7 ms·

Navigating Starlink's FCC Paper Trail

120 points by DanAtC 2y ago

Culonavirus 2y ago
> they’re clearly not the kind of company that takes people on factory tours to proudly show off how they make and run things ??? SpaceX is certainly the most open space corp out there, by a mile. I mean they're still a private for profit company that has to follow ITAR rules, but compared to their competition, they're extremely open. Anyone following Starship development can see that. Just the fact that they even gave a tour (twice!) to the Everyday Astronaut, with Raptor closeups and everything... Imagine Blue Origin or Boeing doing something like that. Yea, right.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Boeing gives multiple daily tours in their Everett Washington based airplane manufacturing facility. They have a public museum next to the facility which is where you buy tickets to the tour and wait for the tour shuttle. I’ve taken the tour and it’s cool! That said I’ve not heard of any tours for their space manufacturing facility, though they might offer them.
  - wildzzz 2y ago
    Space manufacturing centers generally offer tours but not for the general public. It's more like a friends and family sort of deal. Even my uncle got to go inside Endeavor in the early 2000s as he was friends with a QA manager of the shuttle program.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    Satellites and spaceships are classified as weapons, tours that actually showed anything to the general public without some solid verification would be a serious crime. You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology.
    - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
      When I was a kid my dad took me to “take your kid to work day” at Lockheed. I think they hid the secret stuff somewhere where visitors wouldn’t find them.
      - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
        Mar-el-Lago?
      - InitialLastName 2y ago
        Unlike politicians, the military + contractors take their responsibilities re. controlled information relatively seriously. The normal practice is to not have anything that is clearance-controlled sitting out anyway (it's usually stored behind extra levels of security scaled to the secrecy), and to control access to that information on a fairly granular level. Visitors to those facilities (of a variety of clearance backgrounds) are regular, so anything beyond ITAR (which you, as the child of an ITAR-accessible employee, and thus likely a US citizen/green card holder would have had access to) is going to be locked up by default.
      - HumblyTossed 2y ago
        Having grown up in North FL, I've been on a few military ships for friends and family day. This is pretty much exactly what they do. You're only allowed where they tell you to be and they have people watching to make sure you follow the rules. If anyone gets the chance to go out on a carrier, do so. Pretty neat stuff.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - colechristensen 2y ago
        I interned at a Lockheed facility (which is now a nice strip mall). The classified things are behind closed doors or in your computers. The labs where you'd work on classified equipment were behind coded doors, so they just wouldn't take anybody there. They really checked too. One time I was waiting for my friend to finish something in a non-classified lab that still had the code on the door. I was literally falling asleep for a couple of hours doing nothing so I decided not to charge those hours. A few weeks later my manager invited me into his office to reprimand me for not charging the hours because they audited the doors and knew where I was for how long. I got overtime because they tracked what was going on so well.
  - a-dub 2y ago
    too bad they've been kneecapped by the business casual crowd...
    - nvy 2y ago
      >the business casual crowd... The what now?
      - dullcrisp 2y ago
        The Khaki Pants Mafia, The No. 2 Pencil Pushers, Auntie Plaid, you know…
        HPsquared 2y ago
        I don't think fashion has much to do with it.
        nvy 2y ago
        I have no idea to which group you're referring.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Airplane manufacture has a different export rating than spacecraft manufacture, thus (probably) the different posture re: tours. For example, at JPL (where I used to work / give tours), there's a multi-day lead time for background checks on visitors if they intend to enter any location not pre-cleared for tours. E.g., looking at equipment or actual manufacturing.
- bahmboo 2y ago
  He is speaking about Starlink, not SpaceX. The whole sentence wasn't phrased correctly but that's what he meant.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Starlink gives factory tours as part of the interview process. A guy I know who didn’t even get hired saw the sat assembly line in the Seattle area.
    - freedomben 2y ago
      How bad was the interview process up until then? If it's not too bad, it might be worth interviewing to get the tour...
      - kortilla 2y ago
        I think he said it was pretty similar to a tech company test (4-5 on-site interviews).
- rblatz 2y ago
  I’ve toured the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, it was pretty cool. Was inches away from a guy cranking a wrench on a previously flown rocket engine, it was extremely cool.
  - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    ...Two cool, dude, two cool.
- russdill 2y ago
  Its actually ULA that tends to be the most transparent. It just doesn't show as much as they aren't doing nearly as much. But yes, Blue Origin is strangely secretive.
  - esskay 2y ago
    Gotta be secretive when you've got nothing to show. Keeps the illusion of progress in place.
    - engineer_22 2y ago
      speculation
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  True. But why should they be that open? I imagine SpaceX has quite a bit of intellectual property that is non trivial that they don't necessarily want to just hand over to their competition. They are doing quite a few cool things with radios in star link that I imagine are very valuable technology. I watched the latest interviews of Everyday Astronaut over the weekend. Very nice deep dive in the current state of star ship and all the tech involved with that. But there were clearly a few details that Elon wasn't ready to discuss. Which is understandable. As for the question at the end of the article. The FCC is a federal institution with jurisdiction in the US. SpaceX operates a global network of satellites that covers most of the planet. So, going through the ITU seems like it's not a strange move. They'll need approval from more than just the FCC to operate those 30K satellites, which presumably is what those large nice Starships that they are producing rapidly now are going to be delivering to orbit.
  - detritus 2y ago
    If my memory serves, there were at least a couple of blurred/pixellated details in that. What I also noticed is a change in Musk from early Everyday Astronaut interviews, where rather than tackling the mention of competing technologies or methodologies witha reasoned argument as to why they weren't going that route, he'd clamp up and a few minutes later respond clearly slighted by the proposition. Musk has always been a bit of a hard listen, but I found this last EA interview really hard to get through.
    - golol 2y ago
      I think Musk just wanted to make the point that there are many ways to achieve rapid and reliable reusability but they have chosen this one, they are laser focused on making it work, and they know they can make it work. So other ways of doing things are actually not important to him right now.
    - modeless 2y ago
      The blurring is for ITAR compliance. It's not SpaceX policy, it's government policy. My impression from the latest interview was that Elon has not been as directly involved in SpaceX technical decisions since buying Twitter and spending a bunch of time on that instead. So he was less able to engage on technical questions.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  ULA/Tory Bruno has definitely given tours to YouTubers as well
  - apendleton 2y ago
    As have Rocket Lab, Firefly, Astra (RIP probably), Stoke, Relativity, Spin Launch if that counts, and probably others.
- cbanek 2y ago
  When I worked there, you could take your family on a tour (if they were a US Citizen). There was no problem as long as people didn't touch anything on the factory floor. But things may have changed.
- water-your-self 2y ago
  Spacex gave me a factory tour when I was applying so I have an anecdote in direct counter
- AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
  In fairness, ULA has done that too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw Also literally everything Destin/SmarterEveryDay puts online is worth watching.
metadat 2y ago
> One wonders whether SpaceX’s recent ITU application through Tonga’s authorities for a constellation with nearly 30,000 satellites represents an attempt to circumvent FCC scrutiny by launching under a flag of convenience. That Tongan Space Program - they've claimed a lot of spot reservations but haven't launched many satellites. Their budget is miniscule, less than $10m as of the early 2000s. If I'm reading correctly, they only have a single satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongasat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongasat
- adolph 2y ago
  Yes, that was an interesting coda to the story, closing with an example of the opening: The rules of the game aren’t published anywhere, but the aims seem to be quite clear — as an established geostationary satellite provider fearing that SpaceX may be eating your lunch, your goal is to throw as many spanners into the works as you can, usually cleverly disguised as technical objections, to delay and suppress. SpaceX’s goal, on the other hand, seems to be to make you spend as much money on lawyers and other experts as they can, by getting you to comment on system alternatives and options they subsequently abandon.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mNovak 2y ago
One filing type they didn't mention, is SES-STA (Satellite Earth Station Special Temporal Authority) -- aka a temporary experimental license for user or gateway equipment. This is where the juice is, i.e. if they're testing out new models that haven't been announced yet, and if you're lucky includes some technical specs. But they're hard to filter through because they file so many for uninteresting things too.
alexpotato 2y ago
> The FCC website would be a rabbit warren even if there was no SpaceX A relative of mine is in a dispute with another party regarding real estate. I mention this here b/c a big part of that dispute has involved pulling data from government websites (Specifically city property records). The below is all true: - the amount of useful information in government websites is astounding - the UX of these websites is awful - given the above, if you are good at navigating these websites (or can automate the data gathering) it really can be a superpower.

120 points by DanAtC 2y ago

> they’re clearly not the kind of company that takes people on factory tours to proudly show off how they make and run things ??? SpaceX is certainly the most open space corp out there, by a mile. I mean they're still a private for profit company that has to follow ITAR rules, but compared to their competition, they're extremely open. Anyone following Starship development can see that. Just the fact that they even gave a tour (twice!) to the Everyday Astronaut, with Raptor closeups and everything... Imagine Blue Origin or Boeing doing something like that. Yea, right.

TaylorAlexander 2y ago
Boeing gives multiple daily tours in their Everett Washington based airplane manufacturing facility. They have a public museum next to the facility which is where you buy tickets to the tour and wait for the tour shuttle. I’ve taken the tour and it’s cool! That said I’ve not heard of any tours for their space manufacturing facility, though they might offer them.
- wildzzz 2y ago
  Space manufacturing centers generally offer tours but not for the general public. It's more like a friends and family sort of deal. Even my uncle got to go inside Endeavor in the early 2000s as he was friends with a QA manager of the shuttle program.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  Satellites and spaceships are classified as weapons, tours that actually showed anything to the general public without some solid verification would be a serious crime. You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology.
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    When I was a kid my dad took me to “take your kid to work day” at Lockheed. I think they hid the secret stuff somewhere where visitors wouldn’t find them.
    - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
      Mar-el-Lago?
    - InitialLastName 2y ago
      Unlike politicians, the military + contractors take their responsibilities re. controlled information relatively seriously. The normal practice is to not have anything that is clearance-controlled sitting out anyway (it's usually stored behind extra levels of security scaled to the secrecy), and to control access to that information on a fairly granular level. Visitors to those facilities (of a variety of clearance backgrounds) are regular, so anything beyond ITAR (which you, as the child of an ITAR-accessible employee, and thus likely a US citizen/green card holder would have had access to) is going to be locked up by default.
    - HumblyTossed 2y ago
      Having grown up in North FL, I've been on a few military ships for friends and family day. This is pretty much exactly what they do. You're only allowed where they tell you to be and they have people watching to make sure you follow the rules. If anyone gets the chance to go out on a carrier, do so. Pretty neat stuff.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - colechristensen 2y ago
      I interned at a Lockheed facility (which is now a nice strip mall). The classified things are behind closed doors or in your computers. The labs where you'd work on classified equipment were behind coded doors, so they just wouldn't take anybody there. They really checked too. One time I was waiting for my friend to finish something in a non-classified lab that still had the code on the door. I was literally falling asleep for a couple of hours doing nothing so I decided not to charge those hours. A few weeks later my manager invited me into his office to reprimand me for not charging the hours because they audited the doors and knew where I was for how long. I got overtime because they tracked what was going on so well.
- a-dub 2y ago
  too bad they've been kneecapped by the business casual crowd...
  - nvy 2y ago
    >the business casual crowd... The what now?
    - dullcrisp 2y ago
      The Khaki Pants Mafia, The No. 2 Pencil Pushers, Auntie Plaid, you know…
      - HPsquared 2y ago
        I don't think fashion has much to do with it.
      - nvy 2y ago
        I have no idea to which group you're referring.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Airplane manufacture has a different export rating than spacecraft manufacture, thus (probably) the different posture re: tours. For example, at JPL (where I used to work / give tours), there's a multi-day lead time for background checks on visitors if they intend to enter any location not pre-cleared for tours. E.g., looking at equipment or actual manufacturing.
bahmboo 2y ago
He is speaking about Starlink, not SpaceX. The whole sentence wasn't phrased correctly but that's what he meant.
- kortilla 2y ago
  Starlink gives factory tours as part of the interview process. A guy I know who didn’t even get hired saw the sat assembly line in the Seattle area.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    How bad was the interview process up until then? If it's not too bad, it might be worth interviewing to get the tour...
    - kortilla 2y ago
      I think he said it was pretty similar to a tech company test (4-5 on-site interviews).
rblatz 2y ago
I’ve toured the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, it was pretty cool. Was inches away from a guy cranking a wrench on a previously flown rocket engine, it was extremely cool.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  ...Two cool, dude, two cool.
russdill 2y ago
Its actually ULA that tends to be the most transparent. It just doesn't show as much as they aren't doing nearly as much. But yes, Blue Origin is strangely secretive.
- esskay 2y ago
  Gotta be secretive when you've got nothing to show. Keeps the illusion of progress in place.
  - engineer_22 2y ago
    speculation
jillesvangurp 2y ago
True. But why should they be that open? I imagine SpaceX has quite a bit of intellectual property that is non trivial that they don't necessarily want to just hand over to their competition. They are doing quite a few cool things with radios in star link that I imagine are very valuable technology. I watched the latest interviews of Everyday Astronaut over the weekend. Very nice deep dive in the current state of star ship and all the tech involved with that. But there were clearly a few details that Elon wasn't ready to discuss. Which is understandable. As for the question at the end of the article. The FCC is a federal institution with jurisdiction in the US. SpaceX operates a global network of satellites that covers most of the planet. So, going through the ITU seems like it's not a strange move. They'll need approval from more than just the FCC to operate those 30K satellites, which presumably is what those large nice Starships that they are producing rapidly now are going to be delivering to orbit.
- detritus 2y ago
  If my memory serves, there were at least a couple of blurred/pixellated details in that. What I also noticed is a change in Musk from early Everyday Astronaut interviews, where rather than tackling the mention of competing technologies or methodologies witha reasoned argument as to why they weren't going that route, he'd clamp up and a few minutes later respond clearly slighted by the proposition. Musk has always been a bit of a hard listen, but I found this last EA interview really hard to get through.
  - golol 2y ago
    I think Musk just wanted to make the point that there are many ways to achieve rapid and reliable reusability but they have chosen this one, they are laser focused on making it work, and they know they can make it work. So other ways of doing things are actually not important to him right now.
  - modeless 2y ago
    The blurring is for ITAR compliance. It's not SpaceX policy, it's government policy. My impression from the latest interview was that Elon has not been as directly involved in SpaceX technical decisions since buying Twitter and spending a bunch of time on that instead. So he was less able to engage on technical questions.
Rebelgecko 2y ago
ULA/Tory Bruno has definitely given tours to YouTubers as well
- apendleton 2y ago
  As have Rocket Lab, Firefly, Astra (RIP probably), Stoke, Relativity, Spin Launch if that counts, and probably others.
cbanek 2y ago
When I worked there, you could take your family on a tour (if they were a US Citizen). There was no problem as long as people didn't touch anything on the factory floor. But things may have changed.
water-your-self 2y ago
Spacex gave me a factory tour when I was applying so I have an anecdote in direct counter
AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
In fairness, ULA has done that too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw Also literally everything Destin/SmarterEveryDay puts online is worth watching.

metadat 2y ago

> One wonders whether SpaceX’s recent ITU application through Tonga’s authorities for a constellation with nearly 30,000 satellites represents an attempt to circumvent FCC scrutiny by launching under a flag of convenience. That Tongan Space Program - they've claimed a lot of spot reservations but haven't launched many satellites. Their budget is miniscule, less than $10m as of the early 2000s. If I'm reading correctly, they only have a single satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongasat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongasat

adolph 2y ago
Yes, that was an interesting coda to the story, closing with an example of the opening: The rules of the game aren’t published anywhere, but the aims seem to be quite clear — as an established geostationary satellite provider fearing that SpaceX may be eating your lunch, your goal is to throw as many spanners into the works as you can, usually cleverly disguised as technical objections, to delay and suppress. SpaceX’s goal, on the other hand, seems to be to make you spend as much money on lawyers and other experts as they can, by getting you to comment on system alternatives and options they subsequently abandon.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mNovak 2y ago

One filing type they didn't mention, is SES-STA (Satellite Earth Station Special Temporal Authority) -- aka a temporary experimental license for user or gateway equipment. This is where the juice is, i.e. if they're testing out new models that haven't been announced yet, and if you're lucky includes some technical specs. But they're hard to filter through because they file so many for uninteresting things too.

alexpotato 2y ago

> The FCC website would be a rabbit warren even if there was no SpaceX A relative of mine is in a dispute with another party regarding real estate. I mention this here b/c a big part of that dispute has involved pulling data from government websites (Specifically city property records). The below is all true: - the amount of useful information in government websites is astounding - the UX of these websites is awful - given the above, if you are good at navigating these websites (or can automate the data gathering) it really can be a superpower.