaken or for lying.
- mempko 6y ago> No you do not. Satellites, when visible by the naked eye, are seen as point sources of light. Dots, not lines. It was 60 satellites spaced together very closely after they were ejected from the rocket. From far away they look like a bright line just like the pixels of your monitor look like a line (even though they are just dots).
- swhalen 6y agoThese satellites have marred the night sky. There is more to life than broadband availability.
- ragebol 6y agoTell that to the people not on this, or any, forum because they are left behind and don't have any or a decent internet connection. In I were in that spot, I'd happily trade a few bright spots in the sky for catching up with the developed world.
- sto_hristo 6y agoYeah. City light pollution even more so. Time to deprecate civilization and go back to the caves.
- Symbiote 6y agoIt's disappointing indeed that America's failure to provide rural broadband lumbers the whole world with these satellites.
- colinmhayes 6y agoThere is more to life than the night sky.
- oh_sigh 6y agoSays the guy with broadband availability.
- remontoire 6y agoWhat an unbelievably privileged thing to say.
- Avamander 6y agoI don't think most Americans are in a position to criticize or even care about light pollution - the light pollution caused by your cities is way above that of a tiny bit of reflection by Starlink.
- ctdonath 6y agoWhile watching today’s launch, occurred to me the ratio of paying-client launches to Starlink launches is [whatever it is]. Profit margins on paid launches must be high, maybe amazing, to support so many Starlink launches.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jewel 6y agoThey've also been raising money ($850M in February) so they don't necessarily have to be using profit from paid launches.
- sfblah 6y agoDoes SpaceX really have any capital constraints? I'd assume that in the current environment they can essentially raise/borrow unlimited capital just on Musk's brand name.
- adriancr 6y agoJust based on their reusable rockets, government contracts and potential they can borrow unlimited capital... Musk is an added bonus (that can also likely fund it himself fully)
- BurningFrog 6y agoStarlink should make tons of money soon. These launch costs are investments.
- martin8412 6y agoThey won't.. It's a product that's only remotely viable in remote locations. So Australia, Canada and US. Most of the rest of the world has no need for it
- arcticfox 6y ago
- alextheparrot 6y agoMy mother was raving about the service the other day. Speeds are 10-15x faster, she’s having an easier time with her online community college course and her job KPI is up by double digit percents [1]. She was worried that IT wouldn’t be OK with it when I said it was satellite (They’d been burned too many times), but the IT guy was incredibly excited because he’s also waiting to get Starlink. Looking forward to the service only getting better, really incredible execution. [0] My dad went on the roof in the cold Wisconsin winter to put it up. [1] Lines transcribed per hour, as a medical transcriptionist working from home.
- iso1210 6y agoAny issues with snow etc?
- robbiet480 6y agoDishy will actually intentionally heat up to melt snow. I’ve seen YouTube videos of it melting a good amount of snow per hour and service remaining stable.
- bombcar 6y agoDishy also seems to continually pull 100 watts even when not in melt mode.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- state_less 6y agoThat’s some large continuous power consumption for off grid use. Curious if they’ll come up with a way to put it into some sort of low power idle mode during low utilization?
- bombcar 6y agoYeah https://conversation.sevarg.net/t/starlink-satellite-based-internet/397 https://conversation.sevarg.net/t/starlink-satellite-based-i... talks about it - 100 watts idle is too high if you’re on battery. It’s noticeably high so I assume at some point it’ll be reduced unless it’s caused by continuous “transmission” so the satellite doesn’t lose the connection.
- echopom 6y agoI'm really concerned about the alarms raised by Scientific in regards to "Space Pollution".[0] Elon Musk has been dodging the question for the past years and never gave a clear answer about it aside of "Umbrella" joke... Some astronomers are suggesting that with multiple space telecom companies ( US + EU + China ) it would potentially mean we would never be able to see space in plain sight ever. At least not without visual pollution. [0]https://qz.com/1971751/a-flood-of-spacex-satellites-started-a-fight-over-space-pollution/ https://qz.com/1971751/a-flood-of-spacex-satellites-started-...
- vasco 6y agoI can't wake up and see the world without loads of buildings and roads and cars in sight either.
- TeeMassive 6y agoIf you know the position of the satellites it's very easy to mitigate their effect.
- rklaehn 6y agoSpaceX has put in a lot of effort to reduce the visual pollution aspect of starlink. See https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh/status/1369990540763226113/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh/status/136999054076322611... for how the visibility of Starlink sats has changed over time. For professional earth based astronomy, it is possible to remove the streaks digitally. But of course there is a slight impact. But what is the alternative? Just stop development of low earth orbit forever? The future of professional astronomy is space based. Imagine what a telescope you can launch with a single starship launch...
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWe could be constantly lifting new observatories to space, launch is no longer the constraint, but satellite manufacturing and cost. NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent of an org that churns out satellites. The next bus to orbit leaves shortly.
- ShockedUnicorn 6y agoFor the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community. If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TifUa8ENQes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TifUa8ENQes Most things in life are like this. Wind turbines are a great way to supply green energy, but building them takes a lot of energy. So it is important to also think about things like using low co2 concrete, and making them more efficient. They also kill many birds, but this is nothing compared to the amount of birds that cats kill. And engineers are working on ways to get fewer birds killed.
- eecc 6y agoYeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1] Maybe Starlink constellations will be an incentive to finish the JWT, and other space telescopes... [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-turbines-helps-prevent-bird-massacres/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-...
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Yeah, apparently just paint one rotor blade differently to make it stand out and birds will stay clear [1] The study you're citing was only studied 4 wind turbines, while the evidence does point towards this working, I wouldn't say that the existing evidence is conclusive. Also, the turbines with the darker blades still killed birds, just less bird than the turbines with standard blades.
- biotinker 6y agoWind turbines don't kill enough birds to be more than a drop in the dead-bird bucket. It's a talking point used by people who were looking for reasons to be against wind turbines, but housecats kill four orders of magnitudes- not 4x, 10,000x- more birds each year. The percent of human-caused bird deaths due to wind turbines is smaller than the percent of Americans dying in airplane crashes each year, compared to all US deaths each year.
- mabbo 6y agoWorth also pointing out: That's the 9th flight of Booster 1051. And it had a perfect landing. The goal of this design of Falcon 9 is to handle 10 flights with minimum refurbishment. Right now, it looks like they're within a couple months of achieving that goal for the first time, with booster 1049 close as well, at 8 flights. SpaceX is soon going to reach a point that they don't need to build more Falcon 9 boosters.
- vermontdevil 6y agoSaw from one of the Space reporters on Twitter that this booster will do an April launch of another Starlink mission.
- yakz 6y agoWouldn’t they want to continue building them to some extent just so they don’t lose the institutional knowledge of how to build them? Or is the expectation that Starship will render it obsolete soon enough?
- gameswithgo 6y agoSome clients request brand new boosters, and some mission profiles require losing the booster. I think there is no danger of them ceasing to build booster.
- stirlo 6y agoThey produce a new non reusable second stage for each launch which is constructed in a similar manner to the first stage (just far smaller) so they are keeping their skills current.
- rst 6y agoThey have occasional landing failures (one this year, two last year), and still do launch expendably every once in a blue moon, so they'll likely need to build a new one every once in a while until the end of the program is in sight. (It looks like they have very few customers anymore that insist on a new-build booster -- the fussiest had been the US government, but at this point, NASA is accepting reused boosters for human spaceflight, and the NRO has also accepted one for a mission last year. As far as I know, no one has publicly said they'd rather their booster has a test flight yet.)
- ruph123 6y agoMore junk, and no responsibilities of the companies whatsoever. The cleanup (or kessler syndrome-related catastrophe) will be payed with taxpayer money: https://platform.leolabs.space/visualizations/leo https://platform.leolabs.space/visualizations/leo
- okl 6y agoThat's a very cool visualization. When you zoom in you can even see small 3D models that represent the type of debris.
- shantara 6y agoStarlink satellites are flying in low Earth orbit with the natural decay and reentry time no more than 5 years. I see this same argument repeated in every Starlink discussion thread.
- okl 6y agoJunk is junk, even if it's "just" 5 years.
- nickik 6y agoIts not 'junk'. The sats are all under control, do active avoidance of SpaceX works with other sat providers (ESA, NASA and so on) to avoid crashes. Each sat is designed at end of live to have enough fuel on board to deorbit itself safely. The 5 year self drop is only relevant in case a sat a has a failure. In such a case it is in a known orbit and can be avoided. The US and soon Europe are actively tracking object and multiple companies are working on it. Europe is also working on a laser to measure with high accurate move dead objects. The first garbage truck missions are already planned for dead objects. Space junk is a problem and need to be taken seriously. But people need to seriously stop with the panic and bringing up Kessler syndrome in every single discussion as some sort of thread for global civilisation that is imminent.
- beebmam 6y agoI'd like to point out that I'm a big astrophotography nerd. And these satellites are regularly showing up in my long exposure images. It's really quite a nuisance, and I don't look forward to it getting worse.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gitgud 6y agoInteresting, can you share some photos?
- ixfo 6y agoNot OP, but there are plenty of examples out there: https://www.astrobin.com/search/?q=starlink https://www.astrobin.com/search/?q=starlink
- mlindner 6y agoMost of those appear to be from right after launches when they appear as a chain of pearls before they darken significantly from reorientation.
- jostmey 6y agoIf we want to travel to space instead of just looking at stars, humanity will need to deploy a much larger footprint in orbit
- sumedh 6y agoCant you just remove those images which have that satellite streak or do they show up on almost all the captures?
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoThat's crummy. Would it be possible to take some additional shorter exposure images and use those to remove them from your long exposure images?
- kjrose 6y agoCould someone explain to me how/if this resolves the speed issues that all satellite internet has had since its inception.
- Malician 6y agoit's a few hundred miles up instead of 22,300. this means that it's not geostationary and you gotta switch your dish between satellites often as they go overhead, but latency is far lower.
- kjrose 6y agoOk, that would make a huge difference. the biggest argument I"ve made against this with people is simply that the latency would be terrible (and it's still not great), but it's a helluva lot better than 22.3k.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoThe actual latency starlink customers are getting is on par with wired ISPs, and has the potential to be lower than ground based links once they add satellite to satellite laser links.
- KiwiJohnno 6y agoActually, current starlink latency is 20-40 msec, which isn't bad compared to DSL or fibre internet. Its usually better than 4g or 5g internet. When starlink sats are fully using laser interconnects then their long-distance (london-NY or further) latency should be considerably less than anything else available. The speed of light in fibre is about 1/2 the speed of light in a vacuum.
- xen2xen1 6y agoAnd many, many, many more satellites.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Disgardia 6y agoHow much is starlink? Hope its cheap, so i can move on from mobile data
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Disgardia 6y agoI'm ready for the high speed it provides
- NelsonMinar 6y agoI set up on my Starlink near Sacramento last week and it is fantastic. So much better than other rural Internet options. The one drawback to it now is it's a little unreliable, largely because there aren't enough satellites up in orbit yet. I'm papering over it with the Speedify VPN for now (using a second slower link). Every launch brings Starlink closer to 100% uptime.
- ogre_codes 6y agoStarlink is SpaceX's way of guaranteeing SpaceX has a launch client. It increases the number of launches they make, and drives down the cost per launch, both for themselves and for their other customers. They are creating a business model which is both profitable and drives profits to their launch business. This is similar to the synergy Amazon's online store and AWS have with each other. If SpaceX has room on a launch vehicle or an empty launch vehicle, they stuff it with Starlink satellites. Since Starlink will require constant refreshes, SpaceX has a constant client, it becomes far easier for them to offer smaller payloads at good rates. This is SpaceX's way of commoditizing launches and keeping their launch service running regularly. It's extremely clever use of complimentary resources.
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoUnfortunately it's also littering the sky with a shitload of eventual junk, and immediate astronomical blight.
- mlindner 6y agoContinuing to say it doesn't make it true. They deorbit the satellites that stop working and their reliability thus far has been high other than the first two or three launches which had a higher failure rate. Even if they do fail completely and become uncontrollable, they're designed to deorbit within 5 years from operational altitude. They're relatively low mass and have very large solar panels for their size.
- systemvoltage 6y agoWhy is this special to Amazon and SpaceX? Literally every vertical integrated company does what you said. That's the definition of vertical integration.
- andrewljohnson 6y agoVertically integrating space logistics with space products is pretty cool.
- fossuser 6y agoThe service is awesome. In Placerville California our service went from Calnet 10mbps down at 28ms latency to Starlink 160mbps down at 24ms latency. This is a really big deal and will disrupt a lot of these shitty ISPs that have done nothing for years. Also, still tracking for my 2021 predictions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25601473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25601473 Edit: Price is only $99/month with one up front cost for the hardware ($500). Upload is currently only 15mbps, but should improve. Elon says we should see 300mbps soon and less than 20ms ping (iirc).
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoAt what price? And how sustainable is that as more users come online? What about uploads?
- 0goel0 6y ago> shitty ISPs that have done nothing for years Oh no they did do a lot. They lobbied for hundreds of billions of dollars from congress to upgrade infrastructure, then gave themselves bonuses and bought back company stock.
- ogre_codes 6y agoMany of these ISPs are shitty because they service the hardest to reach places. Comcast and Verizon have gobbled up billions in government aid to bring service to rural areas and end up delivering only to fringe areas which they can reach easily. The small companies end up struggling to get the government cash and end up underfunded providing service to the absolute-most difficult to reach consumers. It's a real crappy deal. Arguably satellite service erases all of this and is a hard reset on rural telecommunications. Unfortunately, it's not a industry small businesses can participate in.
- ashneo76 6y agoSo much this. The ground playing field has been controlled by comcast and Verizon. And now space will be spacex. This will be just as bad, if not worse for the people
- 6y ago
- plumeria 6y agoCan you travel around the world with your satellite dish? Sounds like a boon for digital nomads.