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Why do we have to launch tens of thousands or even more satellites?

by squigz 1y ago

mlindner 1y ago
"We" don't have to launch anything at all. SpaceX needs to launch enough satellites to satisfy customer demand for their constellation. In general the trend actually is that SpaceX is launching fewer but larger satellites (initially they were doing 60 satellites per launch, but they made them larger and now launch 24-28 satellites depending on the orbit inclination.
JonChesterfield 1y ago
This internet fad seems to be hanging around and bandwidth is probably linear in satellite count.
jocaal 1y ago
Why do we need radio telescopes. Satellite communications are infinitely more useful for people on earth than some research papers about things light-years away
- voxlax 1y ago
  Yes, but if it hadn't been for the efforts of visionary scientists at NASA trying to reach the stars, there would be no means of putting those satellites into orbit.
  - brookst 1y ago
    This is the but I don’t see the relevance. Is there an argument / position there or just an observation?
    - flufluflufluffy 1y ago
      The point is basic science (e.g. radio astronomy) is, if not necessary, then highly desirable, because it can lead to unimaginable advancements in humanity (or in a country’s technological and military capabilities if that’s how you think).
      - brookst 1y ago
        Sure, and industry is also valuable and contributes to progress. I don’t think it’s useful to say one must always take priority over the other regardless of specifics.
        flufluflufluffy 1y ago
        I don’t think that’s useful either and nobody said that.
- kevindamm 1y ago
  Ironically, those satellites would not be able to communicate effectively without the understanding of relativity that was obtained by looking at things light-years away.
  - jocaal 1y ago
    Einstein developed relativity from mathematical reasoning. A major influence was the michaelson morley experiment, which was solely done on earth. Relativity was developed in the early 1900's and the first radio telescope was made in the 1930's. Also, orbital mechanics uses mostly Newtonian mechanics and the communication of satellites is radio waves which were understood way before einstein. There is no relativity involved. Literally everything you said is factually incorrect.
    - sidewndr46 1y ago
      Einstein developed a theory that includes General relativity and special relativity. Experimental results confirms both of them, with special relativity being the easiest one to understand the consequences of. Without experimental confirmation, neither theory would be valuable.
    - kevindamm 1y ago
      Satellites experience time dilation because of their orbital velocity and gravitational field being significantly different at their altitude. Without accounting for this, the clock drift would become unmanageable and Newtonian models are insufficient to correct for it. You're right that the majority of Einstein's theories were ultimately thought experiments but getting the parameters correct involved a lot of measurements and experimenting, to get to where tech like GPS and StarLink can be accurate. We were also looking at far away stars for centuries before Einstein so that he could have the environment for his ideas to be discussed, which I was including in my phrasing "looking at things light-years away." I wasn't saying it to start an argument, though. I wanted to counter the rather dismal view of "why do we need radio telescopes."
    - madeforhnyo 1y ago
      Communication requires accurate timing. Time dilation occurs between Earth and satellites, a phenomenon that isn't part of Newton mechanics, so relativity is indeed involved.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > Why do we need radio telescopes. Because they provide data that other types of telescopes do not. We have X-ray telescopes. We have infrared telescopes. We have optical telescopes. Also as a bonus, for ground based radio telescopes, we can use them 24/7 instead of waiting for nighttime.
jillesvangurp 1y ago
There is no royal "we" that "has to" do anything. There's just groups of people and countries making use of a shared resource, LEO. Your underlying question as to why some of those are launching satellites is much easier. They are apparently quite useful for things like communication, providing internet, etc. And people are willing to pay for that kind of stuff. It's not more complicated than that.
XorNot 1y ago
If you think the internet is a big deal, you haven't run into how happy the military is to have high bandwidth low-latency communications anywhere on the planet. Starlink is nothing compared to the value Starshield provides, and the civilian product drives costs down. With drone warfare being the next thing, the US probably can't afford to not have a company running a major LEO ISP.
throwaway290 1y ago
If we had a trusted powerful peacekeeper with a track record then we wouldn't need to. But now that masks are off everybody is busy launching dual purpose sats and whoever launches the least can literally get nuked from orbit if they don't do whatever the guy with more sats wants. Then whoever has the most sats will say "that's it guys, LEO is full and you need our approval to launch more" and if someone raises a stink you guessed it, they can get nuked from orbit
- myrmidon 1y ago
  There are no kinetic NOR nuclear orbital strike capabilities for anyone right now, nor is anyone really working on it either, because it just makes zero sense (primarily because suborbital launches achieve the exact same outcome for a tiny fraction of the cost).
  - galangalalgol 1y ago
    Wouldn't having them already up give a lot less warning in a first strike situation? Also redundancy if all your subs, silos, and bomber bases got hit first by their satellites. It doesn't even have to be rational though, combinations of graft and brinkmanship would be enough. It seems really optimistic to think they haven't all already done this.
    - myrmidon 1y ago
      > Wouldn't having them already up give a lot less warning in a first strike situation? Improved first strike capability is worthless íf it isn't crippling, and "devastating enough" first strike capability from orbit is completely unaffordable, and impossible to build up unobserved. Being in orbit is a hindrance more than anything, really, because maintenance becomes ruinously expensive, everything is trivially observable for all your adversaries and you have to align the orbit with your target beforehand, too (which, again, everyone can observe). > It doesn't even have to be rational though, combinations of graft and brinkmanship would be enough. Enough for what? Threatening to nuke some satellites? Because anything else you can do easier, cheaper and on a larger scale from the ground. Why would you bother with nuclear warheads in space when you can just build/maintain like 10 ICBM silos for the same cost?
literalAardvark 1y ago
As others have said, because it's a key military capability. Humanity is what humanity is, not what we wish it'd be, so key military capabilities need to be developed or you get razed by the guy who did develop them. Doubly so now that we've rediscovered that culture is much more resilient than we'd thought, and that different people want Earth to look in different ways. Do we all wish we'd stop ecological collapse instead? Yeah. But it's not going to happen so it's irrelevant.
sneak 1y ago
Because the speed of light is slow and orbital mechanics can’t be changed. To have internet everywhere you need to either accept bad latency (300-500ms round trip) or have closer satellites, which means they’re moving faster, which means you need more of them.
wang_li 1y ago
You should also ask why do we have to do this particular research? Both parties are impacting this particular band of the spectrum. One by excluding others and the other by radiating in those frequencies.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Excluding others only in a way that is not dissimilar to you locking your doors/windows to exclude others from freely entering your house. Yes, some of the premiere radio observatories have radio transmission exclusion zones around them, but they are also typically away from that exclusion zone impacting as few as possible. Starlink on the other hand is not attempting to do anything of the sort. It would be interesting of Starlink could respect a geofence kind of idea so that they stop broadcasting when over certain areas, especially since they do this over geopolitically exclusion zones.

Why do we have to launch tens of thousands or even more satellites?

by squigz 1y ago

Why do we have to launch tens of thousands or even more satellites?

"We" don't have to launch anything at all. SpaceX needs to launch enough satellites to satisfy customer demand for their constellation. In general the trend actually is that SpaceX is launching fewer but larger satellites (initially they were doing 60 satellites per launch, but they made them larger and now launch 24-28 satellites depending on the orbit inclination.

JonChesterfield 1y ago

This internet fad seems to be hanging around and bandwidth is probably linear in satellite count.

jocaal 1y ago

Why do we need radio telescopes. Satellite communications are infinitely more useful for people on earth than some research papers about things light-years away

voxlax 1y ago
Yes, but if it hadn't been for the efforts of visionary scientists at NASA trying to reach the stars, there would be no means of putting those satellites into orbit.
- brookst 1y ago
  This is the but I don’t see the relevance. Is there an argument / position there or just an observation?
  - flufluflufluffy 1y ago
    The point is basic science (e.g. radio astronomy) is, if not necessary, then highly desirable, because it can lead to unimaginable advancements in humanity (or in a country’s technological and military capabilities if that’s how you think).
    - brookst 1y ago
      Sure, and industry is also valuable and contributes to progress. I don’t think it’s useful to say one must always take priority over the other regardless of specifics.
      - flufluflufluffy 1y ago
        I don’t think that’s useful either and nobody said that.
kevindamm 1y ago
Ironically, those satellites would not be able to communicate effectively without the understanding of relativity that was obtained by looking at things light-years away.
- jocaal 1y ago
  Einstein developed relativity from mathematical reasoning. A major influence was the michaelson morley experiment, which was solely done on earth. Relativity was developed in the early 1900's and the first radio telescope was made in the 1930's. Also, orbital mechanics uses mostly Newtonian mechanics and the communication of satellites is radio waves which were understood way before einstein. There is no relativity involved. Literally everything you said is factually incorrect.
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    Einstein developed a theory that includes General relativity and special relativity. Experimental results confirms both of them, with special relativity being the easiest one to understand the consequences of. Without experimental confirmation, neither theory would be valuable.
  - kevindamm 1y ago
    Satellites experience time dilation because of their orbital velocity and gravitational field being significantly different at their altitude. Without accounting for this, the clock drift would become unmanageable and Newtonian models are insufficient to correct for it. You're right that the majority of Einstein's theories were ultimately thought experiments but getting the parameters correct involved a lot of measurements and experimenting, to get to where tech like GPS and StarLink can be accurate. We were also looking at far away stars for centuries before Einstein so that he could have the environment for his ideas to be discussed, which I was including in my phrasing "looking at things light-years away." I wasn't saying it to start an argument, though. I wanted to counter the rather dismal view of "why do we need radio telescopes."
  - madeforhnyo 1y ago
    Communication requires accurate timing. Time dilation occurs between Earth and satellites, a phenomenon that isn't part of Newton mechanics, so relativity is indeed involved.
dylan604 1y ago
> Why do we need radio telescopes. Because they provide data that other types of telescopes do not. We have X-ray telescopes. We have infrared telescopes. We have optical telescopes. Also as a bonus, for ground based radio telescopes, we can use them 24/7 instead of waiting for nighttime.

jillesvangurp 1y ago

There is no royal "we" that "has to" do anything. There's just groups of people and countries making use of a shared resource, LEO. Your underlying question as to why some of those are launching satellites is much easier. They are apparently quite useful for things like communication, providing internet, etc. And people are willing to pay for that kind of stuff. It's not more complicated than that.

XorNot 1y ago

If you think the internet is a big deal, you haven't run into how happy the military is to have high bandwidth low-latency communications anywhere on the planet. Starlink is nothing compared to the value Starshield provides, and the civilian product drives costs down. With drone warfare being the next thing, the US probably can't afford to not have a company running a major LEO ISP.

throwaway290 1y ago

If we had a trusted powerful peacekeeper with a track record then we wouldn't need to. But now that masks are off everybody is busy launching dual purpose sats and whoever launches the least can literally get nuked from orbit if they don't do whatever the guy with more sats wants. Then whoever has the most sats will say "that's it guys, LEO is full and you need our approval to launch more" and if someone raises a stink you guessed it, they can get nuked from orbit

myrmidon 1y ago
There are no kinetic NOR nuclear orbital strike capabilities for anyone right now, nor is anyone really working on it either, because it just makes zero sense (primarily because suborbital launches achieve the exact same outcome for a tiny fraction of the cost).
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  Wouldn't having them already up give a lot less warning in a first strike situation? Also redundancy if all your subs, silos, and bomber bases got hit first by their satellites. It doesn't even have to be rational though, combinations of graft and brinkmanship would be enough. It seems really optimistic to think they haven't all already done this.
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    > Wouldn't having them already up give a lot less warning in a first strike situation? Improved first strike capability is worthless íf it isn't crippling, and "devastating enough" first strike capability from orbit is completely unaffordable, and impossible to build up unobserved. Being in orbit is a hindrance more than anything, really, because maintenance becomes ruinously expensive, everything is trivially observable for all your adversaries and you have to align the orbit with your target beforehand, too (which, again, everyone can observe). > It doesn't even have to be rational though, combinations of graft and brinkmanship would be enough. Enough for what? Threatening to nuke some satellites? Because anything else you can do easier, cheaper and on a larger scale from the ground. Why would you bother with nuclear warheads in space when you can just build/maintain like 10 ICBM silos for the same cost?

literalAardvark 1y ago

As others have said, because it's a key military capability. Humanity is what humanity is, not what we wish it'd be, so key military capabilities need to be developed or you get razed by the guy who did develop them. Doubly so now that we've rediscovered that culture is much more resilient than we'd thought, and that different people want Earth to look in different ways. Do we all wish we'd stop ecological collapse instead? Yeah. But it's not going to happen so it's irrelevant.

sneak 1y ago

Because the speed of light is slow and orbital mechanics can’t be changed. To have internet everywhere you need to either accept bad latency (300-500ms round trip) or have closer satellites, which means they’re moving faster, which means you need more of them.

wang_li 1y ago

You should also ask why do we have to do this particular research? Both parties are impacting this particular band of the spectrum. One by excluding others and the other by radiating in those frequencies.

dylan604 1y ago
Excluding others only in a way that is not dissimilar to you locking your doors/windows to exclude others from freely entering your house. Yes, some of the premiere radio observatories have radio transmission exclusion zones around them, but they are also typically away from that exclusion zone impacting as few as possible. Starlink on the other hand is not attempting to do anything of the sort. It would be interesting of Starlink could respect a geofence kind of idea so that they stop broadcasting when over certain areas, especially since they do this over geopolitically exclusion zones.