[HN Gopher] Starlink satellites hindering detection of near-Eart...
___________________________________________________________________
Starlink satellites hindering detection of near-Earth asteroids,
study finds
Author : nixass
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-01-21 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.caltech.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.caltech.edu)
| suifbwish wrote:
| Why not put sensors on them that can used to help detect
| asteroids. I'm guessing if the signals were combined in an array
| and integrated you could gain quite a high resolution image.
| me_me_me wrote:
| because those things weight
|
| Weight == $$$
|
| Plus starlinks have very short lifespawn
|
| > I'm guessing if the signals were combined in an array and
| integrated you could gain quite a high resolution image.
|
| that's just wishful thinking, ironic since starlink is also no
| more than wishful thinking of a business venture.
| rubykaur wrote:
| Incredible.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Where is the link to the study?
|
| > Musk, the world's richest man, has been sending an increasing
| amount of satellites into orbit since 2019 through his company
| SpaceX.
|
| The personal tone in news about Tesla/SpaceX is funny. Sounds
| like SpaceX is the post office where Elon Musk goes to send his
| packages.
| YATA0 wrote:
| The fact that humanity got to a point where it made more "sense"
| to shoot dozens of rockets and deploy hundreds of satellites into
| space instead of running cables to houses and/or cell towers to
| cover large areas is sad.
|
| The insane amount of externalities associated with this method of
| going to bite us in the ass for years to come.
| umvi wrote:
| > The fact that humanity got to a point where it made more
| "sense" to shoot dozens of rockets and deploy hundreds of
| satellites into space instead of running cables to cell towers
| to cover large areas is sad.
|
| 1. I think you are grossly underestimating just how many cables
| and cell towers would be needed to cover just rural North
| America alone (nevermind less developed places like Africa).
|
| 2. LEO satellite internet benefits more than just terrestrial
| clients. Ships and airplanes can now have more reliable
| communications.
| YATA0 wrote:
| >1. I think you are grossly underestimating just how many
| cables and cell towers would be needed to cover just rural
| North America alone (nevermind less developed places like
| Africa).
|
| Not underestimating at all. Of course it will be a lot, but
| it has many advantages, and is by far more eco-friendly than
| shooting rockets into space.
|
| >2. LEO satellite internet benefits more than just
| terrestrial clients. Ships and airplanes can now have more
| reliable communications.
|
| There will always be a need for ship and airplane
| connectivity, but LEO being more reliable is still up for
| debate, and other forms of satcomms can be done with and
| order of magnitude less satellites.
| jamiequint wrote:
| > is by far more eco-friendly than shooting rockets into
| space
|
| Really? The energy usage is almost certainly much higher to
| do it terrestrially. If you're concerned about the CO2
| generated by the launch burn you could easily offset that
| and more using carbon removal with the energy saved versus
| doing the same buildout terrestrially.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Not underestimating at all. Of course it will be a lot
|
| Do you have any data to back this up? Starlink (and other
| possible future constellations) most effectively serve the
| low-density or unconnected areas of the world. North
| America alone has a land area on the order of 25 million
| square km, with significant topographical and geographical
| contraints.
|
| I have several relatives who had what the government
| considered "high speed" internet available - one an old
| adsl 1.5Mbit connection, the other a drastically
| overprovisioned cell phone wireless that they were lucky if
| it provided 0.5Mbit real world connections. The providers
| offered no consolation, and there was zero prospect of them
| upgrading services. Both relatives are now happily using
| their starlink at ~200Mbit.
|
| > other forms of satcomms can be done with and order of
| magnitude less satellites.
|
| There is effectively a per-satellite maximum bandwidth, as
| well as distance-based power requirements. The same
| satellite in low earth orbit can provide much better
| internet than if it were in GEO. Non-LEO satellites will
| remain second-class internet (with lower speeds and higher
| latencies) because of fundamental physical limitations.
| varelse wrote:
| And yet countries like Vietnam have pulled exactly that off.
| If we have $1.7T for the f-35 fighter, we have the money to
| give everyone 100 Mb or better internet, it's just a matter
| of priority. I'm a satisfied Starlink customer but only
| because there are no other viable alternatives currently
| where I live.
|
| https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/07/07/watchdog-group-
| fi...
|
| Since the comparison to Vietnam is triggering some people,
| let's add some hard numbers and really get the downvotes
| going.
|
| Vietnam's GDP is $271B, The US is $21T or ~77x higher with
| ~3.4x as many people living in a space ~30x bigger than
| Vietnam. And yet we still cannot deliver cellphone reception
| and broadband on par with Vietnam. Wonder why? Also wonder
| why this is such a triggering statement to make but I guess
| some things will just remain a mystery. And won't you do your
| part to bring this post to -10? We can do this together.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Vietnam is smaller than California with a larger
| population. That cell towers can be made to work is not
| really in dispute, it's the cost (both initial and ongoing)
| for reaching the increasingly sparse population areas (like
| Wyoming and Montana) or geographically hard-to-cover areas
| (like the Rocky Mountains) that make satellites more
| economically viable.
| varelse wrote:
| Sure but between the current situation and the outskirts
| of Wyoming and Montana there's plenty of low-hanging
| fruit.
|
| For example, my neighborhood is 1.5 mi away from gigabit
| internet. Good luck with that last mile and a half so
| Starlink it is.
|
| The study I'm linking here says it would cost $80B to fix
| the current situation. That's chump change. I am so fed
| up with the tiny minded thinking that is trapping America
| in an endless loop of failure. But watch trillions
| materialize instantly if we have to go to war with
| someone again.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/striking-a-deal-to-
| streng...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I'm having trouble finding how much Starlink has
| currently cost to deploy, but per wikipedia in 2018 (yes,
| 4 years old):
|
| > The cost of the decade-long project to design, build,
| and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in
| May 2018 to be at least US$10 billion.
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink]
|
| Which would be 1/8th the cost you describe (though
| probably more by now, I haven't found any figures yet).
| It also covers a larger geographic area (and therefore a
| larger number of people) in a shorter time than any cell
| tower + cable solution would, short of conscripting every
| possible technician in the US to accomplish the effort.
|
| Starlink also gets to piggyback on other SpaceX launches
| so they aren't eating the entire launch cost themselves,
| it's subsidized (or can be) by their other customers.
| This is what I'm talking about when I say that
| _presently_ it 's more economically viable. It sucks
| about your situation (being so close to gigabit Internet
| without access), I've been there, too. Cable companies
| and ISPs in the US suck.
|
| EDIT:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/4f992537-59f6-4d09-b977-c33945
| dba...
|
| More recent, June 2021. Musk is expecting to spend $30
| billion to cover 12 countries, and expects to have spent
| $10 billion before becoming cashflow positive with
| Starlink.
|
| EDIT: Fixed link above, not sure why I ended up with a
| link to a subheading.
| varelse wrote:
| You say we can't wire up America, but what's your source?
| I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level
| engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people
| as possible. Starlink looks like it will be half the
| price, but Musk has gone on record saying this is for
| rural areas.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/03/musk-...
|
| Further, I was getting 150 Mb a few months back, but now
| I'm down to 30 Mb. This isn't a polished product yet and
| it's in danger of losing federal funding.
|
| https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2021/12/starlink-download-
| spe...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > You say we can't wire up America, but what's your
| source?
|
| I did not say that, reread what I wrote and quote where
| you think I said that.
|
| > I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level
| engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people
| as possible.
|
| That's basically what I was getting at with this:
|
| >> short of conscripting every possible technician in the
| US to accomplish the effort.
|
| But, sadly, it is politically not viable in the US. If it
| were, I suspect we would have seen such an effort (though
| probably not telecom focused) post 2007/2008 financial
| crisis. Instead, a crap ton of money was dumped into the
| hands of contractors to spend on infrastructure that
| barely went anywhere. Just like a crap ton of money has
| been dumped into ISPs that still can't be bothered to
| cover the last 1.5 miles to your home.
|
| What I _did_ write:
|
| >> [Starlink] also covers a larger geographic area (and
| therefore a larger number of people) in a shorter time
| than any cell tower + cable solution would
|
| The first part is pretty obviously true, but the
| parenthetical does remain to be seen. It depends on how
| effective the fleet actually scales with connecting
| additional users, and they're only at ~145k right now.
| emn13 wrote:
| However, starlink isn't a product _yet_. It 's hard to
| separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns
| out to be a practical alternative still needs practical
| demonstration. Or to put it another way - I'm sure you've
| heard of a few of the teething problems early adopters
| have, but it's not so clear whether those are merely
| small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg of nasty
| practical problems that will render the network
| uneconomical.
|
| The idea is definitely very attractive, but it's not
| quite yet proven itself - and it's definitely unclear how
| realistic those cost guesstimates are.
| SECProto wrote:
| > However, starlink isn't a product yet. It's hard to
| separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns
| out to be a practical alternative still needs practical
| demonstration
|
| Yeah, it's a product. It's out of beta. I know people
| using it, I've video-chatted them for hours without a
| single hiccup. It's a real, practical alternative and
| it's here now.
|
| > I'm sure you've heard of a few of the teething problems
| early adopters have, but it's not so clear whether those
| are merely small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg
| of nasty practical problems that will render the network
| uneconomical.
|
| I haven't, actually - the people I know using it have had
| it running for 5 months without any issues. The only
| issue I've seen online is someone's humourous photo where
| their cats sat on it because it's warm.
| thallium205 wrote:
| What are you talking about it's definitely a product. I
| use it right now in my rural area (USPS doesn't even
| deliver here) and I'm getting 30ms latency with a 150/40
| Mbps link. Rock solid for months straight even during
| snow storms.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| And varelse, the one who I was responding to, is also
| using it right now. There are around 145k current users
| of the system. Which is certainly not enough to keep it
| afloat if it fails to grow in customer base, but it is a
| real thing being used by real people.
| emn13 wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I meant - there's a beta out (i.e. a
| development tool), not a self-sustaining product. The
| scale is still too small; for this to be economically
| viable they need to show they can scale much larger and
| at competitive prices. I'm not saying that won't happen;
| but let's not go counting chickens before they hatch
| either.
| zardo wrote:
| I think Vietnam is significantly smaller than North
| America.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's about 78% of the size of California. Per a quick
| search: | Area |
| Population Vietnam | 128,066 sq mi | 96.2
| million California | 163,696 sq mi | 39.2
| million USA | 3,797,000 sq mi | 329.5
| million
| toast0 wrote:
| Ignoring quality of service, a satellite constellation is
| really very significantly less hardware for global coverage.
|
| Somewhere elsewhere in the thread says the full constellation
| is expected to be 12,000 satellites. Yes, you have to replace
| them every ten years, and yes you need quite a few base
| stations, but by contrast, this random site[1] says there's
| over 100,000 cell towers in the United States. That number
| supports multiple networks, but only the US. Rocket launches
| are expensive, but so is building a lot of cell towers over the
| whole world.
|
| Starlink could provide a reasonable backhaul technology for
| some terrestrial towers that are hard to service through wires
| or terrestrial radio. I'm hopeful that it will provide a
| service floor that inspires terrestrial networks to do better
| in areas where they have the capability but not the desire to
| invest in upgrades.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/521985/telecom-towers-
| in...
| mchusma wrote:
| Know what will help the detection of near-Earth asteriods?
| Starship, with its giant payload capability and low cost.
|
| I'm surprised about how many astronomers seem to...not want us to
| go do stuff in space.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Would it be _totally insane_ for SpaceX to offer free /very cheap
| launches every now and then to pure science missions to make up
| for these types inconveniences?
|
| For context: plain old Falcon 9 could launch a Hubble-sized
| telescope to LEO (with a bit of room to spare) and return for
| reuse.
|
| It feels like the right thing to do and could gain them a bit of
| goodwill.
| markdown wrote:
| OT but related... Starlink would really be useful in Tonga right
| about now, with their fibre-optic connection severed and expected
| to be out of commission for at least a month.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not in its current state; it relies on a local ground station
| as they don't have the inter-satellite relaying via lasers
| working yet. Coming "soon", but that's Elon saying so.
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482424984962101249
| leobg wrote:
| Are you sure? AFAIK the laser links are just needed to
| further reduce latency. I don't think SpaceX needs any ground
| stations. Elon even talked about governments in countries
| like Afghanistan not being able to do anything against their
| citizens using Starlink apart from "shaking their fists at
| the sky".
| emteycz wrote:
| A ground station is required in the current version of
| Starlink. Without it, the satellite has no internet
| connection to offer to clients.
| leobg wrote:
| Ah. Of course. A ground station within the visibility
| cone of the individual satellite. You are right!
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Damn, Elon was telling a stupid lie? Consider me shocked.
| Anyway, when's your dancing robot coming? Mine's about to
| ship.
| Thervicarl wrote:
| > I don't think SpaceX needs any ground stations
|
| It is not magic. You signal from the user terminal has to
| reach a ground station / gateway connected to the Internet.
| Either there are inter-satellite links and the signal can
| be routed to a gateway far away. Or there are not and the
| gateway need to be at most a few hundred kilometers away if
| you satellites are in orbit at 400km.
|
| > Afghanistan not being able to do anything against their
| citizens using Starlink apart from "shaking their fists at
| the sky".
|
| Or sentence to death people caught with a Starlink dish on
| their roof.
| leobg wrote:
| You are right.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| There's only 568km from Tonga to Niue, who still have
| Internet. I wonder if that's close enough to use a
| hypothetical Niue base station to bounce Internet off a
| Starlink to Tonga. Might be a little patchy depending on the
| exact locations of the satellites at any time.
|
| Edit: Looks like Starlink doesn't have great coverage at this
| latitude anyway, currently:
| https://findstarlink.com/#4032402;3
| gpm wrote:
| The site you're linking to is talking about _visible_
| starlink satellites, not starlink coverage.
|
| Starlink is definitely available at that latitude (in the
| sense that there is signal, not in the sense that SpaceX is
| currently taking customers or has set up base stations), in
| the southern hemisphere the only significant landmass that
| doesn't have more or less constant coverage is Antarctica.
|
| Back when coverage was more spotty, I made this map. I'd
| probably change some things if I revisited it now that
| there are lots of satellites up, but it's good enough for
| demonstrating the point: https://droid.cafe/starlink
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Thanks yes I misunderstood the site
| T-A wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-21/elon-musk...
| iso1631 wrote:
| Currently Starlink doesn't do Satelite-Satelite communication,
| so you'd have to downlink reasonably close to Tonga. Even
| ignoring the lack of downlink equipment, the maximum range is
| about 250 miles.
|
| Fiji is the nearest realistic location to downlink, Suva, where
| many cables land (including the cable from Tonga). It's 466
| miles, way over the horizon.
| not2b wrote:
| As the Rolling Stones said, "Paint It Black".
| mzs wrote:
| Here's paper, this article was unnecessarily alarmist:
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac470a
| keewee7 wrote:
| Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population of
| rural people in high income countries.
|
| Their claim about bringing Internet to poor countries is
| bullshit. Countries like Kenya, Nigeria and India have already
| shown that terrestrial long-distance networking (4G and soon 5G)
| is the way to reach mass connectivity in developing countries.
|
| Why should we let one American ISP pollute our global nigh skies
| with 42,000 planned satellites? What happens when an European or
| Chinese competitor launches another 42,000 satellites? We need to
| stop this madness.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Devil's advocate here- the sky either belongs to everybody or
| it belongs to nobody. Why do astronomers think that they have
| sole ownership of the sky?
| RReverser wrote:
| One is looking at it, another is polluting it and precluding
| others from looking at it. Surely you see the difference?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| For the same reason we can't do anything about people doing
| things in international waters: it's outside the jurisdiction
| of most countries. E.g. China might not like satellites flying
| over their territory but there's not much they can do about it
| legally. It's not part of their airspace. SpaceX doesn't need
| permission; just for operating radios on the ground that
| communicate with those satellites. Which of course a few
| countries won't be willing to do because they'd instead prefer
| to use their own satellites.
|
| Because SpaceX is of course hardly the only one with plans like
| this. Like it or not, there will likely be tens or hundreds of
| thousands satellites in orbit in a few decades. Millions even
| long term. They are too cheap and useful for that to not
| happen. It's more a question of when than if other rocket
| companies get their act together. Lots of them have been
| inspired by the success SpaceX has had in recent years.
|
| The downsides are extremely minor. Nobody ever complains about
| jets polluting our night skies (as opposed to our atmosphere,
| which they do of course do bad things to). There are thousands
| flying at any moment. And they are much bigger than the puny
| SpaceX satellites. And much closer too. And they are very easy
| to see because they actually have blinking lights on them that
| are designed to make the planes more visible. It's a complete
| non issue.
| axg11 wrote:
| How would the world react if there was a Chinese company that
| was launching an equivalent number of satellites as Starlink?
|
| I except the discussions would be very different, and there
| would be many more calls to stop SpaceX/Starlink.
| creato wrote:
| If we expected Starlink internet to censor any negative
| opinions of Elon Musk or Tesla, there might be similar
| calls to stop it.
| ekanes wrote:
| > And they are very easy to see because they actually have
| blinking lights on them that are designed to make the planes
| more visible. It's a complete non issue.
|
| Interesting point. They'd also be harder to remove from your
| data because they'd be less predictable. Presumably someone
| could track/monitor all the satelite's so you could adjust
| for them (as best you can) in your data.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I can see the benefits of more competition for politically
| entrenched ISPs, but I'm afraid of a potential Kessler Effect
| happening
| WithinReason wrote:
| At Starlink's low attitude all orbits decay eventually
| without active station keeping
| 0_____0 wrote:
| This is assuming that the satellites all remain in one
| piece, the idea behind Kessler Syndrome is that one
| impact will generate loads of fragments in unpredictable
| orbits and cause a chain reaction.
|
| That being said I don't know what the probability of such
| an event is, I assume it's fairly small. I could look it
| up but I've got to fix an omelette.
| pc86 wrote:
| How was the omelette? There's one on my horizon after
| this all hands is over :)
| WithinReason wrote:
| I'm not an expert in orbital dynamics, but (logically) if
| the point of impact is low enough that it's within a
| high-drag area of space, then any orbits generated by the
| impact must have that point as part of their orbits,
| therefore all pieces after the collision should decay
| eventually as well.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| You can't use the (false) premise that "nobody ever complains
| about jets polluting our atmosphere" to justify hindering the
| detection of near-earth asteroids, which is guaranteed to
| eventually threaten the safety of people in this planet,
| possibly in a country that is not opting in to this
| situation. This is why legality cannot be the sole basis of
| right/wrong. Just because countries do not (yet!) have
| jurisdiction over space doesn't mean that you can just do
| anything with it--and especially if the said countries
| without jurisdiction may be the collateral damage of such
| actions.
| tzs wrote:
| > The downsides are extremely minor. Nobody ever complains
| about jets polluting our night skies (as opposed to our
| atmosphere, which they do of course do bad things to).
|
| Starlink's constellation will have 12000 satellites when
| fully deployed. There are between 8000 and 20000 jets in the
| air at any given time, so you might expect jets and
| satellites to be roughly equally present in any given
| person's sky.
|
| But wait...satellites generally are higher up than jets, so a
| given satellite will be visible to a larger area than a jet
| will.
|
| If the Starlink satellites were in orbits that covered all of
| the Earth equally then when the full constellation is
| deployed there would be about 360 visible from any give point
| on the surface at any given time. I believe they aren't using
| any orbits that cover the far north and south, so the actual
| number visible for most places should be a bit higher, but
| lets stick with 360 as a lower bound.
|
| That's _way_ more than the number of jets visible at any one
| place.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| This is why I wanted orbital space to be treated as
| Antarctica. But the US and China are in a new cold war and
| both sides have no stomach for accountability.
|
| Musk just destroyed America's moral high-ground on the issue
| as well so 10 years from now when we look up we'll see
| corporations battling it out.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Starlink with laser links could be providing Internet access in
| Tonga right now. Sadly they're a year (or more) from having it
| working, they only just started yet.
|
| (I'm posting this message via Starlink. Admittedly I'm a rural
| person in a rich country. Still grateful for it.)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population
| of rural people in high income countries.
|
| By the FCC's estimates[0], there are 26 million people in the
| US alone, mostly in rural areas, who lack access to adequate
| high speed internet. I believe that exceeds what most would
| consider a small dwindling population by quite a large margin.
|
| This number could potentially increase too, with the recent
| advent of full remote work. A fair number of people who live in
| urban areas do so only because they have to for employment and
| if they had the option would move somewhere less densely
| populated.
|
| [0]: https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-
| progr...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've been on the edge of buying Starlink, but am currently
| waiting on a few other things to pan out:
|
| * I often have to drive through rural roads with my family.
| Cell service is limited/spotty here. Starlink would allow me to
| work on the road (and have an emergency backup).
|
| * My wife and I have been eyeing the possibility of purchasing
| a small plot of land to "get away to" occasionally. Starlink
| would enable me to work from that plot of land.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A plot of land to 'get away to' is a great thing to have if
| you are getting away to it frequently enough to stop it from
| turning into a jungle. Abandoned land turns into proto forest
| with amazing speed, and any dwelling on there will be eaten
| up in record time. If you are serious about this please
| budget for a local caretaker.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Some people are OK with with proto Forest or or natural
| environments. I have a getaway that has gone 40 years
| without meaningful caretaking.
|
| Maybe once a decade a few hours are spent pruning trees
| which encroach on the view or clearing brush for fire
| safety.
|
| Hell, there are miners cabins built in the 1800s that are
| still habitable without any dedicated caretaking
| guest3456789a wrote:
| Russians think there could be some hidden military use of
| Starlink and there could be some truth in that, as from a
| business point of view only Starlink somehow does not add up.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Let's say you put a 5G tower with battery+solar in the middle
| of nowhere to provide coverage for a small village. How is that
| tower going to connect to the rest of the world? You'd still
| need to invest in fiber or microwave links to hook it up.
| Starlink could be a cheaper and simpler alternative to connect
| the tower.
| parkingrift wrote:
| >Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population of
| rural people in high income countries.
|
| If this is true then you've nothing to worry about. Starlink
| will quickly fail, they'll close up shop, and the satellites
| will de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.
|
| We need not worry about one American ISP or a European or
| Chinese competitor. As you've said, this only serves a
| dwindling population of rural people in high income countries.
| No one else would be so stupid to try and enter this market.
| There is clearly no need, terrestrial cellular will win.
| trasz wrote:
| Unless the government takes them over, like with Iridium.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| We don't all subscribe to the philosophy that the only valid
| limits to something are those imposed by market forces.
|
| If something is slightly bad for a great many people we're
| allowed to just prevent it. We don't _have_ to wait for the
| market to decide, there 's no virtue in doing so it doesn't
| sanctify our decision.
| michaelt wrote:
| I'm not convinced starlink is slightly bad for a great many
| people.
|
| Should a child struggle to access online learning simply
| because their parents have chosen to live in a rural
| location? Should a family in a town struggle when several
| children need to attend classes online, because some inept
| bureaucrat agreed to a telco monopoly decades ago?
|
| The fact starlink is an inconvenience to amateur stargazers
| doesn't seem very important in comparison.
| dTal wrote:
| >The fact starlink is an inconvenience to amateur
| stargazers doesn't seem very important in comparison.
|
| Hm, I recall reading recently that Starlink satellites
| are hindering detection of near-Earth asteroids though.
| Can't remember where. It's probably not important.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better to move the instruments for
| detection outside of earth's atmosphere anyway? Same with
| most telescopes.
| addicted wrote:
| Sure.
|
| And I'm sure Starlink will be ponying the money for that.
|
| Or wait to deploy their satellites until that process is
| completed.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| What's the cost/benefit on the two options (and for all I
| know there may be more then two)
|
| * get rid of starlink and any like minded projects
|
| * create work around so you can have Starlink type
| projects and still detect asteroids.
|
| It seems like the second option should be viable - if you
| know exactly where all the satellites are couldn't you
| create a filter?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Should a child struggle to access online learning
| simply because their parents have chosen to live in a
| rural location? Should a family in a town struggle when
| several children need to attend classes online,
|
| Children who struggle to learn in rural areas and have
| parents who can afford a hundred dollars a month, plus
| equipment costs? Assuming that the cost to use Starlink
| doesn't rise (how many 35k Teslas actually shipped)?
| Seems like a vanishingly small population right there.
|
| And the percentage of that population that is middle
| class (the part that cannot help themselves) seems even
| smaller. I'm not concerned about children hanging out at
| their parent's 70,000 acre vacation ranch.
|
| Meanwhile, this article seems to be about professional
| astronomers
| flavius29663 wrote:
| The more sensible solution is in ground based towers. The
| US rural areas suffering from lack of coverage is due to
| monopolistic/cartel attitudes of US ISP and carriers.
| Other countries don't have this problem and true fee
| competition made even rural areas have good wired and
| wireless internet. This is a lack of political will
| problem (to enforce cartel laws), not a technical one.
| DennisP wrote:
| Other countries with the population density of US rural
| areas? Which ones specifically, and what did it cost
| them?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If Africa can manage it, we probably can.
|
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/08/in-
| much-...
| DennisP wrote:
| That article is about telephony, not broadband internet.
| We have telephony everywhere too.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're using _mobile_ telephony to access _broadband
| internet_.
|
| https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/blog/the-state-
| of-...
|
| > Mobile broadband coverage has also increased
| substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is still the
| region with the largest coverage gap; one in five people
| live in an area without mobile broadband coverage - an
| estimated 210 million people.
|
| If 80% of Africa can manage mobile broadband, it seems
| likely the USA can.
| parkingrift wrote:
| We not need wait long. Launching satellites is comically
| expensive. This endeavor will surely fail just as fast as
| it started.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Why? If the market deems that there's an actual need beyond
| "a dwindling rural population in high income countries",
| Starlink will survive. If there isn't a need, then it won't
| survive. The problem will take care of itself. Legislation
| has a cost when there are other more pressing issues. A
| politician's time is finite.
| p_l wrote:
| A huge early investor in Starlink is very not market
| constrained and will always have politician backing - the
| military.
| chaostheory wrote:
| How exactly is a "huge early investor not market
| constrained"? For every Starlink, there is likely a
| Webvan. Investors do not have infinite resources.
|
| Military and political backing are also not guaranteed.
| SpaceX's origins are a good example of that.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The military isn't constrained by market forces - they
| are constrained by budgets and capabilities. That is, I'm
| not sure what "market forces" justify being able to cause
| a city to disappear in nuclear explosions across the
| world in 20 minutes, but it definitely is a capability
| the (US, Russian, Chinese, maybe more) military pays for.
|
| Meanwhile, GP is saying the military is a huge early
| investor for Starlink, and they are doing it primarily
| because they want to consume it.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Space X was at a severe political disadvantage vs
| aerospace incumbents. It did not have full government
| support. It still doesn't compared to the incumbents.
| Could be wrong, but the military is not a major factor
| for Space X especially at the beginning. Why? Elon is not
| a fan of bribes.
| p_l wrote:
| Military literally paid for SpaceX to be a thing, and
| USAF is IIRC something in the range of 25% if not more
| initial funder for Starlink, and by virtue of very
| specific requirements, the only stable client who
| couldn't be easily served by few geostationary or Molniya
| satellites (operating an ISP in various countries can
| be... interesting. Elon is also very, very fond of
| government handout, that's how SpaceX and Tesla got
| funded pretty much, even if Elon provided certain capital
| to get things moving at times.
|
| For example, how is Starlink going to provide local
| Ministry of Defense access to the network in time of
| emergency, which was at least in 2008 a requirement for
| any ISP in Poland spanning more than one commune
| (smallest administrative region)? Requirements like that
| mean that ISPs need to seek waivers or just avoid having
| customers in specific countries (or break the law - we're
| talking Elon here after all, just look at latest FSD
| brouhaha). And they greatly dimnish the value proposal of
| building a constellation.
|
| OTOH, DoD had been shopping around for global satellite
| provider for last 15-20 years, as bandwidth and
| availability were often issues just in running bases, but
| also making it harder to drone strike an usually innocent
| group.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > but the military is not a major factor for Space X
| especially at the beginning
|
| The US military funded the first two launches of the
| Falcon 1. Far from "not being a major factor", without
| that money, Musk and Space X (and likely Tesla) would
| have gone bankrupt in 200X.
| keewee7 wrote:
| You're forgetting the "backed by the richest man in the
| world" benefit that Starlink will enjoy before any
| significant market correction happens.
| ben_w wrote:
| Quite a lot of his wealth is predicated on this actually
| succeeding, and is otherwise paper money.
| parkingrift wrote:
| If you don't care for Elon what more could you ask for than
| he wastes tens of billions on such a fruitless endeavor? Do
| you think he'll just keep launching satellites for fun and
| pleasure?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > If you don't care for Elon what more could you ask for
| than he wastes tens of billions on such a fruitless
| endeavor?
|
| Just because I don't care for Elon (nor think he should
| have that much money), doesn't mean I don't care what he
| does with his money. If he buys and shreds the Mona Lisa,
| I care. If he pollutes LEO because a math error keeps the
| satellites from deorbiting and causes Kessler Syndrome, I
| care. If his Boring Company in Vegas has a disaster and a
| hundred people die in his tunnel, I care.
|
| I care about a lot of other things he could do too, but
| I'm not going to list them.
|
| Meanwhile, while I don't care for him, that doesn't mean
| I want him to become poor. I _don 't_ care if he has a
| megayacht or something.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Starlink is too low to cause Kessler Syndrome. The orbits
| all decay within a few years naturally.
| falcolas wrote:
| Well, he launched a car out of spite, so, why not?
| ben_w wrote:
| The alternative was _literally_ a lump of concrete.
|
| That was the Falcon Heavy _test launch_ and he wasn't
| able to even give away the flight for free to anyone when
| he offered.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| They had a rocket they needed to test (Falcon Heavy) and
| that requires a test payload. Usually test payloads are
| boring mass analogs. Instead they decided to use
| something different and get a bunch of marketing out of
| it. Everything had to be approved by the appropriate
| government agencies well ahead of time. So where does the
| "spite" come from?
| falcolas wrote:
| I can't find the reference now, so perhaps I hallucinated
| it. But as I recall, the car was intended to go to
| another investor, and the early-Tesla investor/CEO
| shenanigans put it into limbo, and so Musk launched it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Interesting story if true. Why would Elons personal
| roadster have been promised to an investor?
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| It only happened once, which was an obvious marketing
| stunt that presumably served its purpose. There's not
| much benefit to doing it over and over again.
|
| If he was really doing it "for the lulz" then there would
| be many more such launches. Cars, a painting of some
| artist that offended him, etc. We haven't seen that
| though.
| lnsru wrote:
| It fantastically benefits US military providing reliable
| communication channel and high speed networking everywhere. Not
| sure if Europeans will want this. Not sure if Russians will be
| able to afford this. Chinese might want the same very much and
| they can built all the satellites for sure.
| shantara wrote:
| A large market for Starlink are ships and aircraft. It's
| already been tested in these applications, but commercial usage
| is pending regulatory approval.
|
| Plus there've been some discussions, and even a signed contact
| regarding Starlink usage as a backhaul on cell towers. Link:
| https://telecoms.com/511313/kddi-to-use-starlink-for-mobile-...
| ctoth wrote:
| > What happens when an European or Chinese competitor launches
| another 42,000 satellites?
|
| Then there are 84,000 satellites in orbit and room for
| literally millions more? Space is big. Each satellite is
| smaller than a car. What happens if a company produces 42,000
| more cars? Will it blanket the Earth? Of course not! I think
| you might just be a bit confused when trying to conceptualize
| just how much room we're talking about here.
| 7952 wrote:
| I dont see why spacex has got to target the same niche (rural
| people in rich countries) everywhere in the world. They could
| provide low cost backhaul in developing countries for telcos.
| Offer more expensive access for airlines and ships. Have an
| offering aimed at organisations who want to run a WiFi network
| (like schools or offices). The advantage of satellite is that
| the same infrastructure can offer different services in
| different places.
| edgyquant wrote:
| SpaceX bringing internet to rural areas is just another of
| those Musk stories he tells. Like how SpaceX is "meant to
| make us a multi planet species" when in reality it's just
| another government contractor at this point. Starlinks real
| business _will_ come from the military, airlines and shipping
| fleets.
| 7952 wrote:
| I agree that most revenue will come from military,
| shipping, airlines etc. But I don't see why that should
| preclude other uses at other price points. Particulaly as
| those users can be separated geographically. And the
| marginal cost of bandwidth could become very low. If the
| only customer in a footprint is a school in a remote area
| then you might as well sell to them at a price they can
| afford. It is more revenue than you would have got
| otherwise. It's like selling seats on an airline. Most
| revenue comes from expensive business class seats, but
| there are still cheap seats. Because most costs are fixed
| regardless of how many users.
| kingcharles wrote:
| > Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population
| of rural people in high income countries.
|
| I live in downtown Chicago and I can't get wired Internet for
| less than $70,000 installation. I would have gone with Starlink
| except they had backorders on the receivers, so I went with
| T-Mobile 5G Home Internet instead. So, it's not just people in
| the boondocks that need wire-free Internet.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I think it is your privilege to give such opinion, however, I
| can see the various advantage of Starlink. Many ISP in the US
| simply refuse to provide proper bandwidth and people have to
| live with ISP shenanigans, Starlink has helped those people.
| Sometimes submarine cables are destroyed. We saw that in a
| recent disaster where a volcanic eruption was responsible for
| an internet blackout, Starlink would have been helpful there.
|
| And to counter your same example, in India around 41% of people
| have access to the internet. I think the internet is a basic
| right, at least in this century, so we shouldn't deprive people
| of the internet. I do acknowledge that Starlink might be costly
| but something is better than nothing.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| I mean, I don't think that your argument justifies why we
| should trade off near-earth asteroid monitoring with faster
| internet connections just so we can consume more Instagram
| and TikTok videos better.
| cute_boi wrote:
| To me, internet doesn't means "Instagram and TikTok
| videos". And, we should focus on how to solve this asteroid
| detection issue, that doesn't mean we should dismiss whole
| idea.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| If scanning for near Earth asteroids was really a priority,
| there's nothing stopping us from building a detection
| network in space, above the altitude at which Starlink
| satellites fly.
| gord288 wrote:
| Okay so until such time as this higher-orbit asteroid
| detection network is in place, let's have a moratorium on
| these Starlink things.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Isn't it more the case that it is a priority precisely
| because we have our current methods for detecting near-
| earth asteroids, but we're letting capitalism get in the
| way and launch Starlink satellites in space to trade off
| the safety of our species for more profit that, honestly,
| isn't even necessary? I mean, of course you can argue
| that the survival of our species isn't necessary and is
| not more important than money, but if you believe that,
| you should state that plainly because that seems to be
| where we'll have an impasse.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| In my opinion... If we REALLY wanted to detect near Earth
| asteroids, we'd focus on space based telescopes. They are
| better in nearly every way, except for the raw size of
| the mirror. But we use ground based telescopes because
| they are cheaper. Capitalism has already prioritized
| lower science budgets for finding big rocky planet
| killers.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I don't think detecting near earth asteroids has become
| impossible. Developing space infrastructure is just as
| important to our survival as detection.
| supperburg wrote:
| Somehow I prefer the timeline where the earth is blanketed in
| internet.
| edhelas wrote:
| Big +1 on this. Elon Musk is not a philanthropist. The goal of
| Starlink is just to bring Internet to people that can afford an
| expensive system just for themselves by literally annoying
| everyone else.
|
| It's the same thing with the Boring Company and public
| transports: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-
| dislike-mass-t...
| noutella wrote:
| You're absolutely right. It's saddening to see how little
| regulation there is, or even how little focus there is on
| regulating business in space. I don't want to sound naive, but
| it's frustrating that us citizens of any countries have no
| weight on such important matters. All for the Musks and Bezos'
| of this world I guess.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Regulations will come with time. Space is the new Wild West,
| once we have a decent amount of infrastructure (and people)
| in space governments and regulations will follow.
| akagusu wrote:
| refurb wrote:
| A man who everyone bet against but probably did the most in
| terms of pushing 100% electric cars and making them mainstream
| and you say he's fucked the earth?
|
| Listen, 2 years ago I would have said Elon is a clown and Tesla
| is going to zero.
|
| And I was 100% wrong.
|
| Dude has massive balls and the kind of personality (warts and
| all) that pushes humanity forward.
|
| We need to nurture people like him, not condemn them.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Building goddamn infrastructure for public transport would
| put us so much ahead than stupid luxury cars transiting a
| single person.
|
| Also, did you calculate the production of batteries and their
| limited reusability into the picture as well? Or the not even
| close to renewable-only sources of electricity used to
| recharge the cars?
| refurb wrote:
| You did an _amazing_ job of not addressing a single point I
| made.
| DennisP wrote:
| Well if you can figure out how to actually accomplish a big
| expansion in public transport, please let us know. People
| have been trying for decades. You have to get politicians
| and taxpaying voters on board and that's not so easy.
|
| In the meantime, Tesla is making real progress on
| decarbonizing transport. And it's not just "stupid luxury
| cars," the whole idea was to start with that and work their
| way down to the mass-market as they scaled up mass
| production and batteries got cheaper, and that plan seems
| to be progressing nicely.
|
| Batteries can be recycled and Tesla's 4680 cells are
| designed to make recycling easy. And a recent Yale study
| found that, even taking all indirect emissions into
| account, electric cars are far better than gasoline cars:
| https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yse-study-finds-
| el...
| nothis wrote:
| That's kinda the plot of Don't Look Up.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I felt this movie was truly awful. Vacillating between a
| comedy and a serious movie. As a leftist I felt offended at
| the leftist pandering and idiotic portrayal of conservatives
| in the film. It felt like a dangerously left populist film
| cheering on the decline of public trust. Similar to how the
| kingsmen did so for right populism.
|
| This film really made me feel apathetic to US cultural
| direction. Not because of the portrayal of political
| incompetence. But for the eagerness and shamelessness of
| pretending that the only good smart folks are the little
| people on the left and that everyone else is comic book evil
| in a mostly serious film, or at least, a film that felt like
| it was trying to have a serious point.
|
| Anti science and intellectualism in the US is a problem but
| Christ this movie was just as bad in the opposite direction.
| kaba0 wrote:
| What was leftist about anyone in the film? I swear most
| Americans really have no idea what even leftist politics
| are -- both of your parties are so on the right from a
| European perspective that it is laughable when people call
| democrats left-leaning. They are so corporate-loving that
| calling it left is just bad.
|
| [SPOILER] And I don't really see a dark satire "cheering on
| the decline of public trust".. it showed how ridiculous it
| is that science is looked at this cute nerd hobby which is
| interesting when they "discovered a new planet" or
| whatever, because it makes people feel proud that they are
| also intellectuals. But when science mandates something, it
| is suddenly something we can go against and question, shown
| by the poll in the film where people were asked about
| whether they think the meteor is dangerous, or if it's a
| hoax.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Yes everyone knows that American left is still pretty
| damn right. But it's the left in America. I don't care
| about the global spectrum.
|
| I disagree with your lighthearted assessment of the
| film's values.
|
| I saw all business and political elites being portrayed
| as truly sociopathic villains, and just generally,
| assholes in private contexts.
|
| I saw conservatives being portrayed as fucking idiots.
| Like showing the military commander shooting an assault
| rifle at the comet, or the Fox News equivalent covering
| stupid content instead of the meteor.
|
| I saw constant appeals to young liberal folks as the only
| ones that get it. And for some reason Arianna Grande.
|
| If this movie were clearly a comedy, sure, but it
| frequently tried to be a serious film, and I think it
| just adds chaos and anger to what is otherwise an
| important set of issues. This is just as divisive as the
| bullshit the movie calls out.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Well, that empathetic and caring business and political
| elite got fking rich during a pandemic that hit the US
| particularly hard. The military commander shooting at the
| comet was a goddamn joke, come on (and not even that is
| baseless, just see how many idiot shoots at goddamn
| hurricanes)! And let's be honest, Fox News is trash, I
| can honestly claim that even as a European. And it's not
| like the film took a particular stance regarding the
| portrayal of the media, the main tv show that was
| actually part of the story (and not just a gig) was like
| a central target of the whole satire thing.
|
| > I saw constant appeals to young liberal folks as the
| only ones that get it
|
| I guess this is similar to how conservatives wonder why
| science is always on the side of "the left" or whatever..
| so mysterious why is that.
|
| And the movie is listed as dark comedy - are you not
| familiar with this genre from eg. Russian novels? Those
| are probably the best known uses of this specific genre -
| but putting a serious issue into a comedic setting just
| highlights the ridiculousness of the real world - which I
| think it managed to do quite well, as we are doing pretty
| much exactly that with climate change (and covid, though
| the film was not originally about that).
|
| Like, perhaps my favorite part was the film interview
| inside the film where the producer was about "america is
| divisive enough as is, we should unite instead so that's
| why i made this logo" and shows a don't look up and look
| up logo at the same time, which is really funny and
| ridiculous satire of the "enlightened centrist" thinking.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| FWIW that was also my favorite part. It was a great
| scene. It was very separate from the rest of the film.
| Funny. Clear satire.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Like showing the military commander shooting an assault
| rifle at the comet
|
| I haven't seen it, but that sounds like a sendup to
| _Doctor Strangelove_. What are you going to do when faced
| with your inevitable death? Why not something totally
| absurd! Like ride a nuclear bomb or shoot futilely at a
| comet heading your way.
| fullstop wrote:
| > I felt this movie was truly awful. Vacillating between a
| comedy and a serious movie. As a leftist I felt offended at
| the leftist pandering and idiotic portrayal of
| conservatives in the film.
|
| They were more of a blend of left and right than you might
| appreciate. The president's smoking habit was a clear
| reference to Barack Obama, and all of the photographs of
| her with celebrities was a reference to Hillary Clinton.
| Unqualified children working as advisors was a reference to
| Donald Trump.
|
| I would argue that what you see in the characters is more
| of a reflection of your political leanings.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I agree with that on the presidential piece. Which is why
| I say left populist.
|
| It's anti political elite. Anti business elite. Anti
| American right.
|
| It's not pro Democrat. Much as the Kingsmen wasn't pro
| Republican.
|
| The Fox News equivalent, idiot military man shooting at
| the moon, and conspiracy theory culture were all
| "liberal" pandering though.
| kaba0 wrote:
| The Bash CEO is not a Bezos, Musk, Steve Jobs combo by
| accident.
| [deleted]
| toolz wrote:
| I find it interesting how opposite my view is of yours. I see
| earth as flourishing with 100k+ people lifting themselves out
| of extreme poverty, daily, for the last 25 years. I see
| violence on the decline for decades. I see new discovery
| happening at an insane rate that gives me hope. I see people
| identifying issues and the world responding, maybe not
| perfectly or even effectively, but there's certainly huge
| movement with real problems across the board. People are more
| connected to information than ever and as a whole I see
| progress dominating and the future looks incredibly bright.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > 100k+ people lifting themselves out of extreme poverty,
| daily, for the last 25 years.
|
| where are these people located?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Are there new discoveries happening at an insane rate? I feel
| that due to the knowledge circle always expanding in radius,
| we effectively have a continuously increasing surface area to
| learn about, slowing it down significantly.
|
| Also, I fail to be that optimistic given how wealth imbalance
| is greater then ever, and the looming climate change we do
| jackshit about. The people being connected to information
| suck up bullshit conspiracy theories like they were nothing
| (and those kind little FAANG companies help them in that).
| And this anti-intellectualism is even scarier than climate
| change, might I say.
| stupidcar wrote:
| Elon Musk trying to save humanity from going extinct as a "one
| planet species" and in the process causing us to miss a near-
| Earth asteroid whose impact wipes us out would be rather ironic.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The ironic thing would be if we detected a large asteroid and
| had no way of deflecting it in time because we had shutdown
| SpaceX in an attempt to better find smaller asteroids.
| sschueller wrote:
| Or we can't launch anything to save us because of Kessler
| event caused by startlink sometime back.
| simondotau wrote:
| The Kessler Syndrome doesn't apply at Starlink's altitude.
| buzzwordninja wrote:
| My knowledge basically ends at knowing of the concept, so
| can you elaborate how/why it is different in different
| orbits?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The lower the orbit, the more quickly objects de-orbit.
| This is especially true of the lowest LEO orbits that
| Starlink sits in, where atmospheric drag also enters the
| picture. Worst case scenario, a totally dead satellite
| will deorbit on its own in a couple of years and they can
| very easily suicide if required to avoid catastrophe.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| collisions can easily push things into higher orbits.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm not a rocket scientist, but this seems unlikely; sure
| two large satellites colliding could create smaller
| debris with a much higher apogee, but it seems to me that
| the perigee would not increase, so it would still spend a
| significant fraction of its orbit in atmospheric drag.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| but could easily collide with something at apogee,
| especially if the collision lead to a cascading style
| kessler syndrome event.
| gpm wrote:
| Kessler syndrome will never prevent us from launching
| things, it could theoretically stop us from parking things
| in certain orbits, but the risk to launch through those
| orbits will be minimal.
|
| Source (wikipedia):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Implications
| ZetaZero wrote:
| LOL. Unfortunately, we still are not in any position to do
| anything about any detected asteroid.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| We've already detected all asteroids with that mass in our
| solar system [1]. There are smaller ones that won't end life on
| Earth that are still concerning, but the quandary is we have
| almost nothing to do even if we detected a threat from an
| asteroid.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/4Wrc4fHSCpw
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > We've already detected all asteroids with that mass in our
| solar system.
|
| We really haven't. We found Sedna in 2003. Makemake and Eris
| in 2005.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| If only someone was trying to build a spaceship company that
| could launch massive payloads everyday.
| Qem wrote:
| Only in the near planetary region of the solar system.
| There's lots of comets with very long periods we didn't
| detect yet, because their last visit to the inner solar
| system was centuries or even millennia ago.
| sschueller wrote:
| Sadly that is what happens when you blindly follow someone
| without ever questioning their doctrine.
| danieldrehmer wrote:
| Humans had no NEO monitoring for about 500k years, we'll do ok
| for a few years of diminished capacity
| kaba0 wrote:
| Dinosaurs didn't have one either and are still doing... ooh
| XorNot wrote:
| Astronomy as a whole probably needs to move off world.
|
| Eventually someone was going to fill up orbit, and cheap global
| internet connectivity is a really good reason to do so.
|
| The telescopes you need for NEO detection aren't very big, so we
| really should fund a full high orbit web of them for planetary
| defence.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Why don't we do instead the starlink equivalent but at a lower
| altitude -> lower radius -> less satellite. We could easily put
| a "satellite" at each roof and be done. It's just not as good
| PR as space.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Because air seems clear people don't realize that using a
| telescope from sea level is like adding a layer of ice to your
| windshield while driving.
| travisporter wrote:
| The title doesn't reflect the contents of the article; was the
| link changed but the sensationalist title remains?
|
| "the paper shows a single streak affects less than one-tenth of a
| percent of the pixels in a ZTF image."
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Wait, we're using terrestrial telescopes for this? I would have
| assumed that satellite based ones would be favored for this kind
| of thing.
| iso1631 wrote:
| You can build far more and far larger telescopes on the ground
| than you can in space, for the same money.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The whole point of SpaceX is to make the cost of payload to
| orbit 1000x cheaper. At that point you can build a much
| better monitoring system that isn't dealing with the
| atmosphere.
| iso1631 wrote:
| And when we have daily starship launches that will be
| great, but we aren't there yet. Hopefully some people are
| thinking how they could design mass produced satelites to
| perform this type of detection and the best way to build
| such a network (thinking outside the box // low earth orbit
| assuming low cost launches)
|
| But ultimately prices will have to drop far more than that
| to be cheaper to build an orbiting telescope rather than
| one on the ground for most requirements.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| > better monitoring system
|
| There's the Vera C. Rubin observatory:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory
| https://www.lsst.org/
|
| > NASA has been tasked by the US Congress with detecting
| and cataloging 90% of the NEO population of size 140 meters
| or greater.[68] LSST, by itself, is estimated to detect 62%
| of such objects,[69] and according to the National Academy
| of Sciences, extending its survey from ten years to twelve
| would be the most cost-effective way of finishing the
| task.[70]
|
| https://www.universetoday.com/153620/nasas-new-asteroid-
| impa...
|
| > The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will be a powerful tool for
| detecting NEAs. It'll image each area of the sky about 1000
| times in its ten-year survey. And it'll do so with a
| powerful 3,200-megapixel camera. The Rubin will image the
| entire visible sky every two nights, and Asteroids will
| have nowhere to hide.
|
| And there's NEO Surveyor which is a satelite which does
| exactly that as well from orbit to get full coverage.
|
| https://www.universetoday.com/151539/nasa-has-approved-a-
| spa...
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-approves-asteroid-
| hunting-...
| gitfan86 wrote:
| FTA: "30% to 50% of the exposures around twilight" So the
| rest of the night it is collecting data. Sounds like
| ground based detection will work just fine even with more
| satellites in orbit.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The satelites are still going across the sky whether they
| are reflecting light or not
| gitfan86 wrote:
| So are bugs and birds and planes and dust particles and
| uneven temperature gradients, that all have to be
| corrected for already when you use ground based
| telescopes.
| tejtm wrote:
| true, but those are included of the natural cost of doing
| business. these additional occlusions are because a
| private entity has chosen to take the space for their
| profit with zero consequence or compensation for our
| loss.
| dantheman wrote:
| You don't think availability of internet around the world
| isn't compensation?
| gitfan86 wrote:
| And you are asking people in rural areas to give up
| cheap/fast internet access without compensating them for
| that loss.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The classic gif of the Wide-field Infrared Survey
| Explorer satellite detecting asteroids: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/File:PIA22419-Neowise-1stFourY...
| eyko wrote:
| I don't have any experience with telescopes or satellites
| but I can imagine that the cost of running a satellite in
| space is not just the cost of launching it. Everything
| after that is necessarily more complex and expensive:
| repairs, corrections of orbit/trajectory, availability
| windows if it's not geostationary, monitoring, protecting
| from debris, limited bandwidth, etc.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Then you have to maintain it
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Counterpoint: below a certain price point, no you don't.
| theptip wrote:
| Yeah this is my take too. Version N+1 of satellite internet
| breaks Version N of asteroid detection. The answer is
| clearly to build Version N+1 of the detection system using
| SpaceX to launch cheap satellites.
|
| There was some discussion (Ars Technica maybe?) about why
| the Webb telescope took so long and was so expensive --
| basically because heavy launch is (was?) so expensive, they
| needed to contort to fit everything in one payload
| (telescoping heat shield etc). But if you could do 10
| launches for the same cost, you could iterate on the
| satellite much more easily, and the total cost to build it
| would be much less. (Waterfall vs. agile, to analogize with
| software development.)
| juanani wrote:
| samwillis wrote:
| For now.
|
| Planet have shown that for earth observation constellations
| are not only possible but cost affective.
|
| Now imagin if SpaceX stuck a camera/telescope facing outwards
| on even 10% of their constellation. With modern ML image
| proccing pipelines I could see that providing us with very
| valuable additional astroid detection.
|
| I really hope to see SpaceX "renting" space on some of their
| constellation for uses such at this.
| sklargh wrote:
| Momentarily setting aside the human tragedy of losing the night
| sky for...broadband internet. We can manage externalities through
| taxation. Large constellations should be funding space-based
| sensors across all spectrums for regular astronomy and planetary
| defense. I feel like we could get here via a launch license fee.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Only HN will downplay the role of the internet when it comes to
| Elon hating.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Satellites are relatively cheap. Certainly cheaper than the
| right-of-way to run cables through every expensive heavily
| populated city in America for instance.
|
| In fact, it would seem obvious that a LEO power station would
| make a lot of sense for the same reason. Earth-bound stations
| have the disadvantage of ~50% duty cycle due to a periodic
| eclipse phenomenon known as 'night'.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Link to study:
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac470a
| shantara wrote:
| Any explanation how it affects the asteroid detection? It is not
| a manual sky search it was decades ago, but a completely
| automated process with a computer controlled telescope, orbit
| calculation software, check against a database of known objects
| and a submission of the new findings.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Also I thought that Sentinel was doing most of the near Earth
| asteroid work.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Space_Telescope
|
| EDIT: Oops, I was actually thinking of WISE but found the wrong
| thing Googling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-
| field_Infrared_Survey_Exp... but apparently that isn't nearly
| as important as land based surveying.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| "This article is about the cancelled Sentinel Space Telescope
| for detecting asteroids."
|
| Don't think it's doing a lot of monitoring honestly.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you have to remove the streaks, you're losing data behind
| those streaks. It's possible that in that frame, you miss the
| data that would be needed.
|
| Of course an expanding space economy is just what we need to be
| able to survive an asteroid on a collision course.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Seems a little silly. Streaks are small and a tiny part of an
| image. So long as the satellites don't block a constant part
| of the sky, if they block < 1% of the frame you can probably
| just ignore the problem entirely. Assume that by chance
| anything missed on photo n will be captured on n + 1.
|
| I'm assuming it's totally fine to delay asteroid detection by
| one search with regards to whatever we can do about
| asteroids.
| simondotau wrote:
| Those streaks are what, 0.0000001% of the sky? Probably less?
|
| It's like if there were just a few thousand cars and boats on
| the entirety of planet earth, evenly spaced out across the
| land and sea. And then someone pipes up to complain about the
| heavy traffic, or the constant sound of horn honking.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| The problem isn't so much missing pixels, its that bright
| satellites raise the noise floor of the image
| significantly, the more satellites in shot, the worse it
| is.
|
| Its the same reason telescopes can't just "filter out"
| stuff like city lights and human radio sources.
| robocat wrote:
| The satellite streaks affect a limited number of pixels.
| The optics are not perfect, so a bright object can smear
| light over all the pixels of the sensor (noise floor).
|
| Do you have any facts to show that the streaks raise the
| noise floor significantly (say more than 10%)?
|
| I would guess from your lack of hard information that you
| are just suggesting it could potentially be a problem.
|
| Edit: for a quick and dirty calculation, I estimated the
| pixels on a horizontal line in the image in the article,
| ignoring the galaxy, and the streak is not significant
| compared with the light from the stars. I presume because
| the satellites move fast across a slow time-lapse image
| capture, your hypothetical problem is not actually
| significant.
| robocat wrote:
| Your metaphor is poor. Imagine 2000 vehicles travelling at
| 25000 km/h across your location ocassionally from seemingly
| random directions.
|
| Orbital period is ~90 minutes, and the surface area of the
| planet is ~510 million km2, so they would only occasionally
| pass you closely. The Doppler effect would prevent you
| hearing the horn, but the sonic booms would be rather
| noticeable (the speed of sound is 1080 km/h).
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Your metaphor is poor. Imagine 2000 vehicles travelling
| at 25000 km /h across your location ocassionally from
| seemingly random directions._
|
| But are they actually random? I thought satellite orbits
| (even LEO constellations like Starlink) were well know
| and tracked?
|
| To a human observer, the orbits may be 'seemingly
| random', but a computer should know if a Starlink
| satellite crossed its field of view.
| gpm wrote:
| Incidentally, even to a human observer they are very far
| from random (though they aren't entirely regular either).
|
| Go to https://droid.cafe/starlink (disclaimer: my site),
| click the gear icon in the top right, and drag the speed
| slidebar all the way to the right to see...
| mkj wrote:
| "So far, ZTF science operations have not yet been severely
| affected by satellite streaks, despite the increase in their
| number observed during the analyzed period"
|
| So it requires processing for mitigation, but isn't as dire as
| the title suggests.
| shantara wrote:
| From the paper linked in the other comment:
|
| >approximately 4 x 10-4 of all pixels would be lost over the
| course of a year.
|
| I don't believe this is a significant enough impact
| Frost1x wrote:
| It's probably seen more as a herald of things to come. SpaceX
| will not be the last private entity throwing things in orbit.
| There have already been concerns about the amount of space
| debris that currently exists and coordinating it to avoid
| costly and time consuming repairs/replacements (or in the
| case of ISS, life threatening) accidents.
|
| It's probably seen more as an opportunity to acknowledge a
| problem early to try and prevent issue before the problem
| grows too large and to consider mitigation strategies now.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Starlink gets a lot of bad press from astronomers, so I want to
| leave this here to balance it out. It's written by Casey Handmer,
| an (ex) NASA astrophysicist. Source:
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/science-upside...
|
| Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it's worth reading:
|
| Starlink will ultimately be a network of tens of thousands of
| satellites connecting to hundreds of millions of user terminals
| located all over the Earth. Its radio encoding scheme adapts the
| signal rate to measured atmospheric opacity along the signal line
| of sight across 10 different frequency bands in real time.
| Collectively, the system measures trillions of baselines of
| Earth's entire atmosphere every day. This data, fed into standard
| tomography algorithms such as those used by medical CT imagers,
| can resolve essentially all weather structure in the atmosphere.
| No more careful scrutiny of remote weather station pressure gauge
| measurements. No more reliance on single mission oxygen emission
| line broadening. Instead, complete real time resolution of the
| present state of the entire atmosphere, a gift for weather
| prediction and climate study.
|
| Starlink satellites are equipped with perhaps the most versatile
| software defined radios ever put into mass production. Each
| antenna allows the formation of multiple beams at multiple
| frequencies in both send and receive. With sufficiently accurate
| position, navigation and timing (PNT) data from GPS satellites,
| Starlink satellites could perform fully 3D synthetic aperture
| radar (SAR) of the Earth's surface, with enough bandwidth to
| downlink this treasure trove of data. Precise ocean height
| measurements. Precise land height measurements. Surface
| reflectivity. Crop health and hydration. Seismology and
| accumulation of strain across faults. City surveying. Traffic
| measurements in real time. Aircraft tracking for air traffic
| control. Wildlife study. Ocean surface wind measurements. Search
| and rescue. Capella has produced extraordinary radar images with
| a single satellite. Now imagine the resolving power with birds
| from horizon to horizon.
|
| Starlink SAR is great for Earth observation, but the same
| principle can be applied looking outwards. Starlink is a network
| of thousands of software defined radios with highly precise PNT
| information and high speed data connections. It is practically
| begging to be integrated into a world-sized radio telescope. With
| 13000 km of baseline (trivially extendable with a handful of GTO
| Starlink launches) and the ability to point in any desired
| direction simultaneously, Starlink could capture practically
| holographic levels of detail about the local radio environment.
| Literally orders of magnitude better resolution than ground-based
| antennas like the Very Large Array. Cheaper than repairing
| Arecibo and independent of Earth's rotation. Potentially capable
| of resolving exoplanets.
|
| There's no reason to do only passive radio astronomy. Starlink
| can exploit its exceptional resolving power and onboard
| amplifiers to perform active planetary radar, for examination of
| close-flying asteroids and transmission of radio signals to
| distant missions in support of the Deep Space Network. As of
| November 2021, all Starlink satellites are flying with lasercoms
| so in principle the DSN application could also support laser, as
| well as radio, communication with distant probes. No need to
| build even larger dishes than the 70 m monsters. The potential to
| greatly increase our data rates from distant probes.
|
| And while Starlink can derive PNT from the GPS constellation, it
| need not depend on it forever. High capacity radio encoding
| schemes such as QAM4092 and the 5G standard contain zero-epoch
| synchronization data, meaning that any radio capable of receiving
| Starlink handshake signals is able to obtain approximate
| pseudorange information. What Starlink's onboard clocks may lack
| in atomic clock-enabled nanosecond stability, they make up in
| sheer quantity of connections and publicly available information
| about their orbital ephemerides. Already a group from OSU has
| demonstrated <10 m accuracy, while a group based at UT Austin is
| developing a related method for robust PNT estimation using
| Starlink hardware. It seems likely to me that Starlink could
| support global navigation with few to no software changes and no
| hardware changes, improving the resilience of satellite
| navigation especially in a case where the relatively small GPS
| constellation is disabled. I won't go into vast detail, but GNSS
| signals are not only used for pizza delivery, but also support a
| vast array of Earth science objectives, including the monitoring
| of tectonic drift.
|
| Starlink has received its fair share of criticism, drawn perhaps
| by its overwhelming scale and potential impacts to ground-based
| astronomy. But Starlink can also be the single greatest
| scientific instrument ever built, a hyperspectral radio eye the
| size of the Earth, capable of decoding information about the
| Earth and the universe that is right up against the limits of
| physics.
| gala8y wrote:
| Few days ago I watched 'Debunking Starlink' video [0] (posted
| by @qsdf38100 in another thread [1] on Starlink) and it got me
| thinking. I am just a lay person, but, after watching it, am
| not so sure if Starlink is such a good idea.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29975352
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Might not want to take that at face value. I skipped through
| most of the video but it seems like a series of thoughtless
| jabs. The cost estimates are way off, ignores the fact
| commercial launch prices are a large multiple of the actual
| cost, ignores economics with Starship. It handwaves the fact
| that Starlink orbits are so low that the satellites naturally
| decay in 5 years, so no permanent space trash. Comparing the
| addressable market (telecom alone is already 2T) to average
| income per capita is pointless.. I stopped there. Too much of
| the "i am very smart" vibe.
| schiffern wrote:
| De-debunk: https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/rppkb
| 5/very_well_...
|
| You just described all of CommonSenseSkeptic's 'debunking'
| content (along with his predecessor Thunderfoot, who
| should've stuck with creationists and Kickscammers).
|
| Lately I find the word "debunking"/"debunked" in a title is
| a high-reliability signal of low-quality content.
| WithinReason wrote:
| > De-debunk
|
| Rebunk? Anyway, Musk-hate seems to be becoming its own
| religion.
| schiffern wrote:
| Linguistically it's an awkward case. Currently,
| "debunked" (see also: "busted") is just the latest
| version of the phrase "scientists say X." The literal
| semantics and how it's actually used in practice are
| polar opposites. But "re-bunked" still sound like false
| information.
|
| Right now the words are mainly used as a cheap way to
| sound like Carl Sagan or Mythbusters without any of the
| deep knowledge and research.
|
| "De-debunked" IMO gets the message across, but also
| highlights the absurdity.
| __m wrote:
| i doubt that it can handle that many users. I even doubt it can
| handle enough users to cover the cost of replacing its
| satellites every 5 years
| DennisP wrote:
| Somehow I suspect SpaceX did the math on how many users it
| can support and the cost of replacing satellites, before
| betting the company on the project.
| RReverser wrote:
| Yeah, like every start-up clearly did before them (example:
| Uber). /s
| me_me_me wrote:
| What?? Noooo... they would only have to launch indefinitely
| something like 10 rockets a month to keep replacing aging
| nodes, I am sure that is financially viable way to compete
| with a copper/fibre cable -_-
|
| The tech works, its just completely non feasible. Geosync
| satelites can give you global access with handful of
| satelites.
|
| Trans-sea cables give you cheap and quick connection speeds.
|
| Starlink is middle of the road solution that solves both
| problems are immense costs.
|
| I can only imagine high frequency traders being able to
| afford it vs utilise the advantage of the latencies.
| vkou wrote:
| HFTs use direct, point-to-point terrestrial connections.
| They rarely need to send trades out of <middle of nowhere,
| that does not have a fiber link>.
|
| They've already optimized the hell out of their latency, to
| a ridiculous level.
| ericd wrote:
| It's certainly not going to require 10 starships/month. And
| they're aiming to get those down to <$10M/starship launch.
| thro1 wrote:
| Great idea! ;) Feasibility study - regarding _outwards_ , by
| teraflop (Nov 2020)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25051151 , shortly:
|
| _.. dishes on every one of the 12,000 satellites_ for _the
| same total area_ [as Arecibo] _each have to be over 9 feet.
| That 's about the same size as the chassis of the satellite
| itself.._
|
| _.. the receivers need to have very precisely synchronized
| clocks, and their relative positions need to be known to within
| a small fraction of the wavelengths you 're interested .. you
| might need to add atomic clocks to every satellite as well..
|
| .. you have to think about how to aim the antennas..
|
| .. fairly sensitive, low-noise, specialized signal processing
| equipment .. power .. weight..
|
| .. satellites have a roughly 5-year design lifetime.._
|
| then, can it be done ?
| [deleted]
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think that's the thing we should strive for. It has been
| shows time and time again that Elon Musk takes PR very
| seriously. We should make the company aware of astronomers so
| that they incorporate scientific objectives into Starlink. And
| pointing both the the nuisances and potential is one way to do
| it.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Why should that be owned by a private entity though? What right
| do they have for that? I wouldn't mind it being run by a public
| (international) organization, for public good, but that's very
| different.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| No government decided to build it? Like what kind of question
| is this?
| kaba0 wrote:
| On what right can a US. private entity spam the sky? Was it
| approved by people living in Europe or China or whatever?
|
| This is my question regarding the morality of that.
| secondcoming wrote:
| That's great but sometimes it's nice to be able to see the
| stars unobstructed on a cloudless night.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Starlink doesn't stop you from doing that, the satellites are
| only visible when they are in direct sunlight (dusk and
| dawn).
| RReverser wrote:
| For pure visual observation you might be right, but any
| sort of amateur astrophotography is already significantly
| affected and is only going to get worse because 1) it's
| usually more wide-field than in professional observatories,
| which significantly increases the chance of Starlink
| streaks and 2) the ~6.5 magnitude is still a lot brighter
| than all the interesting deep-sky objects and is only
| dimmer than stars visible to the human eye.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Amateur astrophotography usually stitches multiple short
| exposures together to simulate long exposure, where it's
| trivial to remove frames with streaks. You could also
| automatically detect the extent of the streaks and only
| remove those.
| RReverser wrote:
| With guiding you're usually aiming for 5-10 minute
| exposures per frame. That usually results in each frame
| having at least several streaks. Sure, those are
| technically still short and can be cancelled out, but
| astrophotography is already challenging enough and has
| plenty of other noise sources without adding more fuel to
| the problem.
|
| And that's now, when we're not close to the planned tens
| of thousands of satellites by Starlink above, and other
| vendors like Amazon only starting to plan their similar
| programs. That's why early feedback is important -
| otherwise the sky will be ruined in the best case for
| decades to come.
| juanani wrote:
| finnx wrote:
| > approximately 4 x 10-4 of all pixels would be lost over the
| course of a year. However, simply counting pixels affected by
| satellite streaks does not capture the entirety of the problem,
| for example resources that are required to identify satellite
| streaks and mask them out or the chance of missing a first
| detection of an object
|
| It looks like the main problem is not the amount of data lost but
| amount of extra manual work this situation causes. I assume
| Starlink tracks and knows where their satellites are, so why
| don't they just provide data feed to trusted third parties who
| might be affected by their satellites? That way researchers could
| automatically classify these trails.
| simondotau wrote:
| It seems to me that if you know where the satellites will be,
| it's not so much a problem of removing streaks but rather
| factoring it into automated scheduling so that you never have
| any streaks to remove.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I'd be surprised if the positions weren't already public data.
| Surely the US government requires or pressures knowledge of the
| positions since its a US based company and the satellites could
| certainly interfere with things NASA and other agencies want
| and need to do.
| japanuspus wrote:
| My understanding is that all startlink orbital data is
| available via https://www.space-track.org/.
| capableweb wrote:
| > I assume Starlink tracks and knows where their satellites
| are, so why don't they just provide data feed to trusted third
| parties who might be affected by their satellites?
|
| I'm not sure if this is in any way official and/or the right
| way of doing it, this area is all outside of my normal
| competence. But, stumbled upon a python library
| (https://github.com/python-astrodynamics/spacetrack) that
| supposedly connects to space-track (space-track.org) and you
| should be able to get the position there. How the data comes
| into space-track I'm not sure.
|
| But there are bunch of small services for seeing the live
| location, so I'm sure someone is tracking the location
| somewhere, like this one: https://findstarlink.com/
| tephra wrote:
| http://www.celestrak.com/Norad/elements/table.php?tleFile=st...
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Starlink satellites are supposed to perform movements on their
| own, mainly to avid other satellites. But this means you might
| not know where they are all the time, just for the most part.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I don't know about that. The satellite must know where it's
| at to avoid other satellites. And if the satellite knows
| where it's at, why can't it tell us?
| yosito wrote:
| It really drives me crazy how "study finds" just means that
| somebody built a hypothetical model to confirm their opinion.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Replication Crisis has taught me that "a scientific study
| shows X" only gently hints that X might be true.
| drran wrote:
| Science is about replication of results.
|
| For example, if Alice did X and got Y, then published a paper
| about it, and Bob did X and got Y, and Charlie did X and got
| Y, then X->Y is scientifically proven.
|
| If well known and proven scientist Alice said that X may
| cause Y, then it is just Alice words, not a science.
| kaba0 wrote:
| This is very field specific. As sibling poster mentioned,
| claiming it true for all of science is throwing out the baby
| with the bathwater.
| yosito wrote:
| Science and predictive models are two entirely different
| things. A study !== science.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I don't think there is a replication crisis in astronomy.
| It's important not to generalize from other fields
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| I think "This title is misleading" is a pretty worthwhile
| thing to mention.
| dang wrote:
| The GP didn't mention that.
| yosito wrote:
| Noted. I'd delete my comment, but it doesn't seem possible
| now.
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated! No need to delete - it's all about learning
| (and we're all in the process of doing that)
| [deleted]
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| That's not what the published article says at all.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Why did this somehow remind me of the movie "Don't Look Up"?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Because this article and that movie have the same agenda.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Even if you look, you can't see
| DennisP wrote:
| For anyone who would like a better source than the Daily Star,
| here's an article at Caltech:
|
| https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/palomar-survey-instrument...
|
| It includes this perspective:
|
| > Study co-author Tom Prince, the Ira S. Bowen Professor of
| Physics, Emeritus, at Caltech, says the paper shows a single
| streak affects less than one-tenth of a percent of the pixels in
| a ZTF image.
|
| > "There is a small chance that we would miss an asteroid or
| another event hidden behind a satellite streak, but compared to
| the impact of weather, such as a cloudy sky, these are rather
| small effects for ZTF."
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed to that URL from https://web.archive.org/web/
| 20220120172234/https://www.daily.... Thanks!
| onphonenow wrote:
| How do these idiots deal with CLOUDS? Weather? Airplanes?
|
| Observation from space at a fraction of existing costs would be
| game changing to astronomy. Instead we get these idiots for
| scientists.
| wwilson wrote:
| Funny given that Starlink itself has potential to be one giant
| synthetic aperture radar installation.
|
| From Casey Handmer's excellent post
| (https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/science-
| upside...):
|
| "Starlink SAR is great for Earth observation, but the same
| principle can be applied looking outwards. Starlink is a network
| of thousands of software defined radios with highly precise PNT
| information and high speed data connections. It is practically
| begging to be integrated into a world-sized radio telescope. With
| 13000 km of baseline (trivially extendable with a handful of GTO
| Starlink launches) and the ability to point in any desired
| direction simultaneously, Starlink could capture practically
| holographic levels of detail about the local radio environment.
| Literally orders of magnitude better resolution than ground-based
| antennas like the Very Large Array. Cheaper than repairing
| Arecibo and independent of Earth's rotation. Potentially capable
| of resolving exoplanets."
| cronix wrote:
| You could also install cameras pointing back towards Earth and
| basically have 24/7 coverage of everyone's movements similar to
| what Darpa's ARGUS-IS[1](2013) does except using a global
| network of satellites instead of drones and build the greatest
| video surveillance platform on the planet. Instead of covering
| a city for a limited time with a drone stuffed with an array of
| off the shelf cell phone cameras, you could have "persistent
| stare" for the entire planet. I wonder if the NSA has thought
| about that.
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA
| staplers wrote:
| Wouldn't you basically already have that telemetry if you
| tracked wifi/cell signals. I imagine that tech is already
| installed on starlink sats.
|
| I haven't done much research on them though.
| sockpuppet69 wrote:
| bberenberg wrote:
| You may be interested to know about Planet Labs
| https://www.planet.com/
| echelon wrote:
| I can't imagine that the NSA hasn't already had several talks
| with Musk.
| Retric wrote:
| Starlink satellites are tiny which limits how much you can
| slip in undetected. You can't get anything close to useful
| resolution from something like a cellphone camera at those
| altitudes. Maximum resolution really requires something the
| size of Hubble.
| Teever wrote:
| I was under the impression that spy satellites are put into
| much higher orbits to increase their lifespan but
| necessitating larger optical systems.
|
| One of the advantages of a LEO based surveillance system is
| that the optics could be smaller at the cost of requiring
| more satellites with shorter life span.
| Retric wrote:
| ~500km is still a common NRO orbit, and presumably that's
| to take the highest resolution images possible. The
| earliest spy satellites where under 150km and had
| extremely short lifespans. By comparison the commercial
| KOMPSAT-3 can provide 0.7m b/w images and 2.8 m color
| images from a 980kg satellite at 685 km and a multi year
| lifespan, I doubt classified satellites are that much
| better than that.
|
| Some NRO satellites are sent to geostationary orbit,
| presumably for other missions. So, it really depends on
| the goals as not all satellites are designed for ground
| imaging.
| welterde wrote:
| Even the full planned constellation has a smaller collecting
| area than Arecibo had (~60 000 m^2 vs ~73 000 m^2 for Arecibo)
| - and that's not even considering that for half the
| constellation the earth will be in the way, not the full
| dimensions of the satellite are usable as antenna, they are
| pointing the wrong way, etc. etc. Nevermind that one looses
| quite a lot of sensitivity when using these arrays..
| nuccy wrote:
| It is not about collecting area, but about synchetic aperture
| [1] alike very-long baseline interferometry (e.g. used by
| Event Horizon Telescope [2], which is a combination of many
| radio telescopes to observe the accretion disk around the
| supermassive black hole in M87 galaxy [3]). For that you need
| as long as possible distance between antenas, good time
| synchronisation, and as many as possible pairs of antenas
| (i.e. baselines) [3].
|
| Though unfortunately advances in radio don't compensate
| losses in optical and survey quality due to strays. Different
| sources emit at different wavelengths differently and usually
| one needs the whole picture (spectral energy distribution)
| from radio, ir, visible light, uv, x-rays up to gamma-rays to
| explain the properties of a source.
|
| 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/science-
| upside...
|
| 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-
| baseline_interfero...
|
| 3. https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/black-hole-
| files...
| welterde wrote:
| Depends on what you are after.
|
| You need long baselines if you want high resolution.
| However if you want high sensitivity there is no way around
| having a large collecting area. And since we are not
| looking to detect the sun in super high resolution, but
| very far away objects that will be extremely faint we need
| very high sensitivity. There is a reason the VLA (and other
| arrays such as ALMA) move their antennas into different
| configurations. A more compact configuration achieves
| better sensitivity at the cost of lower resolution and a
| more spread out configuration gives the inverse.
|
| Your hypothetical Starlink telescope would always have
| extremely high resolution but virtually no sensitivity to
| detect anything at all (maybe the sun). Certainly not any
| NEO objects - those were the prime targets for large
| single-dish radio telescope like Arecibo.
|
| The closest radio telescope to the concept you have in mind
| is LOFAR, but even for that one each station has many times
| the collecting area of many dozens of Starlink satellites
| (total collecting area of all stations together is up to
| ~1km^2).
| thro1 wrote:
| I made that question once on HN (2020, relating to Arecibo) and
| it was downvoted: _Couldn 't it be receivers on Starlink
| satellites plus some computing power instead?_ - but I've got
| great feasibility study by teraflop as the answer for that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25051151 .
| [deleted]
| suifbwish wrote:
| Their claim is the equivalent of complaining that the weight of
| a large vehicle engine is bad because it makes the vehicle more
| difficult to carry up a hill. Get in, start the engine and
| drive up the hill lol. I'm curious what you mean by
| "holographic levels of detail"
|
| If starlink were used as an outward sensor array, with the
| correct software and enough compute you could generate a live
| 3D model of the entire sky and almost anything in it down to
| quite a small resolution.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| Your second paragraph answers the first question, I think! As
| you probably know, more antennas spread further apart
| dramatically increases the effective antenna size when phased
| correctly.
| ben_w wrote:
| While that does increase the angular resolution, it does
| nothing for weak signals -- only area can boost that.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Wouldn't the area of the combined sensor be the sum of
| the areas of each sensor?
| ben_w wrote:
| Yes, if that's what you're asking (which is not what I
| thought this was about). Thought as someone else said,
| even combined it's still less than Arecibo.
| lokimedes wrote:
| Does the StarLink constellation have sufficiently accurate time
| synchronization and phase stability to allow it to act as a
| long baseline multi-static radar? I have been contemplating
| using it as a passive radar source, but here the limitation is
| its phased array nature. It is not really optimal for non-
| cooperative receivers.
| justinjlynn wrote:
| One would imagine so given that the satellites are eventually
| meant to collaborate via peer to peer direct laser links.
| Time synchronisation and phase stability are required for
| direct links but it's a good question as to how much is
| available in terms of the microwave SDRs.
| ianai wrote:
| Yes. If Elon was as concerned about the survival of humanity as
| he claims with his mars initiatives then he'd outfit these with
| some equipment for this. There's got to be a way to do both
| internet and radio astronomy.
| immmmmm wrote:
| putting extremely sensitive RF detectors on top of extremely
| power RF emitters doesn't seems the best match
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Until you realize every single satellite that both
| transmits and receives information has solved this problem
| already, including Starlink.
| emn13 wrote:
| I'm somewhat skeptical that every radio receiver is
| interchangable. Yes, starlink will have some kind of
| transceiver - but do you have any citation to back up the
| claim that it can be used effectively for astronomical
| observation?
|
| Even if the physics are fundamentally the same, all kinds
| of practical implementation details like orientation,
| bandwidth, frequency, and probably all kinds of stuff an
| actual expert in the field would know about may well
| differ.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Maybe it just hasn't gained enough steam for him to notice?
| Maybe it's not directly applicable to colonizing Mars?
|
| All of his current business ventures make sense when viewed
| through the lens of setting up a highly autonomous Martian
| colony. Each self funds R&D.
|
| Tesla: power generation, storage, management. Autonomous
| vehicles and droids to operate in hostile environments.
|
| SpaceX: transportation and communications.
|
| Boring Co.: protected subterranean environments.
|
| NeuraLink: Humans are more expensive to send. Augment the
| ones there with AI
| ianai wrote:
| I'd bet he could get funding from various governments by
| just hiring 1 astrophysicist and adding minimal hardware to
| the satellites. They're SDR so it might just be a software
| update.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Would be great! Especially because they plan to send so
| many more satellites up.
|
| Hopefully someone from SpaceX will see it here.
| cdash wrote:
| That is all based on the assumption that anything could be
| done to prevent an extinction level event with current
| technology.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It takes enormous amounts of capital to do all of this. He's
| got to build some of that capital first, and to do that he
| has to pursue commercial interests first. Once he's got
| positive cash-flow and growth and demonstrated a sustainable
| business, then he still can't quite build a radio telescope
| on SpaceX's dime for fiduciary reasons, but he'd have built a
| launch facility that governments could use to do it.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > It takes enormous amounts of capital to do all of this
|
| He's literally richest person on earth and SpaceX is his
| playground.
| cryptonector wrote:
| He can't just dedicate it to this or anything else in one
| go. That wealth is largely paper wealth based on other
| people's idea of what he can deliver, but then he has to,
| you know, deliver -- if he suddenly dedicated himself
| entirely to non-commercial projects, then he'd suddenly
| not be all that rich anymore.
|
| So, he has to make SpaceX more clearly a success before
| he can dedicate any capital to a space-based
| radiotelescope. And even then, he can't use SpaceX's
| capital -- he has to use his own.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think it's likely there will be a dope deal at some point
| where low-earth satellite clusters have to offer sky
| observation services that offset the loss of fidelity from
| ground-based systems.
|
| If the satellites can swing between sky and ground scanning
| several times in a single orbital period, they could use off-
| peak hours in the early morning to scan the skies.
|
| I don't know if that practically will work out, as Starlink has
| lower speed of light delays than undersea cables. Accessing
| content on the other side of the world will become more
| attractive with lower latency. For instance a lot more people
| using VPNs to watch BBC.co.uk at 4 am GMT.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| More likely, instead of dual purposing the satellites they'll
| end up finding a customer who is willing to pay for them to
| send up additional satellites that offer imagery, radio
| telemetry, or other sensor data. They'll get mixed in with
| the rest of the fleet, possibly acting as relays between
| satellites rather than downlink/uplinks themselves. Removing
| the downlink/uplink components would free up quite a bit of
| mass that could be dedicated to various sensor platforms, and
| the comms left would be the inter-satellite system already
| being used by the fleet.
|
| There are lots of potential customers for this (especially if
| used for terrestrial imagery or similar sensing), and
| piggybacking on their existing telecom fleet to handle the
| uplink/downlink side could be a phenomenal bit of cost
| savings for them. And they get the benefit of improving the
| inter-satellite network with the additional relays.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| If their primary mission was observation, they would be an
| incredible astronomical resource. However, I think that given
| the fuel constraints and SLA they aim to provide, I would be
| shocked if they used any fuel to orient for extraterrestrial
| observation.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think that SpaceX has convincingly proven that it is not
| that expensive to send up thousands of satellites. So, anyone
| interested in launching a telescope satellite could do worse
| than talk to them to see if they could help out. Also, given
| enough money, I don't see why SpaceX would not be using their
| satellite network for more than communication. Positioning is
| another interesting use case for them, for example.
| devnulll wrote:
| For the amortized cost of 1 strategic modern bomber, or a
| submarine, or an aircraft carrier, the DOD or US NRO could
| easily just pay SpaceX to do this. At the nation state
| scale, this constellation has proven to be trivially cheap.
|
| The resulting arms race would be... interesting and would
| probably get us closer to Kessler Syndrome quickly.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I would be shocked of DoD was not buying its own version
| of the same thing. There is even a company out there that
| has shown they can do it...
| [deleted]
| didericis wrote:
| One thing that makes me less scared about Kessler
| Syndrome than other environmental problems is that
| there's a very strong and immediate economic incentive to
| clean things up and prevent things from getting dirty by
| the people at risk of making things dirty. If you can't
| do maintenance on or launch satellites, that destroys the
| industry's source of income.
|
| The consequences for pollution from other industries is
| usually longer term and less dramatic/direct on the
| business itself, if it even effects the core business
| directly.
|
| I think all the effort put into monitoring space debris
| and the amount of attention things like starlink is
| getting speaks to this.
| shagie wrote:
| Starlink isn't at the top of my list for "likely Kessler
| Syndrome starters" because its a rather low orbit.
|
| They're at 550km up. From
| https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm
| puts it at likely a 10 year lifespan with some variation.
| The published lifespan of a satellite is 5 years.
|
| Its the stuff in the 700km to 900km range that's a
| problem.
|
| http://stuffin.space
|
| https://www.satview.org/spacejunk.php - and you'll see
| things like STARLINK-1204 already getting deorbtied (
| https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=45203 - note its
| perigee is 204.0 km - its already well below the other
| orbits)
|
| https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=45203 for more
| on that satellite.
|
| Starlink-61 appears to be one of the oldest ones still in
| orbit - https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=44249
| though its on its way down and you can see the type of
| impact and the duration of the "ok, this is going down".
|
| Even with the maximum starlink, that's 1,700 satellites
| that will last about 10 years.
|
| The 2007 China anti-satellite test created approximately
| 150,000 debris at 865km. Those are in an orbit that is on
| the order of 500 years.
|
| Starlink isn't going to be the cause of Kessler Syndrome.
|
| ---
|
| In hunting this up, I also found
| https://planet4589.org/astro/starsim/index.html which is
| relevant to the main topic - the impact on astronomy.
| nonesuchluck wrote:
| 550km is also just the operational altitude. SpaceX
| initially releases satellites in a much lower initial
| orbit. If they fail to POST, they fall into the
| atmosphere months after launch. Starlink climbs slowly to
| 550km with the same ion thrusters used for station
| keeping. SpaceX does not want dead birds in their orbital
| shell.
| shagie wrote:
| Looking more closely at https://in-the-
| sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=45203 - that makes sense. Its
| released right about 350 km in a rather eccentric orbit
| which is then stabilized at just under 400, then after
| about a month there, it climbs to its target orbit over
| the course of a month up at 550km.
|
| A more natural one is https://in-the-
| sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=45229 which has the same
| initial orbit pattern.
|
| The key thing with this is that without anything else,
| the satellite has a lifespan that is measured in months
| to years and up to a decade... not centuries. A Kessler
| syndrome at 550km would certainly be rather up there on
| the "suck" scale, but wouldn't keep humanity grounded for
| more than a decade.
|
| One of the important things to remember about debris at a
| given altitude, without additional energy, an object
| cannot climb further out of the the gravity well into a
| higher orbit. It will always come back to the same spot
| in its orbit one orbital period later.
| Diederich wrote:
| > not that expensive to send up thousands of satellites
|
| It's relatively inexpensive for SpaceX to do it, but their
| external prices are still quite high, even if cheaper than
| the competition.
| shantara wrote:
| Another thing that SpaceX has proven with Starlink is that
| the benefits of economy of scale could be applied to
| satellite production and the aerospace industry in general.
|
| It is so incredibly wasteful that the companies and
| governments keep coming up with unique designs for the
| satellites serving similar purposes. Imagine if we had a
| standard design template for an optical telescope that
| could be cheaply and easily mass produced and launched by
| the thousands.
| mcguire wrote:
| As someone mentioned above, weak signals require large
| receivers.
| mlyle wrote:
| Does it take any fuel? Isn't fuel used to desaturate reaction
| wheels?
| ajnin wrote:
| > Potentially capable of resolving exoplanets
|
| I was curious about that claim, so I did a bit of research and
| made a "back of the envelope" calculation. According to
| Wikipedia [1], the angular resolution of a telescope is
| proportional to <wavelength of light>/<diameter>. Starlink
| seems to operate from 10 to 40GHz, so assume the hardware has a
| 50% design margin so is capable of reaching 60GHz. Visible
| light has a frequency of 400 to 800THz, so take the middle of
| 600THz. Using those figures, it come out that the Starlink
| satellites, used as a telescope, would have the same angular
| resolution as a 1.3m visible light telescope. Is it enough to
| resolve exoplanets ? I'm not sure but I think not. Hubble is 6m
| and can apparently resolve some exoplanets so it's not too far
| off. Some launches to GEO would boost the resolution to the
| equivalent of 8.4m in visible. (IANAA)
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution
| jcims wrote:
| This is the one that specifically discusses telescope array
| (but your formula is still correct) https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Angular_resolution#Telescope_a...
|
| 60GHz has a wavelength of 5mm. Effective diameter would be
| ~13000km. Someone check my math but I end up with 5e-3/13e6
| radians or ~.0001 arcseconds. Hubble is ~.05 arcseconds.
| gliptic wrote:
| Hubble is 2.4 meter aperture.
| mcguire wrote:
| Certainly, Starlink's ground equipment has multiple functions:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/outdoor-cats-are-u...
| seventytwo wrote:
| Or...
|
| We just stop letting the broadband companies regulate
| themselves and nationalize the system.
|
| Then we don't have multiple layers of bandaids.
| robocat wrote:
| Why isn't space junk also a problem?
|
| "The current count of large debris (defined as 10 cm across or
| larger) is 34,000." - Wikipedia
| theptip wrote:
| LEO decays quickly because of atmospheric drag. (5-10 years
| IIRC).
| caaqil wrote:
| Recent discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29973626 (12 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29995026 (11 comments)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Semi off-topic question. Would it be possible or reasonable to
| mount small energy efficient high resolution cameras on the
| opposing side of the satellite and make a real time grid picture
| of space, then open source the data to any scientists or
| astronomers that want it? Could that be a feature request for the
| next model of their satellite?
| thro1 wrote:
| I wish it too. The cost of static, not synchronized, efficient
| cameras shall be marginal. Semi off-topic answer by teraflop,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055543 :
|
| _.. Now you have to think about how to aim the antennas.
| Presumably you can 't just reorient the entire satellite,
| because its main job is to keep its ground-facing antennas
| aimed at the ground and its solar panels aimed at the sun. So
| you need to add a separate antenna pointing mechanism, with a
| fairly wide range of very accurate movement along multiple
| axes, so that all of the radio antennas can observe the same
| region of the sky simultaneously.._
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Stupid question, but what international treaties currently
| regulate private citizens and corporations when it comes to
| space? Like, who can claim which orbits? Is this just first come,
| first serve? What would happen if someone crashes Starlink
| satellites, for instance by putting projectiles on a collision
| course?
|
| Edit, found an interesting link:
| https://www.spacelegalissues.com/orbital-slots-and-space-con...
|
| > The geostationary orbit is part of outer space and, as such,
| the customary principle of non-appropriation and the 1967 Space
| Treaty apply to it. The equatorial countries have claimed
| sovereignty, then preferential rights over this space. These
| claims are contrary to the 1967 Treaty and customary law.
| However, they testify to the concern of the equatorial countries,
| shared by developing countries, in the face of saturation and
| seizure of geostationary positions by developed countries. The
| regime of res communis of outer space in Space Law (free access
| and non-appropriation) does not meet the demand of the developing
| countries that their possibilities of future access to the
| geostationary orbit and associated radio frequencies are
| guaranteed. New rules appear necessary and have been envisaged to
| ensure the access of all States to these positions and
| frequencies.
| mattr47 wrote:
| Starlink satellites are in LEO, not geostationary.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Always fascinated by these useless, "shaking fist at sky"
| denunciations by small countries. What, exactly, is Zaire going
| to do about a satellite operator in GEO not paying a tax for
| their orbital slot? Start up a space program real quick to go
| move the satellite?
| y4mi wrote:
| You don't need a space program to destroy satellite
|
| It's not trivial, but it's still easier then a space program
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The highest satellite ever hit by an ASAT missile was FY-1C
| at 865km.
|
| GEO is 35,786km.
|
| Every nation ever to field ASAT missiles demonstrated
| orbital launch first.
| narag wrote:
| what about a laser?
| Melatonic wrote:
| As far as I know: Not enough
| fallingmeat wrote:
| "...they want you to look up so they can look down on you!"
|
| Best line from that movie
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