SpaceX Internet Satellite Network: Starlink

[mongo]

Disclaimer: I consider this enjoyable discussion/ banter, not trying to be argumentative (sub-disclainer I don't mean to imply I consider you argumentative)

I don't disagree that the timeline can and probably will be shorter for Starship, but being ready to launch people in 2020 on starlink is, IMHO, crazy talk.

Yeah, launching people on starlink is crazy.
If Starship can reach orbit, hold pressure, and land reliably, why not put people in it?

What you do need, again, is regulatory approval to launch anything into space and then tenfold approval (so to speak) when there's people involved.

Do you? Seriously, I have no clue, I'm not even aware who would have jurisdiction over whether there is a person in that huge projectile.

You might find less fault in the statement if you considered the full context of the statement.

The schedule delay from the Draco anomaly was the result of a SpaceX mistake.

Still not following you. To me, a mistake would be doing something that you knew you shouldn't or that you didn't intend to. If the one way valves worked properly, there would not have been any anomaly. That is engineering/ learning, not a mistake. Shotwell said at one point something along the lines of 'our tests aren't failing so we are not pushing hard enough'

 

[bxr140]

Fair enough if you don’t think there will be humans on a Starship until 2022. But assuming they reach LEO some time in 2020, what do you suppose the payload will be between then and 2022? For a system that is designed to have a very low marginal cost of use? Hint in the title of this thread.

Ahhh....Thou doth conflate.

Never have I suggested that SH/Starship won't launch Starlinks. It is obvious that the lion's share of the units will be lifted by SH+Starship, or at least some cargo-only version of Starship. 12000 satellites, as it turns out, is a lot of satellites.

My position [that you misunderstood, but if you re-read it will be clear] was and is that F9 will be used to deploy the starlink assets required to initiate revenue generating service. Near as I can tell that's 720 satellites, but its possible there's a new number. I'm pretty sure last word is that they want to do that by end of 2020 or maybe hurricane season(?)...but if I'm honest, its hard to keep up with ever changing Elon time... Either way, that's another 11-12 F9 launches, depending on how you do The Maths + The Variables. Totally doable, no need for Starship there. That's the point.

Just to circle back, on a parallel track I (again) don't think we'll see 'several hundred' starlinks launched on Starship in 2020. That is primarily because I think there will only be one or maybe 2 orbital Starships launched by the end of 2020. I could see there being no payload on the first one and maybe something more 'dumb' than satellites on the second one, like fuel. Best case is one of them carrying some starlinks.

 

[bxr140]

Disclaimer: I consider this enjoyable discussion/ banter, not trying to be argumentative

Lol. As do I!

I'm not even aware who would have jurisdiction over whether there is a person in that huge projectile.

FAA and FCC, Range (which pretty much means Air Force), and there are some DOD elements too as satellites and rockets are often classified as defense articles. Not exactly relevant to the topic, there's almost certainly some The Man level encryption involved, and The Man definitely wants to know what you're using it for and who will have access. (Even commercial satellites can be CCI).

I do not know if NASA has a hard sign (so to speak) on private American spaceflight. But...private spaceflight is uncharted territory and I wouldn't be surprised if there were political entities scrambling to regulate further.

Still not following you. To me, a mistake would be doing something that you knew you shouldn't or that you didn't intend to.

Back to semantics on this one, but I would contest they didn't intend to use a faulty part. Whether we call that an anomaly or a mistake or a **** up...its kinda all the same in the end. The delay was the result of SpaceX (in this case, their part selection), not some external difficult-to-control element like red tape/paperwork.

In any case, humorously, I made the statement that started this sidebar in an attempt to ward off someone calling me out on a technicality. So much for pre-empting a discussion that's way off the main point...

To go back, I suggested there was no evidence to suggest Starship's timeline to manned flight would be much different than Dragon's. Someone could [rightly] question that logic based on the fact that Dragon is specifically delayed because of the anomaly, so I added the caveat that Starship might not suffer a delay due to something rooted internally (engineering, processes, whatever), thus improving the relative timeline versus Dragon. BUT...Starship might still be held hostage to whatever regulatory agencies SpaceX needs to navigate to pass go, so externally induced delays are almost inevitable.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Elon Musk Told Us Why He Thinks We Can Land on the Moon in ‘Less Than 2 Years’
Elon:
I’m not sure. If it were to take longer to convince NASA and the authorities that we can do it versus just doing it, then we might just do it. It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can.

Obviously this is a decision that’s out of my hands. But the sheer amount of effort required to convince a large number of skeptical engineers at NASA that we can do it is very high. And not unreasonably so, ’cause they’re like, “Uh, come on. How could this possibly work?” The skepticism…you know, they’d have good reasons for it. But the for sure way to end the skepticism is just do it.

Oh Elon. You are so optimistic. Even if you DID land someone on the moon, the crusty old NASA engineers would STILL say it wasn't done safely enough!

 

[bxr140]

Oh Elon. You are so optimistic. Even if you DID land someone on the moon, the crusty old NASA engineers would STILL say it wasn't done safely enough!

NASA be like: "They faked it all in Van Nuys!"

 

[Singer3000]

Ahhh....Thou doth conflate.

Never have I suggested that SH/Starship won't launch Starlinks. It is obvious that the lion's share of the units will be lifted by SH+Starship, or at least some cargo-only version of Starship. 12000 satellites, as it turns out, is a lot of satellites.

My position [that you misunderstood, but if you re-read it will be clear] was and is that F9 will be used to deploy the starlink assets required to initiate revenue generating service. Near as I can tell that's 720 satellites, but its possible there's a new number. I'm pretty sure last word is that they want to do that by end of 2020 or maybe hurricane season(?)...but if I'm honest, its hard to keep up with ever changing Elon time... Either way, that's another 11-12 F9 launches, depending on how you do The Maths + The Variables. Totally doable, no need for Starship there. That's the point.

Just to circle back, on a parallel track I (again) don't think we'll see 'several hundred' starlinks launched on Starship in 2020. That is primarily because I think there will only be one or maybe 2 orbital Starships launched by the end of 2020. I could see there being no payload on the first one and maybe something more 'dumb' than satellites on the second one, like fuel. Best case is one of them carrying some starlinks.

I hope they get them on Starship sooner than 2021. The first 720 is a fairly limited service, especially so by geographic coverage.

By way of example for the demand for this service and the amount of upfront money that may be forthcoming, the UK government announced this week "GBP 5 billion of investment to support the roll-out of gigabit-capable, full-fibre broadband in the hardest to reach 20 percent of the country". Seems to me that this is a complete waste of money if Starlink can achieve the same thing. It just needs to prove it can work before money is wasted running fibreglass to remote places.

Even Phase 1 of Starlink would cover harder to reach parts of South West England and South Wales. Someone at SpaceX should be tapping up the UK government on this. To note as well they also announced funding for a spaceport on the north coast of Scotland, which should be handy for polar to polar orbits.

 

[dhanson865]

contrary to our resident hand waiver.

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Starship may get crewed flights in a Apollo-esque timeframe, but that is likely more due to relatively high possible flight rates (assuming full reuse works out, etc). There could be more uncrewed test flights than Apollo, Shuttle, and all Commercial Crew entrants combined, in that time frame, if the rapid reuse works as intended.

Chances are those things won't happen in such a flawless fashion, and it will take longer to fly people, and/or only have half a dozen test flights before crew in order to hit the desired time frame, or some combination thereof... but if things work as desired there's no reason they can't be extremely careful with lots of test flights and at the same time have a rapid time frame to crewed flight.

 

[mongo]

SpaceX asks FCC for approval of 30,000 satellites.
One set is retrograde: "1500 at 97.7°, 580 km"

SpaceX files application to launch 30 new satellites.

Harry Stoltz on Twitter

Wait, did I say "30"? I meant 30 thousand.

(Number of satellites currently in orbit: 1886)

 

[bxr140]

One set is retrograde: "1500 at 97.7°, 580 km"

That’s SSO. Inclination actually goes more retrograde as altitude gets higher...

 

[BioSehnsucht]

SpaceX asks FCC for approval of 30,000 satellites.
One set is retrograde: "1500 at 97.7°, 580 km"

Pretty sure it's not 30,000 sats, but 30,000 frequency allocations.

And each satellite uses more than one allocations. Probably at least 4 (up/down to user terminals, up/down to ground control stations).

They have to get approval for each sat * the allocations it uses, even if hypothetically all 7500 (assuming 30k/4) actually use the same bandwidth. They have to get approval for sat 1 in orbit A, sat 2 in orbit A... sat 1 in orbit ZZZ, sat 2 in orbit ZZZ... etc

Also, some of the allocations may be up to 30GHz (30,000 MHz) so there may be some confusion from there.

 

[doghousePVD]

Pretty sure it's not 30,000 sats, but 30,000 frequency allocations.

And each satellite uses more than one allocations. Probably at least 4 (up/down to user terminals, up/down to ground control stations).

They have to get approval for each sat * the allocations it uses, even if hypothetically all 7500 (assuming 30k/4) actually use the same bandwidth. They have to get approval for sat 1 in orbit A, sat 2 in orbit A... sat 1 in orbit ZZZ, sat 2 in orbit ZZZ... etc

Also, some of the allocations may be up to 30GHz (30,000 MHz) so there may be some confusion from there.

SpaceX did get approval for c. 12,000 sats a while back. I don’t know anything about the allocations.

 

[mongo]

Pretty sure it's not 30,000 sats, but 30,000 frequency allocations.

And each satellite uses more than one allocations. Probably at least 4 (up/down to user terminals, up/down to ground control stations).

They have to get approval for each sat * the allocations it uses, even if hypothetically all 7500 (assuming 30k/4) actually use the same bandwidth. They have to get approval for sat 1 in orbit A, sat 2 in orbit A... sat 1 in orbit ZZZ, sat 2 in orbit ZZZ... etc

Also, some of the allocations may be up to 30GHz (30,000 MHz) so there may be some confusion from there.

Hummm... After reading closer, I'm even more confused. A bunch of the filings are for 1525 planes each. (1500 active simultaneously). Is the allocatation one plane per satellite due to their self manuvering?

 

[Pricee2]

Starlink-1? Has there been a static fire yet?

 

[doghousePVD]

Starlink-1? Has there been a static fire yet?

Starlink is the Internet satellite constellation. Already has over 100 birds in space.

Starship is the giant rocket Must is building. It has had a "grasshopper" test, and will be having a 20 km flight very soon.

 

[Pricee2]

Starlink-1 is the next launch of Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 and is scheduled for liftoff in approximately 32 hours.

 

[MacGreiner]

Definitely no launch on 17th - haven't static fired as yet. The latest update I had was late Oct/early Nov. Does anyone have information different to that?

 

[f205v]

The most reliable source I found is here:
reddit: the front page of the internet

 

[ecarfan]

The most reliable source I found is here:
reddit: the front page of the internet

Unfortunately, in iOS at least, the table formatting is lost making it rather difficult to read.

 

[Pricee2]

I have been using the spacexnow.com website to see when upcoming launches are scheduled. As of last night it had Starlink-1 launch time as about 4am PDT the 17th. It does not have a launch date now.