[HN Gopher] The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
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The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 41 points
Date : 2024-04-17 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| bagels wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Y5ntn
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240417093737/https://www.techn...
| rickydroll wrote:
| The continued enshittification of LEO (Low Earth Orbit). The
| other LEO was enshittified a long time ago.
|
| [edit] I guess I should clarify
|
| Low Earth orbit has been all crapped up by commercial
| constellations for ground-based Internet access. Starlink has
| severely damaged Earth-based astronomy, and at least two other
| multi-thousand satellite constellations are in the works. There
| are another ten or so CubeSat constellations planned--each
| consisting of between 100 and 150 satellites.
|
| Orbits around the earth are a limited natural resource. Pre-
| Starlink, there were approximately 2000 active satellites, 3000
| dead satellites, and 34,000 pieces of junk larger than 10 cm.[1]
| Starlink is responsible for 1600 close encounters every week.[2]
|
| History shows us that corporations leave behind damage once they
| have extracted as much wealth as they can and leave the
| recovery/cleanup to the public purse. This behavior is why I
| believe corporations will fill low Earth orbit with junk and do
| nothing to clean it up unless they can profit.
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-
| starlink-... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-
| collision-al...
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| We're just using that word for everything we don't like now,
| aren't we?
| rickydroll wrote:
| Because it fits everywhere? I can see how my comment is the
| enshittification of enshittification.
| exe34 wrote:
| enshittification considered harmful.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| Something being turned to shit for commercial gain. Seems
| like a valid use of the word.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| It generally means over-commercialization.
| Hizonner wrote:
| No, it means establishing a dominant market position,
| preferably with some kind of lockin based on a network
| effect, and then changing your product to transfer value
| previously given to your customers to your shareholders,
| because you believe the customers can't or won't now leave
| you.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > And right now, the soonest likely to launch is being led out of
| a sprawling former Fry's Electronics retail store in a shopping
| center complex in Texas.
|
| Oh man, I miss Fry's.
|
| Anyways, ISTM that Starship itself can be launched, left in
| orbit, and retrofitted into a space station module. Just purge
| the tanks, cut up the methane tank's dome, the common dome, and
| the downcomer, disconnect the engines (and return them to Earth,
| maybe) or maybe build smaller tanks to feed the engines for
| boosting the station, and finish the interior using materials
| shipped as the payload. IIRC one Starship would have as much
| volume as the entire ISS, but I can't check right now.
| trothamel wrote:
| While the wet-tank concept has been explored since Skylab,
| that's a lot of work to do before your station becomes
| habitable - and where do you stay while doing the work?
|
| Launching inflatable stations inside the cargo area of Starship
| seems to be a much better approach, as all the fitting-out can
| be done on Earth, so the station is immediately inhabitable.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| You answered your own question in a way - use the inflatable
| habs while finishing the Starship itself. Then you've got
| both.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's not like you can't have several Starships parked next
| to each other either. There are at least 3 lined up at
| Starbase in various stages of production.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The payload bay could have enough finished quarters and life
| support to support the astronauts who would do the expansion
| of the station into the fuel tanks. But even if that seems a
| bit silly you could lash two Starships together and only use
| their payload bays and _still_ have way more interior space
| than the ISS does now _and_ do it all for much cheaper
| because Starships are so cheap.
| delichon wrote:
| With a pair of Starships it would be tempting to put them
| on either end of a tether and spin them for artificial
| gravity. The benefits for construction and comfort may
| outweigh the benefits of proximity. And it may be practical
| to convert from one configuration to the other.
| perihelions wrote:
| One (future) Starship's payload bay alone has more volume than
| the ISS--that's _not_ counting the fuel tank volume that shares
| a common bulkhead. The payload bay takes up just ~1 /3rd of the
| spacecraft length.
|
| - _" The Starship spacecraft is 50.3 m (165 ft) tall and 9 m
| (30 ft) in diameter. It uses 6 Raptor engines, three of which
| are optimized for use in vacuum.[6][22] The engines produce
| 14,700 kN (3,300,000 lbf) of thrust.[17] The vehicle's payload
| bay is planned to measure 17 m (56 ft) tall and 8 m (26 ft) in
| diameter with an internal volume of 1,000 m3 (35,000 cu ft);
| slightly larger than the ISS's pressurized volume.[23]"_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship#Starship_space...
| WWLink wrote:
| I remember a common talking point for space shuttle haters
| (aka people who use the word "boondoggle" way too damn much)
| was that it's a truck and we don't need a space truck. If it
| was a truck what is starship?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| A much much much cheaper truck.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's a very good point! From one perspective, you can view
| Starship as a challenge that SpaceX can implement the STS
| (Shuttle) concept much better than the original STS itself.
| (And doing so, become cheap enough to create a high-volume
| orbital launch market). It's correct to be skeptical, even
| with SpaceX' track record. (Was it pg or whoever on HN who
| kept railing on that point about YC startups, that the
| implementation is _everything_ --high-level ideas and
| concepts come cheap).
|
| If Starship's proven a lot of things, there's still major
| show-stopping uncertainties remaining, like if they can
| execute well on the reentry heat-shield tiles. That was
| overwhelmingly difficult for STS. I'm not knowledgeable
| enough to guess if SpaceX is on a promising track with
| those or not--I'm looking forward to finding out what
| happens!
|
| (Here's an open-ended question: if the modern SpaceX were
| asked to build a reusable spacecraft with (broadly) the
| same design choices as STS, would the outcome be closer to
| the dismal failure of the original, or to the success of
| Falcon 9? That is to say: how much of SpaceX' success do
| they owe to smart high-level design choices, vs. effective
| low-level execution?)
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| By same design choices do you mean that it is mandated
| that an essentially reusable cargo truck be mounted to
| the side(s) of booster(s)/tank? Because that was the
| shuttle's damning sin. Besides the collapse of the USSR
| there's a reason the Buran wasn't further pursued, and
| commercial space hasn't pursued a similar form factor.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > if the modern SpaceX were asked to build a reusable
| spacecraft with (broadly) the same design choices as STS,
| [...]
|
| That depends on which design choices should stay the
| same. The boosters and the main tank were bad design
| choices that made reuse unattainable. With Falcon 9's and
| Starships reusability lessons in mind perhaps one could
| make the boosters just part of the main tank, all
| methalox burning, and have the main tank land itself.
|
| With the booster and main tank design choices disposed
| of, the remaining major design choice would be that the
| shuttle had to be a space _plane_ that could land like a
| plane. That seems like a tremendous waste of weight which
| would keep the new program from being broadly successful
| at being _cheap_ , though it might not be fatal I
| suppose. But at this point Falcon 9 has a better
| reliability record _including landings_ since they
| figured out landings than the shuttle did altogether
| since the STS became "mature".
| pfdietz wrote:
| At a deeper level, the shuttle failed because technical
| success was secondary to political success. It wasn't
| started because Nixon wanted cheap launch; it was started
| because Nixon wanted votes in California in 1972.
| Legislators didn't support it for technical reasons, but
| because it brought funding to their constituents. If ever
| technical decisions had to be made they had to be
| filtered politically, and only if they continued to meet
| political constraints could they be adopted. In
| particular, optimizing it to reduce manpower requirements
| was contrary to political goals.
|
| In contrast, SpaceX is focused on technical/economic
| success as the first and overriding goal. As a result,
| they've run rings around what NASA could do. NASA is by
| its nature hamstrung in comparison; witness the abortion
| of SLS, which is showing the same pathology in even more
| virulent form. NASA didn't fail on the shuttle because of
| particular choices made, but because NASA essentially
| could not make good choices.
|
| Europe saw the same problem with Ariane 6.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > At a deeper level, the shuttle failed because technical
| success was secondary to political success. [...]
|
| Yes, there is also all of that.
|
| That's another thing: neither SpaceX nor any other
| private company would make the same design mistakes as
| the space shuttle program for the simple reason that
| private companies want to succeed. But government
| agencies will gladly make the same sorts of mistakes in
| slightly different ways (as in the SLS case) precisely
| because success is not actually required and none of the
| people making decisions have anything to lose anyways.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Space Shuttle wasn't a boondoggle because it was a
| truck; it was a boondoggle because it was an incredibly
| expensive truck. It failed utterly at the ostensible and
| valid reasons it was constructed, to make access to space
| cheap and routine.
| Hizonner wrote:
| That's quite a collection of copium, there. Absolutely NO
| critical examination of the whole concept. Every claim from space
| station proponents taken at face value, if not hyped even
| further.
|
| The fact is that space stations, like all crewed spacecraft, are
| a colossal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by stupid
| romanticism (and don't even start with the laughable "lifeboat"
| crap). That's going to stay true for a long, long, long time, and
| maybe forever.
|
| The main significant science done on the ISS (that couldn't have
| done at least as easily elsewhere) has been the stuff showing
| that space is very bad for your health. Which you wouldn't really
| need to know if you didn't go there. Most of the rest is also
| incestuous stuff aimed at supporting the useless-in-the-first-
| place goal of putting humans in space. It has not remotely paid
| for itself in science, nor will any other station.
|
| Nobody has yet demonstrated any manufacturing process that's
| enough better in microgravity to justify the launch costs... let
| alone the enormous infrastructure you'd need to do any of it a
| remotely interesting scale. And if it _did_ , you could likely do
| it lights-out more easily than you could keep people alive to do
| it hands-on.
|
| Whatever "robust, global user base" there may be exists only
| because the whole thing is subsidized. Not that there really is
| much of one.
|
| But at least now it's more fools wasting their own money and less
| fools wasting other people's money...
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| > Nobody has yet demonstrated any manufacturing process that's
| enough better in microgravity to justify the launch costs...
| let alone the enormous infrastructure you'd need to do any of
| it a remotely interesting scale. And if it did, you could
| likely do it lights-out more easily than you could keep people
| alive to do it hands-on.
|
| This has already been demonstrated via Varda Space and yes,
| they do it robotically with no humans in orbit.
|
| As for the rest of this comment, thank _goodness_ this type of
| incredibly depressing and pessimistic attitude is not
| widespread among engineers, we 'd never achieve anything.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't think it's really depressing or pessimistic. A
| serious argument can be made that manned spaceflight is
| unnecessary when everything we need to do in space can be
| done remotely with robotics. The delta-V-times-mass spent
| launching relatively heavy redundant meatbags (people) into
| space could be saved or repurposed for launching even better
| machines.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > As for the rest of this comment, thank goodness this type
| of incredibly depressing and pessimistic attitude is not
| widespread among engineers, we'd never achieve anything.
|
| "Nuh-uh! That's depressing and pessimistic! I don't wanna
| believe that!".
|
| Not very convincing, I'm afraid.
|
| > This has already been demonstrated via Varda Space and yes,
| they do it robotically with no humans in orbit.
|
| Well, no.
|
| Varda demonstrated crystallizing ritonavir (presumably
| without getting form II).
|
| This is already done at scale on Earth.
|
| They did _not_ show that it was "enough better in
| microgravity to justify the launch costs". They just showed
| that it could be done _at all_. So far as I know, they don 't
| actually even plan to commercialize the ritonavir thing; they
| were just demonstrating that they could do _some_
| crystallization that had had some (famous, but already
| solved) problems on the ground.
|
| They have neither made anything at a profit, nor specifically
| identified anything that they plan to make at a profit.
|
| ... and these are the same people who couldn't get their shit
| together to get a permit to land their spacecraft on time.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| It is a depressing and pessimistic way to look at the
| world!
|
| > Varda demonstrated crystallizing ritonavir (presumably
| without getting form II).
|
| > This is already done at scale on Earth.
|
| Is it? The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be
| reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of
| "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided.
|
| > and these are the same people who couldn't get their shit
| together to get a permit to land their spacecraft on time.
|
| The issue appears to stem from the FAA's side of things.
| One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with only
| a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's hardly
| "not having their shit together".
| avmich wrote:
| Saying "human shouldn't fly to space" is like saying "we
| shouldn't build particle accelerators or sequence DNAs".
| It's purely uneducated point of view, which doesn't cost
| much. No reason for depression at all.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > Is it?
|
| It's part of the standard HIV therapy, which means it's
| being given to literally millions of people on a regular
| basis.
|
| A generic version is approved in the US, and probably
| elsewhere, which means that more than one company is
| making it.
|
| It's a WHO-listed essential medicine.
|
| Short of ibuprofen or something, that's about as "at
| scale" as it gets for drugs.
|
| > The crux of the issue seems to be that this can't be
| reliably crystalized under gravity and the issue of
| "disappearing polymorphs" can be avoided.
|
| Apparently it can be crystallized reliably _enough_ to
| support heavy use.
|
| There was a bad problem in 1998 where a more stable, but
| less potent, form was showing up. Apparently if there's
| even a tiny bit of that in a batch, it propagates and
| ruins the whole batch, so forward microcontamination was
| ruining _all_ the batches. I think that was the first
| time anybody knew that that form even existed.
|
| My guess is that that is happening in approximately zero
| batches right now. But even if it's ruining half the
| batches, throwing them away is still cheaper than trying
| to do it in space.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > One could argue Varda shouldn't have gone forward with
| only a verbal agreement from the FAA in hand, but that's
| hardly "not having their shit together".
|
| Yeah, it really is. They took dumb chances and endangered
| their mission. You can't cut corners on that kind of
| thing.
|
| ... and that's assuming you fully accept their version of
| events.
| indymike wrote:
| > The fact is that space stations, like all crewed spacecraft,
| are a collosal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by
| stupid romanticism (and don't even start with the laughable
| "lifeboat" crap). That's going to stay true for a long, long,
| long time, and maybe forever.
|
| > But at least now it's more fools wasting their own money and
| less fools wasting other people's money...
|
| I'd rather the fools waste their money (and yours, to) on
| laughable crap like keeping humanity alive than not so
| laughable crap like waging wars.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Unfortunately, there are times when wars need to be waged,
| which means nation-states need to be prepared at all times to
| wage war.
|
| (gestures in the direction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces)
| RunningDroid wrote:
| Agreed, to paraphrase Major General Smedley Butler: War is
| a racket, but it's not always _your_ racket.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| To paraphrase Trotsky, it doesn't matter whether you're
| interested in war. It matters whether war is interested
| in you.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Most of the rest is also incestuous stuff aimed at supporting
| the useless-in-the-first-place goal of putting humans in space.
|
| useless I guess if you're fine with humanity dying off
| entirely. One way or another, if humanity is going to survive
| it has to get into space and out of our solar system because we
| only have so long before our sun dies and takes all life on
| Earth with it. That's already assuming that we don't kill
| ourselves first, or that something else doesn't. Since we have
| no idea how long we really have, it seems very smart to take
| what steps we can and develop the technology we know we'll
| need.
|
| Maybe you just don't care since you can assume you'll already
| be long dead before it happens, but it's still a fact that
| we're up against an uncertain deadline.
| avmich wrote:
| Ok, I waited to be downvoted :) now let me repeat: this is
| uneducated post, almost if not all statements here are
| incorrect, it's a personal opinion, but not facts. Literally
| everything could and should be disregarded here - "with the
| exception of 'thank you'"
| (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104952/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1).
| crypro1952 wrote:
| I wish people would put "paywall" in the titles so i would know
| not to click on it and waist time.
|
| This one would be "The great commercial takeover of low Earth
| orbit - paywall"
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Anything posted to Hacker News is typically fully available via
| archive.is. (And you can make it available if it wasn't
| already.)
|
| https://archive.is/Y5ntn
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