[HN Gopher] Navigating Starlink's FCC Paper Trail
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Navigating Starlink's FCC Paper Trail
Author : DanAtC
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-06-26 06:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.apnic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.apnic.net)
| Culonavirus wrote:
| > they're clearly not the kind of company that takes people on
| factory tours to proudly show off how they make and run things
|
| ??? SpaceX is certainly the most open space corp out there, by a
| mile. I mean they're still a private for profit company that has
| to follow ITAR rules, but compared to their competition, they're
| extremely open. Anyone following Starship development can see
| that. Just the fact that they even gave a tour (twice!) to the
| Everyday Astronaut, with Raptor closeups and everything...
| Imagine Blue Origin or Boeing doing something like that. Yea,
| right.
| bahmboo wrote:
| He is speaking about Starlink, not SpaceX. The whole sentence
| wasn't phrased correctly but that's what he meant.
| kortilla wrote:
| Starlink gives factory tours as part of the interview
| process. A guy I know who didn't even get hired saw the sat
| assembly line in the Seattle area.
| freedomben wrote:
| How bad was the interview process up until then? If it's
| not too bad, it might be worth interviewing to get the
| tour...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Boeing gives multiple daily tours in their Everett Washington
| based airplane manufacturing facility. They have a public
| museum next to the facility which is where you buy tickets to
| the tour and wait for the tour shuttle. I've taken the tour and
| it's cool!
|
| That said I've not heard of any tours for their space
| manufacturing facility, though they might offer them.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Space manufacturing centers generally offer tours but not for
| the general public. It's more like a friends and family sort
| of deal. Even my uncle got to go inside Endeavor in the early
| 2000s as he was friends with a QA manager of the shuttle
| program.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Satellites and spaceships are classified as weapons, tours
| that actually showed anything to the general public without
| some solid verification would be a serious crime. You'd have
| to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card
| or a citizen of a friendly country.
|
| Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well
| be guilty of exporting protected technology.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| When I was a kid my dad took me to "take your kid to work
| day" at Lockheed. I think they hid the secret stuff
| somewhere where visitors wouldn't find them.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Mar-el-Lago?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Unlike politicians, the military + contractors take their
| responsibilities re. controlled information relatively
| seriously. The normal practice is to not have anything
| that is clearance-controlled sitting out anyway (it's
| usually stored behind extra levels of security scaled to
| the secrecy), and to control access to that information
| on a fairly granular level. Visitors to those facilities
| (of a variety of clearance backgrounds) are regular, so
| anything beyond ITAR (which you, as the child of an ITAR-
| accessible employee, and thus likely a US citizen/green
| card holder would have had access to) is going to be
| locked up by default.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Having grown up in North FL, I've been on a few military
| ships for friends and family day. This is pretty much
| exactly what they do. You're only allowed where they tell
| you to be and they have people watching to make sure you
| follow the rules.
|
| If anyone gets the chance to go out on a carrier, do so.
| Pretty neat stuff.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I interned at a Lockheed facility (which is now a nice
| strip mall). The classified things are behind closed
| doors or in your computers. The labs where you'd work on
| classified equipment were behind coded doors, so they
| just wouldn't take anybody there. They really checked
| too. One time I was waiting for my friend to finish
| something in a non-classified lab that still had the code
| on the door. I was literally falling asleep for a couple
| of hours doing nothing so I decided not to charge those
| hours. A few weeks later my manager invited me into his
| office to reprimand me for _not_ charging the hours
| because they audited the doors and knew where I was for
| how long. I got overtime because they tracked what was
| going on so well.
| skissane wrote:
| > You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at
| least green card or a citizen of a friendly country.
|
| Under ITAR, "US Person" means US citizen or green card
| holder. (And a few other obscure categories, such as
| individuals granted refugee status by the US government.)
| Export to citizens of friendly countries (who don't have
| green cards or dual US citizenship) requires an export
| license. I heard some talk they might exclude Australian
| citizens from this rule as part of AUKUS (although even
| there I don't know if it would apply to space stuff, since
| space ain't got nothing to do with nuclear submarines), but
| right now no ally is excluded.
|
| > Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could
| well be guilty of exporting protected technology.
|
| From what I understand, theoretically speaking you are okay
| if they have a green card, or dual US-Chinese citizenship.
| How well the theory holds up in practice, I don't know.
| (Technically China bans dual citizenship-however, if a
| Chinese citizen naturalises into the citizenship of another
| country, what happens if they don't tell the PRC government
| they did it? And even if they do tell the PRC government,
| although PRC law says the government has to cancel their
| Chinese passport, the PRC government is free to ignore its
| own laws whenever it wants to.)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There are generally exceptions to US Person status for
| dual citizens, especially those from "Designated
| countries" which include China, Iran, etc currently.
| These exceptions apply on a per-center, per-project basis
| IIRC, but include blanket bans on NASA collaboration /
| exchange, which would include private tours of the kind
| being discussed.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/08/designated-c...
| colechristensen wrote:
| >From what I understand, theoretically speaking you are
| okay
|
| One does not rely on theory when you could spend a decade
| in prison for interpreting it wrong. For edge cases you'd
| better consult your compliance lawyer, your state
| department contact, and your god before making
| assumptions. Exports do happen all the time and there's a
| pretty open culture of declaring them. Usually it's a
| matter of an email getting sent to the wrong person and
| actually harmless which comes with an administrative
| bitch slap from the state department and maybe a moderate
| fine (like 5 digits, enough to get somebody's attention
| but in the way a parking ticket does). If you're brazen
| or particularly foolish or there's real harm though...
| a-dub wrote:
| too bad they've been kneecapped by the business casual
| crowd...
| nvy wrote:
| >the business casual crowd...
|
| The what now?
| dullcrisp wrote:
| The Khaki Pants Mafia, The No. 2 Pencil Pushers, Auntie
| Plaid, you know...
| HPsquared wrote:
| I don't think fashion has much to do with it.
| nvy wrote:
| I have no idea to which group you're referring.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Airplane manufacture has a different export rating than
| spacecraft manufacture, thus (probably) the different posture
| re: tours. For example, at JPL (where I used to work / give
| tours), there's a multi-day lead time for background checks
| on visitors if they intend to enter any location not pre-
| cleared for tours. E.g., looking at equipment or actual
| manufacturing.
| rblatz wrote:
| I've toured the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, it was pretty
| cool. Was inches away from a guy cranking a wrench on a
| previously flown rocket engine, it was extremely cool.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...Two cool, dude, two cool.
| russdill wrote:
| Its actually ULA that tends to be the most transparent. It just
| doesn't show as much as they aren't doing nearly as much. But
| yes, Blue Origin is strangely secretive.
| esskay wrote:
| Gotta be secretive when you've got nothing to show. Keeps the
| illusion of progress in place.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| speculation
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| True. But why should they be that open? I imagine SpaceX has
| quite a bit of intellectual property that is non trivial that
| they don't necessarily want to just hand over to their
| competition. They are doing quite a few cool things with radios
| in star link that I imagine are very valuable technology.
|
| I watched the latest interviews of Everyday Astronaut over the
| weekend. Very nice deep dive in the current state of star ship
| and all the tech involved with that. But there were clearly a
| few details that Elon wasn't ready to discuss. Which is
| understandable.
|
| As for the question at the end of the article. The FCC is a
| federal institution with jurisdiction in the US. SpaceX
| operates a global network of satellites that covers most of the
| planet. So, going through the ITU seems like it's not a strange
| move. They'll need approval from more than just the FCC to
| operate those 30K satellites, which presumably is what those
| large nice Starships that they are producing rapidly now are
| going to be delivering to orbit.
| detritus wrote:
| If my memory serves, there were at least a couple of
| blurred/pixellated details in that.
|
| What I also noticed is a change in Musk from early Everyday
| Astronaut interviews, where rather than tackling the mention
| of competing technologies or methodologies witha reasoned
| argument as to why they weren't going that route, he'd clamp
| up and a few minutes later respond clearly slighted by the
| proposition.
|
| Musk has always been a bit of a hard listen, but I found this
| last EA interview really hard to get through.
| golol wrote:
| I think Musk just wanted to make the point that there are
| many ways to achieve rapid and reliable reusability but
| they have chosen this one, they are laser focused on making
| it work, and they know they can make it work. So other ways
| of doing things are actually not important to him right
| now.
| modeless wrote:
| The blurring is for ITAR compliance. It's not SpaceX
| policy, it's government policy.
|
| My impression from the latest interview was that Elon has
| not been as directly involved in SpaceX technical decisions
| since buying Twitter and spending a bunch of time on that
| instead. So he was less able to engage on technical
| questions.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| ULA/Tory Bruno has definitely given tours to YouTubers as well
| apendleton wrote:
| As have Rocket Lab, Firefly, Astra (RIP probably), Stoke,
| Relativity, Spin Launch if that counts, and probably others.
| cbanek wrote:
| When I worked there, you could take your family on a tour (if
| they were a US Citizen). There was no problem as long as people
| didn't touch anything on the factory floor. But things may have
| changed.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Spacex gave me a factory tour when I was applying so I have an
| anecdote in direct counter
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| In fairness, ULA has done that too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw
|
| Also literally everything Destin/SmarterEveryDay puts online is
| worth watching.
| metadat wrote:
| > One wonders whether SpaceX's recent ITU application through
| Tonga's authorities for a constellation with nearly 30,000
| satellites represents an attempt to circumvent FCC scrutiny by
| launching under a flag of convenience.
|
| That Tongan Space Program - they've claimed a lot of spot
| reservations but haven't launched many satellites. Their budget
| is miniscule, less than $10m as of the early 2000s. If I'm
| reading correctly, they only have a single satellite.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongasat
| adolph wrote:
| Yes, that was an interesting coda to the story, closing with an
| example of the opening:
|
| _The rules of the game aren't published anywhere, but the aims
| seem to be quite clear -- as an established geostationary
| satellite provider fearing that SpaceX may be eating your
| lunch, your goal is to throw as many spanners into the works as
| you can, usually cleverly disguised as technical objections, to
| delay and suppress._
|
| _SpaceX's goal, on the other hand, seems to be to make you
| spend as much money on lawyers and other experts as they can,
| by getting you to comment on system alternatives and options
| they subsequently abandon._
| mNovak wrote:
| One filing type they didn't mention, is SES-STA (Satellite Earth
| Station Special Temporal Authority) -- aka a temporary
| experimental license for user or gateway equipment. This is where
| the juice is, i.e. if they're testing out new models that haven't
| been announced yet, and if you're lucky includes some technical
| specs.
|
| But they're hard to filter through because they file so many for
| uninteresting things too.
| alexpotato wrote:
| > The FCC website would be a rabbit warren even if there was no
| SpaceX
|
| A relative of mine is in a dispute with another party regarding
| real estate.
|
| I mention this here b/c a big part of that dispute has involved
| pulling data from government websites (Specifically city property
| records).
|
| The below is all true:
|
| - the amount of useful information in government websites is
| astounding
|
| - the UX of these websites is awful
|
| - given the above, if you are good at navigating these websites
| (or can automate the data gathering) it really can be a
| superpower.
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