13 ms·

Starshield: Secured satellite network for government entities

116 points by rlt 4y ago

mhoad 4y ago
Not exactly a name you want associated with anything to do with national security right now.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  SpaceX has been launching Department of Defense payloads since 2006.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    I didn’t say they were new to the game I said they probably aren’t looking super reliable all of a sudden. Things that tend to matter a lot in that world are credibility, stability and reliability. New information has come in via a very public set of car crashes and that relationship is now looking like a liability.
    - Cyberdog 4y ago
      Could you elaborate for those of us who don’t typically follow space news? Has Space-X had some trouble recently?
      - mensetmanusman 4y ago
        He is saying spacex=tesla
      - mhoad 4y ago
        I can’t tell if you’re being cute and trying to carve out some exemption here when it’s clear what I’m talking about I think but let’s operate on good faith. The owner with an 80% voting control of the company has had some very serious issues in judgement lately not limited to the Twitter fiasco but has also made a number of public moves that were very friendly towards what the US has called their biggest national security threat repeatedly for the past half decade or longer. In a national security context that would be generally thought of as a completely unacceptable amount of leverage for your main enemy to have over your national security infrastructure. This isn’t some mindless Elon bashing post, I’m presenting this as an actual honest to god problem for natsec.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        TMWNN 4y ago
        >I can’t tell if you’re being cute and trying to carve out some exemption here when it’s clear what I’m talking about I think but let’s operate on good faith. Translation: "I think you're committing wrongthink to be asking such a question, but I'll magnanimously say 'let's operate on good faith'". >The owner with an 80% voting control of the company has had some very serious issues in judgement lately not limited to the Twitter fiasco Ah yes, the world's wealthiest man has invested 20% of his net wealth in something that may or may not work out. Proof that he is a danger to national security!!!1!!11!!!!! PS - Two questions to ponder: Q: Wasn't Twitter supposed to have collapsed and died like a month ago? A: Yes. Q: Isn't Twitter functioning apparently quite well during the current mega world event known as the FIFA World Cup? A: Yes. >but has also made a number of public moves that were very friendly towards what the US has called their biggest national security threat repeatedly for the past half decade or longer. Oh, good grief. Musk said that Ukraine might have to give up land to end the war with Russia. A) A negotiated settlement is how 90% of wars in world history have ended, and B) such a settlement has always been the most likely scenario for ending the current war. Maybe it'll be a formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, maybe it'll also include parts of eastern Ukraine. Now, maybe Ukraine's recent successes on the ground will let it regain control over all of its territory, maybe even Crimea. I hope that happens, but (again, even with the recent pushback of Russian lines) that still remains a relatively unlikely outcome. >This isn’t some mindless Elon bashing post, I’m presenting this as an actual honest to god problem for natsec. There is nothing wrong, from a legal or moral perspective, in Musk publicly stating what he said. He is an American and the US is not actually a combatant in the war. Musk is free to say anything he wants, and those who immediately claim that anything short of demanding "Ukrainian forces roll into Moscow and Zelensky personally swings the axe that cuts off Putin's head" = Russian sympathizer/"problem with natsec" just make themselves look stupid.
      - s5300 4y ago
        Musk has had some trouble recently, but I thought it was pretty well known that Shotwell pretty much runs the show at SpaceX & has for some time. I may be completely incorrect, but I think Musk is mostly just a mascot/figurehead/hype-man for SpaceX & has been for a bit. Regarding most of the day-day stuff that is, he probably still has some input on very long term matters. But I think if Musk were to die in a mysterious Tesla fire tomorrow, not much would change for the worse at the company for quite some time.
        mhoad 4y ago
        I’m specifically referring to the 80% voting rights he has at SpaceX.
        dotnet00 4y ago
        It is well known that Shotwell runs the business side and Musk runs the engineering/R&D side. Eg. Falcon Heavy was almost cancelled because the engineering side turned out to make it more expensive to develop than expected (with the original plan for fuel crossfeed) and F9 had improved so much that it ate up most of FH's potential market. So Musk's preference was to cancel it. But because it was favorable for the business side (I think they might've even already bid on some launches with it by then), Shotwell pushed for them to keep it, which is how we got the current variation of FH which just has F9s with a reinforced center-core.
        bryanlarsen 4y ago
        It wasn't important to the business side -- they'd only sold a couple launches or so. But Shotwell convinced Elon that it was important to their reputation. Musk has since cratered his, but Shotwell's is intact.
        dotnet00 4y ago
        I feel like that's nitpicking, when the company's reputation is obviously a business issue.
    - caconym_ 4y ago
      Musk has been a complete trainwreck for years, and it hasn't stopped SpaceX from winning a bunch of government (including defense) contracts, nor---crucially---from delivering on them. The recent Twitter stuff has gotten a lot of airplay, but I'm not sure what's supposed to have happened that would fundamentally change the equation.
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Actually SpaceX's first contract and the name 'Falcon' came from the DARPA Falcon Project https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      I believe I read in Eric Berger's book Liftoff that the name came from the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. But your theory has some merit since the timing of the Falcon project's award to SpaceX could be coming about the same time that they named the rocket. Both theories may be right. The Falcon project grew out of the Reagan era Star Wars project, so it's likely a backronym.
      - georgeg23 4y ago
        You nailed it... Dig deeper and the story only gets more interesting.
  - 7e 4y ago
    That's unfortunate.
- influxmoment 4y ago
  Are govt bureaucrats LARPing about posting left wing conspiracy about emerald mines on twitter? I doubt they pay any attention
foobarqux 4y ago
They rebranded Starlink so they can sell it to the government for 10x the price.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Governments want it 100x more than the public, so they might be under charging.
  - wmf 4y ago
    NASA has already saved billions by using SpaceX instead of legacy vendors so they're definitely charging less than they could.
devrand 4y ago
> Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. I don't understand this marketing. How would they possibly being doing E2E encryption? This is the wrong layer to be applying encryption at anyway.
- wmf 4y ago
  Clearly they're using a different definition of end. All wireless and shared-media (DOCSIS, PON) protocols should be encrypted out of respect for customer metadata privacy.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Encryption should be at a higher layer, preferably from the end client to end the server, to provide any security. To be fair, the fact that the data is being transmitted wirelessly does mean that encryption is 100% required or else someone could easily spy on you.
    - tetrep 4y ago
      Wireless has nothing to do with it, you always need encryption: https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-here-nsa-smiley/ https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her...
candiddevmike 4y ago
This can't be more secure than running encryption over cell right?
- carl_dr 4y ago
  > Starshield launches satellites with sensing payloads and delivers processed data directly to the user. It seems to be more about low cost sensors in space than what consumer-level Starlink is used for.
poszlem 4y ago
One thing that people miss is the fact that in the event of any type of a "big" war between superpowers satellites are going to be heavily affected and probably one of the first targets. Having something like this, having that kind of speed in deploying new satellites is going to be a superpower to the USA.
- rlt 4y ago
  Kessler Syndrome notwithstanding.
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Such low orbits should prevent that being a long term problem. I also wonder how much more difficult it is to target satellites going this fast than say the one China destroyed a few years ago?
    - popinman322 4y ago
      Seems like speed wouldn't be that much of a problem when the satellites all move in a highly predictable manner.
    - theteapot 4y ago
      What's basis for thinking it would be much harder? Still has highly predictable trajectory. Recall the US destroy one a few months later in 2008 with a modified SM3, from a boat. That sat was in a ~ 244km×261km decaying orbit -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost.
    - bagels 4y ago
      If the thing China shot was on orbit, there isn't much difference in orbital velocity vs other objects. If it's below ~7.8km/s it's suborbital, and if it's above 11km/s it's on escape trajectory.
    - p1mrx 4y ago
      > Such low orbits should prevent that being a long term problem. Wouldn't a military power be more willing to trigger Kessler syndrome for 5 years than 500?
KerrAvon 4y ago
trusting a dude who is compromised by interests in China up to his eyeballs to do anything involving national security seems unwise
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Don't forget the rampant drug abuse.
- tendiesfortwo 4y ago
  literally can't make who you are talking about
  - dmix 4y ago
    They don't have a fake Russian Kompromat file to justify the foreign boogieman narrative this time around but they'll believe it if it suits their ideology ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - threeseed 4y ago
      Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that he interfered in US elections. And there was plenty of evidence other than the file that indicates that it happened.
      - dmix 4y ago
        Yes I remember the study showing the total amount of ad spending by Prigozhin was <$1 million. In a campaign where both sides spent $1 billion, not to mention the priceless wall-to-wall coverage the global media provided worth far more than an additional $1B. But yes, I'm sure Russia did enough to sway the election... All of the social media campaigns attributed to Russian agencies weren't even backing one party. They hit both sides. All they cared about was generating social conflict.
        threeseed 4y ago
        I am glad we can both agree that Russia did in fact interfere in the election.
gz5 4y ago
Low-orbit data centers become interesting in this context. Yes, problems with radiation, solar flares and traditional ops. But 'free' power, real estate (1) and cooling. (1) Low orbit real estate may be a future battleground?
- readams 4y ago
  Cooling is actually a big problem in space.
- coolspot 4y ago
  There is no free cooling in the space. It is actually harder to cool something in the space than in Sahara, because you have no air that you can dump energy into. Your only choice is to radiate heat away, which is very inefficient.
  - gz5 4y ago
    agree you would radiate it away - but why does that need to be inefficient at scale (understood there are upfront costs)? meanwhile cooling is a huge expense in terrestrial DCs. i am not an expert - happy to hear more expert opinions which is why i wrote the parent comment - but on a quick google search it seems folks are working on these designs: https://orbitsedge.com/satframe https://orbitsedge.com/satframe
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Cooling in space is easy -- it just requires massive radiators. And mass is expensive in space.
credit_guy 4y ago
Sooner or later the US Government will realize the Starship will be a good launching vehicle for the ballistic missile defense. Currently a midcourse ground base interceptor booster [1] weighs more than 20 tons, costs a few tens of millions, and carries one single kill vehicle [2] that weighs about 64 kg. A single Starship would be able to carry more than 1000 such kill vehicles. If Russia launches a few hundred missiles at the US, a couple Starships could send multiple kill vehicle against each Russian warhead. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle
- plazmatic 4y ago
- georgeg23 4y ago
  SpaceX already has contracts for a Missile Defense Shield (w/ SDA, now part of Space Force). Govt program was started by Mike Griffin-- one of the early founders of Strategic Defense Initiative, space kill vehicles, and SpaceX itself. His history with Elon is fascinating. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
  - kidme5 4y ago
    I thought SpaceX is just building thermal imaging satellites for tracking ballistic missiles, but agree it's obvious just the first step to orbital weapons for interception. Yes that's the plan. Sounds like Biden Admin wasn't a fan of Star Wars and has been slowing Elon down.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
    - georgeg23 4y ago
      Correct
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  It has to get off the ground first.
amatecha 4y ago
Huh. "Secured Satellite Network For Government Entities" .. which, or how many, entities? You can only offer your service to so many before you hit those inevitable political barriers. I think they're already firmly cemented in the "US and allies" market, so the broadly-worded marketing text is a bit funny to me.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  "Government entities" usually referrs to US gov subcontractors, military, intelligence, etc etc.. Not 'an entity with a gov' and not 'an entity of a government'
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Scoundreller 4y ago
Sounds extremely profitable. While you can end-to-end encrypt things so it all looks like noise, you'll want to send nonsense data constantly just to make sure you can hide real data when you need to without tipping anyone off. Like an HF numbers station, but you have to pay for every transmission.
ilyt 4y ago
> Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements. aka "We put TLS in SPAAAACE!" ? I kinda doubt government needs help in such basic things as "talking over unsecure channel"...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hx833001 4y ago
Is Elon Musk a DoD project?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Yes and Michael D Griffin is his handler. Surprising few talk about it given the evidence out there... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
  - ScaredGospodin 4y ago
    A scary thought, but thankfully not likely. From Ashlee Vance's biography: >At SpaceX, Musk and the company’s top executives had spent most of December in a state of fear. According to reports in the press, SpaceX, the onetime front-runner for the large NASA contract, had suddenly lost favor with the space agency. Michael Griffin, who had once almost been a cofounder of SpaceX, was the head of NASA and had turned on Musk. Griffin did not care for Musk’s aggressive business tactics, seeing him as borderline unethical. Others have suggested that Griffin ended up being jealous of Musk and SpaceX. It seems to just be two space nerds doing their thing, nothing more: >The collection of talent attending these sessions in 2001 was impressive. Scientists showed up from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL. James Cameron appeared, lending some celebrity to the affair. Also attending was Michael Griffin, whose academic credentials were spectacular and included degrees in aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, and applied physics. Griffin had worked for the CIA’s venture capital arm called In-Q-Tel, at NASA, and at JPL and was just in the process of leaving Orbital Sciences Corporation, a maker of satellites and spacecraft, where he had been chief technical officer and the general manager of the space systems group. It could be argued that no one on the planet knew more about the realities of getting things into space than Griffin, and he was working for Musk as space thinker in chief. (Four years later, in 2005, Griffin took over as head of NASA.) >Musk had come to Russia filled with optimism about putting on a great show for mankind and was now leaving exasperated and disappointed by human nature. The Russians were the only ones with rockets that could possibly fit within Musk’s budget. “It was a long drive,” Cantrell said. “We sat there in silence looking at the Russian peasants shopping in the snow.” The somber mood lingered all the way to the plane, until the drink cart arrived. “You always feel particularly good when the wheels lift off in Moscow,” Cantrell said. “It’s like, ‘My God. I made it.’ So, Griffin and I got drinks and clinked our glasses.” Musk sat in the row in front of them, typing on his computer. “We’re thinking, Fucking nerd. What can he be doing now?” At which point Musk wheeled around and flashed a spreadsheet he’d created. “Hey, guys,” he said, “I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” Griffin and Cantrell had downed a couple of drinks by this time and were too deflated to entertain a fantasy. They knew all too well the stories of gung-ho millionaires who thought they could conquer space only to lose their fortunes. Just the year before, Andrew Beal, a real estate and finance whiz in Texas, folded his aerospace company after having poured millions into a massive test site. “We’re thinking, Yeah, you and whose fucking army,” Cantrell said. “But, Elon says, ‘No, I’m serious. I have this spreadsheet.’” Musk passed his laptop over to Griffin and Cantrell, and they were dumbfounded. The document detailed the costs of the materials needed to build, assemble, and launch a rocket. According to Musk’s calculations, he could undercut existing launch companies by building a modest-sized rocket that would cater to a part of the market that specialized in carrying smaller satellites and research payloads to space. The spreadsheet also laid out the hypothetical performance characteristics of the rocket in fairly impressive detail. “I said, ‘Elon, where did you get this?’” Cantrell said. >In April 2002, Musk fully abandoned the publicity-stunt idea and committed to building a commercial space venture. He pulled aside Cantrell, Griffin, Mueller, and Chris Thompson, an aerospace engineer at Boeing, and told the group, “I want to do this company. If you guys are in, let’s do it.” (Griffin wanted to join but ended up declining when Musk rebuffed his request to live on the East Coast, and Cantrell only stuck around for a few months after this meeting, seeing the venture as too risky.)
neatze 4y ago
At fist I thought this would something similar to band 14 on LTE networks, but seems like this is not the case, or at least they are not saying anything about QOS. Not sure what they mean by encryption, since DOD has there own crypto chips with classified algorithms.
rzimmerman 4y ago
It sounds like they’re trying to sell two things: 1. Hosted payloads, where DoD entities pay to have something (telescope, Sigint equipment, whatever) strapped on to a starlink satellite with comms all figured out for them. Probably a good deal if your stuff fits on that big flat satellite. SpaceX starlink launches do sway the launch market significantly enough (offering a launch at half othe price or less, beholden to starlink orbits) that it can seem worth it. 2. A government friendly starlink service which has security features like hardware managed encryption. The cynic in me wonders if there just isn’t enough market for commercial starlink. But honestly it makes sense to sell the empty edges, kilograms, and bandwidth to the government. They have a lot of money.
- georgeg23 4y ago
  It's part of this program, https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan-s-star-wars-trump-calls-missile-defenses-would-blast-warheads-sky https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan... More on Wikipedia: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
  - mlindner 4y ago
    That doesn't seem related. That's 3 years ago.
    - georgeg23 4y ago
      As the wikipedia article says (SpaceNews reference), the first SpaceX element for the program is finally launching this month (Dec 2022). But yes, it was first announced under the Trump administration in 2019 when the Science article came out.
    - kidme5 4y ago
      Yes they're related. This is SpaceX making public (to a partial extent) what they have long been doing for the Space Development Agency (a Mike Griffin government program closely aligned with Starlink). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
greesil 4y ago
SpaceX is so cool. Why does Elon have to be the way he is?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Unfortunately Elon always has this in the plans from day 1 with Mike Griffin.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Meh, history is rife with people on the leading edge that have a tinge of madness. It’s probably required since they are extreme outliers in behavior otherwise.
- Palpatineli 4y ago
  As compared the the sane management of, say, Boeing? The whole idea of SpaceX was madness back in the 2010s
TruthWillHurt 4y ago
"As a small time dictator I often find it difficult to terminate internet services to citizens of my country while still enabling it to my militias for effective opression. Now with Starshield - I can!"
7e 4y ago
How much of SpaceX's technology contains components sourced from abroad, and/or China? My bet is that it's enough to kill any national interest in defense applications.
7e 4y ago
The DoD seems well on its way towards having two more such networks (augmenting the one it already has in existence), without the involvement of SpaceX at all: https://spacenews.com/u-s-to-ramp-up-spending-on-classified-communications-satellites/ https://spacenews.com/u-s-to-ramp-up-spending-on-classified-.... Maybe this program was spun up in an attempt to grab those sweet government dollars in 2025.
- rektide 4y ago
  Thay seemed to mainly cover specific efforts & contracts. All Space Force related. Personally I feel like this is over narrow. They seem likenthey are just trying to make am acquisition, spend money to have some shit to be in control of. I feel like DARPA has a much broader & more long-term real effort underway, not about hardware to buy but about how hardware communicates, networks, what things do. Space Based Adaptive Communication Networks (Space BACN) seems to be the real effort afoot right now, IMO, to more broadly define how communication works in space. There's, as I understand, some fairly popular command & control buses for satellites. But this Space BACN seems like a much broader networking initiative, that this Starlink project seems like a proprietary competitor to. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33307864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33307864
rektide 4y ago
Basically proving the Piketty theory of space, that all space efforts are eventually taken over & subsumed by military-governmental big dollar concerns. Unsurprising but definitely one giant leap for SpaceX away from being their own masters, away from being explorers & a venture/adventurers, & towards being a key element of the military-industrial complex. One perhaps with much less congressional hooks than previous M-I-C Complex.
nnx 4y ago
``` EARTH OBSERVATION Starshield launches satellites with sensing payloads and delivers processed data directly to the user. ``` Never heard of this capability for Starlink before. What kind of sensing payloads can it do? Imaging? Thermal? Since Starlink is low altitude and high density, it would allow almost real-time high-precision surveillance?
- abudabi123 4y ago
  Starlink is growing a lot of headroom. "delivers processed data directly" is so skynet A.I. Looks like Amazon's Kuiper [1] constellation has a longer catchup to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems
rapjr9 4y ago
So far I haven't seen anyone mention the big deal here, that Starshield is offering to take over ANY satellites communications entirely using lasers. A customer no longer has to include a radio system on their satellite (unless that is the whole point of the satellite), just a small laser and gimbal. This seems like a major savings in weight and power. Send your satellite up and join the existing network and you get communication to your other satellites in orbit (via laser), to the ground (via RF), and to aircraft (via RF), worldwide. All of it point-to-point which makes it very difficult to interrupt or intercept. This is a space internet, an internet for things in space, though only open to wealthy customers who can afford to launch things into orbit. I quote: INTEROPERABILITY Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which is the only communications laser operating at scale in orbit today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable incorporation into the Starshield network. End quote. Depending on how large the weight and power savings are this could cause a proliferation of satellites. It may require satellites to be in an orbit near that of the Starlink satellites, or maybe not. Depends on what angle range the laser gimbals cover. I would guess each Starlink satellite with lasers already has multiple lasers plus backup lasers, so dedicating the spare ones to providing communication for other satellites might be easy. The laser/gimbals may already be time shared to spread wear evenly and make sure they are working.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Practically speaking it doesn't really eliminate the need for a radio system entirely, since you would still want a control interface that isn't dependent on such a sensitive technology (ie you would want to be able to fix the satellite if some software or tracking error makes it unable to accurately target a Starlink satellite). What this does mean is that the bandwidth restrictions for transmitting larger amounts of data become a bit looser and become much harder for adversaries to detect and track.
  - rapjr9 4y ago
    That makes sense. The radio system could be a much lower power, low baud rate system though, enough to transmit commands and get a little telemetry but much smaller than would be required for constant communication with Earth. This may also be relevant: "NRL Engineers Ready Innovative Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) Payload for Launch" https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3214111/nrl-engineers-ready-innovative-robotic-servicing-of-geosynchronous-satellites-r/ https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3214111/nrl-engi... Starshield as a "space network as a service" and robots as a "repair service for space infrastructure". Seems like together these could make doing things in space cheaper and easier. Both would require very well defined standards.
TheDesolate0 4y ago

116 points by rlt 4y ago

mhoad 4y ago

Not exactly a name you want associated with anything to do with national security right now.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
SpaceX has been launching Department of Defense payloads since 2006.
- mhoad 4y ago
  I didn’t say they were new to the game I said they probably aren’t looking super reliable all of a sudden. Things that tend to matter a lot in that world are credibility, stability and reliability. New information has come in via a very public set of car crashes and that relationship is now looking like a liability.
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Could you elaborate for those of us who don’t typically follow space news? Has Space-X had some trouble recently?
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      He is saying spacex=tesla
    - mhoad 4y ago
      I can’t tell if you’re being cute and trying to carve out some exemption here when it’s clear what I’m talking about I think but let’s operate on good faith. The owner with an 80% voting control of the company has had some very serious issues in judgement lately not limited to the Twitter fiasco but has also made a number of public moves that were very friendly towards what the US has called their biggest national security threat repeatedly for the past half decade or longer. In a national security context that would be generally thought of as a completely unacceptable amount of leverage for your main enemy to have over your national security infrastructure. This isn’t some mindless Elon bashing post, I’m presenting this as an actual honest to god problem for natsec.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - TMWNN 4y ago
        >I can’t tell if you’re being cute and trying to carve out some exemption here when it’s clear what I’m talking about I think but let’s operate on good faith. Translation: "I think you're committing wrongthink to be asking such a question, but I'll magnanimously say 'let's operate on good faith'". >The owner with an 80% voting control of the company has had some very serious issues in judgement lately not limited to the Twitter fiasco Ah yes, the world's wealthiest man has invested 20% of his net wealth in something that may or may not work out. Proof that he is a danger to national security!!!1!!11!!!!! PS - Two questions to ponder: Q: Wasn't Twitter supposed to have collapsed and died like a month ago? A: Yes. Q: Isn't Twitter functioning apparently quite well during the current mega world event known as the FIFA World Cup? A: Yes. >but has also made a number of public moves that were very friendly towards what the US has called their biggest national security threat repeatedly for the past half decade or longer. Oh, good grief. Musk said that Ukraine might have to give up land to end the war with Russia. A) A negotiated settlement is how 90% of wars in world history have ended, and B) such a settlement has always been the most likely scenario for ending the current war. Maybe it'll be a formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, maybe it'll also include parts of eastern Ukraine. Now, maybe Ukraine's recent successes on the ground will let it regain control over all of its territory, maybe even Crimea. I hope that happens, but (again, even with the recent pushback of Russian lines) that still remains a relatively unlikely outcome. >This isn’t some mindless Elon bashing post, I’m presenting this as an actual honest to god problem for natsec. There is nothing wrong, from a legal or moral perspective, in Musk publicly stating what he said. He is an American and the US is not actually a combatant in the war. Musk is free to say anything he wants, and those who immediately claim that anything short of demanding "Ukrainian forces roll into Moscow and Zelensky personally swings the axe that cuts off Putin's head" = Russian sympathizer/"problem with natsec" just make themselves look stupid.
    - s5300 4y ago
      Musk has had some trouble recently, but I thought it was pretty well known that Shotwell pretty much runs the show at SpaceX & has for some time. I may be completely incorrect, but I think Musk is mostly just a mascot/figurehead/hype-man for SpaceX & has been for a bit. Regarding most of the day-day stuff that is, he probably still has some input on very long term matters. But I think if Musk were to die in a mysterious Tesla fire tomorrow, not much would change for the worse at the company for quite some time.
      - mhoad 4y ago
        I’m specifically referring to the 80% voting rights he has at SpaceX.
      - dotnet00 4y ago
        It is well known that Shotwell runs the business side and Musk runs the engineering/R&D side. Eg. Falcon Heavy was almost cancelled because the engineering side turned out to make it more expensive to develop than expected (with the original plan for fuel crossfeed) and F9 had improved so much that it ate up most of FH's potential market. So Musk's preference was to cancel it. But because it was favorable for the business side (I think they might've even already bid on some launches with it by then), Shotwell pushed for them to keep it, which is how we got the current variation of FH which just has F9s with a reinforced center-core.
        bryanlarsen 4y ago
        It wasn't important to the business side -- they'd only sold a couple launches or so. But Shotwell convinced Elon that it was important to their reputation. Musk has since cratered his, but Shotwell's is intact.
        dotnet00 4y ago
        I feel like that's nitpicking, when the company's reputation is obviously a business issue.
  - caconym_ 4y ago
    Musk has been a complete trainwreck for years, and it hasn't stopped SpaceX from winning a bunch of government (including defense) contracts, nor---crucially---from delivering on them. The recent Twitter stuff has gotten a lot of airplay, but I'm not sure what's supposed to have happened that would fundamentally change the equation.
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Actually SpaceX's first contract and the name 'Falcon' came from the DARPA Falcon Project https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    I believe I read in Eric Berger's book Liftoff that the name came from the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. But your theory has some merit since the timing of the Falcon project's award to SpaceX could be coming about the same time that they named the rocket. Both theories may be right. The Falcon project grew out of the Reagan era Star Wars project, so it's likely a backronym.
    - georgeg23 4y ago
      You nailed it... Dig deeper and the story only gets more interesting.
- 7e 4y ago
  That's unfortunate.
influxmoment 4y ago
Are govt bureaucrats LARPing about posting left wing conspiracy about emerald mines on twitter? I doubt they pay any attention

foobarqux 4y ago

They rebranded Starlink so they can sell it to the government for 10x the price.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Governments want it 100x more than the public, so they might be under charging.
- wmf 4y ago
  NASA has already saved billions by using SpaceX instead of legacy vendors so they're definitely charging less than they could.

devrand 4y ago

> Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. I don't understand this marketing. How would they possibly being doing E2E encryption? This is the wrong layer to be applying encryption at anyway.

wmf 4y ago
Clearly they're using a different definition of end. All wireless and shared-media (DOCSIS, PON) protocols should be encrypted out of respect for customer metadata privacy.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Encryption should be at a higher layer, preferably from the end client to end the server, to provide any security. To be fair, the fact that the data is being transmitted wirelessly does mean that encryption is 100% required or else someone could easily spy on you.
  - tetrep 4y ago
    Wireless has nothing to do with it, you always need encryption: https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-here-nsa-smiley/ https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her...

candiddevmike 4y ago

This can't be more secure than running encryption over cell right?

carl_dr 4y ago
> Starshield launches satellites with sensing payloads and delivers processed data directly to the user. It seems to be more about low cost sensors in space than what consumer-level Starlink is used for.

poszlem 4y ago

One thing that people miss is the fact that in the event of any type of a "big" war between superpowers satellites are going to be heavily affected and probably one of the first targets. Having something like this, having that kind of speed in deploying new satellites is going to be a superpower to the USA.

rlt 4y ago
Kessler Syndrome notwithstanding.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Such low orbits should prevent that being a long term problem. I also wonder how much more difficult it is to target satellites going this fast than say the one China destroyed a few years ago?
  - popinman322 4y ago
    Seems like speed wouldn't be that much of a problem when the satellites all move in a highly predictable manner.
  - theteapot 4y ago
    What's basis for thinking it would be much harder? Still has highly predictable trajectory. Recall the US destroy one a few months later in 2008 with a modified SM3, from a boat. That sat was in a ~ 244km×261km decaying orbit -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost.
  - bagels 4y ago
    If the thing China shot was on orbit, there isn't much difference in orbital velocity vs other objects. If it's below ~7.8km/s it's suborbital, and if it's above 11km/s it's on escape trajectory.
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    > Such low orbits should prevent that being a long term problem. Wouldn't a military power be more willing to trigger Kessler syndrome for 5 years than 500?

KerrAvon 4y ago

trusting a dude who is compromised by interests in China up to his eyeballs to do anything involving national security seems unwise

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Don't forget the rampant drug abuse.
tendiesfortwo 4y ago
literally can't make who you are talking about
- dmix 4y ago
  They don't have a fake Russian Kompromat file to justify the foreign boogieman narrative this time around but they'll believe it if it suits their ideology ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that he interfered in US elections. And there was plenty of evidence other than the file that indicates that it happened.
    - dmix 4y ago
      Yes I remember the study showing the total amount of ad spending by Prigozhin was <$1 million. In a campaign where both sides spent $1 billion, not to mention the priceless wall-to-wall coverage the global media provided worth far more than an additional $1B. But yes, I'm sure Russia did enough to sway the election... All of the social media campaigns attributed to Russian agencies weren't even backing one party. They hit both sides. All they cared about was generating social conflict.
      - threeseed 4y ago
        I am glad we can both agree that Russia did in fact interfere in the election.

gz5 4y ago

Low-orbit data centers become interesting in this context. Yes, problems with radiation, solar flares and traditional ops. But 'free' power, real estate (1) and cooling. (1) Low orbit real estate may be a future battleground?

readams 4y ago
Cooling is actually a big problem in space.
coolspot 4y ago
There is no free cooling in the space. It is actually harder to cool something in the space than in Sahara, because you have no air that you can dump energy into. Your only choice is to radiate heat away, which is very inefficient.
- gz5 4y ago
  agree you would radiate it away - but why does that need to be inefficient at scale (understood there are upfront costs)? meanwhile cooling is a huge expense in terrestrial DCs. i am not an expert - happy to hear more expert opinions which is why i wrote the parent comment - but on a quick google search it seems folks are working on these designs: https://orbitsedge.com/satframe https://orbitsedge.com/satframe
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Cooling in space is easy -- it just requires massive radiators. And mass is expensive in space.

credit_guy 4y ago

Sooner or later the US Government will realize the Starship will be a good launching vehicle for the ballistic missile defense. Currently a midcourse ground base interceptor booster [1] weighs more than 20 tons, costs a few tens of millions, and carries one single kill vehicle [2] that weighs about 64 kg. A single Starship would be able to carry more than 1000 such kill vehicles. If Russia launches a few hundred missiles at the US, a couple Starships could send multiple kill vehicle against each Russian warhead. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle

plazmatic 4y ago
georgeg23 4y ago
SpaceX already has contracts for a Missile Defense Shield (w/ SDA, now part of Space Force). Govt program was started by Mike Griffin-- one of the early founders of Strategic Defense Initiative, space kill vehicles, and SpaceX itself. His history with Elon is fascinating. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- kidme5 4y ago
  I thought SpaceX is just building thermal imaging satellites for tracking ballistic missiles, but agree it's obvious just the first step to orbital weapons for interception. Yes that's the plan. Sounds like Biden Admin wasn't a fan of Star Wars and has been slowing Elon down.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Correct
pclmulqdq 4y ago
It has to get off the ground first.

amatecha 4y ago

Huh. "Secured Satellite Network For Government Entities" .. which, or how many, entities? You can only offer your service to so many before you hit those inevitable political barriers. I think they're already firmly cemented in the "US and allies" market, so the broadly-worded marketing text is a bit funny to me.

jvanderbot 4y ago
"Government entities" usually referrs to US gov subcontractors, military, intelligence, etc etc.. Not 'an entity with a gov' and not 'an entity of a government'

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Scoundreller 4y ago

Sounds extremely profitable. While you can end-to-end encrypt things so it all looks like noise, you'll want to send nonsense data constantly just to make sure you can hide real data when you need to without tipping anyone off. Like an HF numbers station, but you have to pay for every transmission.

ilyt 4y ago

> Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements. aka "We put TLS in SPAAAACE!" ? I kinda doubt government needs help in such basic things as "talking over unsecure channel"...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hx833001 4y ago

Is Elon Musk a DoD project?

georgeg23 4y ago
Yes and Michael D Griffin is his handler. Surprising few talk about it given the evidence out there... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- ScaredGospodin 4y ago
  A scary thought, but thankfully not likely. From Ashlee Vance's biography: >At SpaceX, Musk and the company’s top executives had spent most of December in a state of fear. According to reports in the press, SpaceX, the onetime front-runner for the large NASA contract, had suddenly lost favor with the space agency. Michael Griffin, who had once almost been a cofounder of SpaceX, was the head of NASA and had turned on Musk. Griffin did not care for Musk’s aggressive business tactics, seeing him as borderline unethical. Others have suggested that Griffin ended up being jealous of Musk and SpaceX. It seems to just be two space nerds doing their thing, nothing more: >The collection of talent attending these sessions in 2001 was impressive. Scientists showed up from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL. James Cameron appeared, lending some celebrity to the affair. Also attending was Michael Griffin, whose academic credentials were spectacular and included degrees in aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, and applied physics. Griffin had worked for the CIA’s venture capital arm called In-Q-Tel, at NASA, and at JPL and was just in the process of leaving Orbital Sciences Corporation, a maker of satellites and spacecraft, where he had been chief technical officer and the general manager of the space systems group. It could be argued that no one on the planet knew more about the realities of getting things into space than Griffin, and he was working for Musk as space thinker in chief. (Four years later, in 2005, Griffin took over as head of NASA.) >Musk had come to Russia filled with optimism about putting on a great show for mankind and was now leaving exasperated and disappointed by human nature. The Russians were the only ones with rockets that could possibly fit within Musk’s budget. “It was a long drive,” Cantrell said. “We sat there in silence looking at the Russian peasants shopping in the snow.” The somber mood lingered all the way to the plane, until the drink cart arrived. “You always feel particularly good when the wheels lift off in Moscow,” Cantrell said. “It’s like, ‘My God. I made it.’ So, Griffin and I got drinks and clinked our glasses.” Musk sat in the row in front of them, typing on his computer. “We’re thinking, Fucking nerd. What can he be doing now?” At which point Musk wheeled around and flashed a spreadsheet he’d created. “Hey, guys,” he said, “I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” Griffin and Cantrell had downed a couple of drinks by this time and were too deflated to entertain a fantasy. They knew all too well the stories of gung-ho millionaires who thought they could conquer space only to lose their fortunes. Just the year before, Andrew Beal, a real estate and finance whiz in Texas, folded his aerospace company after having poured millions into a massive test site. “We’re thinking, Yeah, you and whose fucking army,” Cantrell said. “But, Elon says, ‘No, I’m serious. I have this spreadsheet.’” Musk passed his laptop over to Griffin and Cantrell, and they were dumbfounded. The document detailed the costs of the materials needed to build, assemble, and launch a rocket. According to Musk’s calculations, he could undercut existing launch companies by building a modest-sized rocket that would cater to a part of the market that specialized in carrying smaller satellites and research payloads to space. The spreadsheet also laid out the hypothetical performance characteristics of the rocket in fairly impressive detail. “I said, ‘Elon, where did you get this?’” Cantrell said. >In April 2002, Musk fully abandoned the publicity-stunt idea and committed to building a commercial space venture. He pulled aside Cantrell, Griffin, Mueller, and Chris Thompson, an aerospace engineer at Boeing, and told the group, “I want to do this company. If you guys are in, let’s do it.” (Griffin wanted to join but ended up declining when Musk rebuffed his request to live on the East Coast, and Cantrell only stuck around for a few months after this meeting, seeing the venture as too risky.)

neatze 4y ago

At fist I thought this would something similar to band 14 on LTE networks, but seems like this is not the case, or at least they are not saying anything about QOS. Not sure what they mean by encryption, since DOD has there own crypto chips with classified algorithms.

rzimmerman 4y ago

It sounds like they’re trying to sell two things: 1. Hosted payloads, where DoD entities pay to have something (telescope, Sigint equipment, whatever) strapped on to a starlink satellite with comms all figured out for them. Probably a good deal if your stuff fits on that big flat satellite. SpaceX starlink launches do sway the launch market significantly enough (offering a launch at half othe price or less, beholden to starlink orbits) that it can seem worth it. 2. A government friendly starlink service which has security features like hardware managed encryption. The cynic in me wonders if there just isn’t enough market for commercial starlink. But honestly it makes sense to sell the empty edges, kilograms, and bandwidth to the government. They have a lot of money.

georgeg23 4y ago
It's part of this program, https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan-s-star-wars-trump-calls-missile-defenses-would-blast-warheads-sky https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan... More on Wikipedia: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
- mlindner 4y ago
  That doesn't seem related. That's 3 years ago.
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    As the wikipedia article says (SpaceNews reference), the first SpaceX element for the program is finally launching this month (Dec 2022). But yes, it was first announced under the Trump administration in 2019 when the Science article came out.
  - kidme5 4y ago
    Yes they're related. This is SpaceX making public (to a partial extent) what they have long been doing for the Space Development Agency (a Mike Griffin government program closely aligned with Starlink). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

greesil 4y ago

SpaceX is so cool. Why does Elon have to be the way he is?

georgeg23 4y ago
Unfortunately Elon always has this in the plans from day 1 with Mike Griffin.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Meh, history is rife with people on the leading edge that have a tinge of madness. It’s probably required since they are extreme outliers in behavior otherwise.
Palpatineli 4y ago
As compared the the sane management of, say, Boeing? The whole idea of SpaceX was madness back in the 2010s

TruthWillHurt 4y ago

"As a small time dictator I often find it difficult to terminate internet services to citizens of my country while still enabling it to my militias for effective opression. Now with Starshield - I can!"

7e 4y ago

How much of SpaceX's technology contains components sourced from abroad, and/or China? My bet is that it's enough to kill any national interest in defense applications.

7e 4y ago

The DoD seems well on its way towards having two more such networks (augmenting the one it already has in existence), without the involvement of SpaceX at all: https://spacenews.com/u-s-to-ramp-up-spending-on-classified-communications-satellites/ https://spacenews.com/u-s-to-ramp-up-spending-on-classified-.... Maybe this program was spun up in an attempt to grab those sweet government dollars in 2025.

rektide 4y ago
Thay seemed to mainly cover specific efforts & contracts. All Space Force related. Personally I feel like this is over narrow. They seem likenthey are just trying to make am acquisition, spend money to have some shit to be in control of. I feel like DARPA has a much broader & more long-term real effort underway, not about hardware to buy but about how hardware communicates, networks, what things do. Space Based Adaptive Communication Networks (Space BACN) seems to be the real effort afoot right now, IMO, to more broadly define how communication works in space. There's, as I understand, some fairly popular command & control buses for satellites. But this Space BACN seems like a much broader networking initiative, that this Starlink project seems like a proprietary competitor to. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33307864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33307864

rektide 4y ago

Basically proving the Piketty theory of space, that all space efforts are eventually taken over & subsumed by military-governmental big dollar concerns. Unsurprising but definitely one giant leap for SpaceX away from being their own masters, away from being explorers & a venture/adventurers, & towards being a key element of the military-industrial complex. One perhaps with much less congressional hooks than previous M-I-C Complex.

nnx 4y ago

``` EARTH OBSERVATION Starshield launches satellites with sensing payloads and delivers processed data directly to the user. ``` Never heard of this capability for Starlink before. What kind of sensing payloads can it do? Imaging? Thermal? Since Starlink is low altitude and high density, it would allow almost real-time high-precision surveillance?

abudabi123 4y ago
Starlink is growing a lot of headroom. "delivers processed data directly" is so skynet A.I. Looks like Amazon's Kuiper [1] constellation has a longer catchup to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems

rapjr9 4y ago

So far I haven't seen anyone mention the big deal here, that Starshield is offering to take over ANY satellites communications entirely using lasers. A customer no longer has to include a radio system on their satellite (unless that is the whole point of the satellite), just a small laser and gimbal. This seems like a major savings in weight and power. Send your satellite up and join the existing network and you get communication to your other satellites in orbit (via laser), to the ground (via RF), and to aircraft (via RF), worldwide. All of it point-to-point which makes it very difficult to interrupt or intercept. This is a space internet, an internet for things in space, though only open to wealthy customers who can afford to launch things into orbit. I quote: INTEROPERABILITY Starlink's inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which is the only communications laser operating at scale in orbit today, can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable incorporation into the Starshield network. End quote. Depending on how large the weight and power savings are this could cause a proliferation of satellites. It may require satellites to be in an orbit near that of the Starlink satellites, or maybe not. Depends on what angle range the laser gimbals cover. I would guess each Starlink satellite with lasers already has multiple lasers plus backup lasers, so dedicating the spare ones to providing communication for other satellites might be easy. The laser/gimbals may already be time shared to spread wear evenly and make sure they are working.

dotnet00 4y ago
Practically speaking it doesn't really eliminate the need for a radio system entirely, since you would still want a control interface that isn't dependent on such a sensitive technology (ie you would want to be able to fix the satellite if some software or tracking error makes it unable to accurately target a Starlink satellite). What this does mean is that the bandwidth restrictions for transmitting larger amounts of data become a bit looser and become much harder for adversaries to detect and track.
- rapjr9 4y ago
  That makes sense. The radio system could be a much lower power, low baud rate system though, enough to transmit commands and get a little telemetry but much smaller than would be required for constant communication with Earth. This may also be relevant: "NRL Engineers Ready Innovative Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) Payload for Launch" https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3214111/nrl-engineers-ready-innovative-robotic-servicing-of-geosynchronous-satellites-r/ https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3214111/nrl-engi... Starshield as a "space network as a service" and robots as a "repair service for space infrastructure". Seems like together these could make doing things in space cheaper and easier. Both would require very well defined standards.

TheDesolate0 4y ago