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SpaceX Launches Another 60 Starlink Satellites, Sets Two Rocket Reuse Records (cnbc.com) 73

Posted by BeauHD from the there's-more-where-that-came-from dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: SpaceX launched another 60 of its internet satellites on Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a mission that set two new company records for reusing its rockets. Starlink represents SpaceX's ambitious plant to create an interconnected network of as many as 30,000 satellites, to beam high-speed internet to consumers anywhere in the world. This was the second full launch of Starlink satellites, as SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 in May. The company sees Starlink as a key source of funding while SpaceX works toward its goal of flying humans to and from Mars.

Monday's launch also represented the fourth mission for this SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster, which landed and was reused after three previous launches, making this the first time the company landed a rocket booster four times. The booster, the large bottom portion of the rocket, previously launched satellites and then landed successfully for missions in July 2018, October 2018 and February 2019. Additionally, SpaceX used a fairing (the rocket's nosecone) that the company fished out the Atlantic Ocean after a mission in April -- the first time a company has refurbished and used that part of a rocket again. The company has been working to catch the fairing halves in a net strung above the decks of two boats, using parachutes and onboard guidance systems to slowly fly the fairings back into the nets. SpaceX caught its first fairing half on a boat in June. "We deployed 60 more Starlink satellites. This puts us one step closer to being able to offer Starlink internet service to customers across the globe, including people in rural and hard to reach places who have struggled to access high speed internet," SpaceX engineer Lauren Lyons said on the webcast.
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SpaceX Launches Another 60 Starlink Satellites, Sets Two Rocket Reuse Records More

SpaceX Launches Another 60 Starlink Satellites, Sets Two Rocket Reuse Records

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  • How will China, Russia, or the UK etc. react to this?
    • Build their own like how they copied GPS. It's going to be awesome for future space travel.

      • Re:National Security Threat (Score:5, Informative)

        by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Monday November 11, 2019 @08:49PM (#59405198) Homepage

        Right now, nobody but SpaceX can afford to build their own.* It would cost Russia something on the order of ten times as much to launch and maintain a similar constellation, and they'd have a smaller market to sell it to. China might manage it within the next decade since they have a larger market and are working on reusable rockets.

        * OneWeb is trying but doesn't appear to have a path to viability. Blue Origin is planning, but they have to build their rocket first.

    • For comedic entertainment purposes I am more interested in how the shorters and haters react.

      • For comedic entertainment purposes I am more interested in how the shorters and haters react.

        Do you lump astronomers into one of those two groups? Because they're definitely complaining.

        • I donâ(TM)t know a single astronomer who hates SpaceX or satellites. There are plenty of other phenomena to worry about than a satellite cross the field of view. Anything from birds to clouds are more of a problem than satellites. Any rational astronomer, amateur or professional, knows the importance of developing space industries and companies like SpaceX. Ultimately we want massive telescopes in space, the only way to get them there cheap is if space companies are successful.

          Itâ(TM)s irrational

          • Re: National Security Threat (Score:5, Informative)

            by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday November 11, 2019 @09:48PM (#59405346)

            You must not know many astronomers.

            Birds and clouds obscure the view - birds so briefly and blurrily as to be irrelevant for most purposes. Not to mention there's not many birds that fly at night, when telescopes are doing most of their work.

            Satellites in contrast send a blast of daylight that completely washes out all images in which they're contained. Not a *huge* problem when there's only a couple thousand total satellites, most of which never come anywhere close to what you're looking at. But when you talk about increasing that number 20-fold in a net that completely covers the night sky? That's a problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )

        You can't short a stock that isn't on any exchange. SpaceX is a private company, not a pulicly traded one. Which also means that nobody really knows what their financial viability really is. They could be raking in the dough, or they could be neck deep in debt and getting worse.

        I suspect they're probably doing just fine, but near as I can tell, they've never released any of the refurbishment costs for their rockets. Keep in mind the space shuttle was supposed to save money by being reusable, but the refurbi

    • Would this constellation provide unfiltered internet access to people in censorship countries, like China?

      • Would this constellation provide unfiltered internet access to people in censorship countries, like China?

        No. In order to do billing, SpaceX needs a name and an address, at the very least, if not also a credit or debit card number. If Starlink isn't censored, such jurisdictions won't allow any Starlink subscription payments.

        If you can finagle a way to pay for the connection that's invisible to the local government, and you can smuggle the antenna and base station into the country (the size and shape of a pizza box), then sure, you can have uncensored Internet. But you will have a tough time keeping it secret

        • It would be surprising if you couldn't cover it with a vinyl or perhaps coroplast cover, and make it look like something else. But beamforming isn't perfect any more than any other means of making a directional antenna, so as long as the frequencies in question aren't in common use for some other purpose, it should be pretty easy to find them from the air.

        • Depends on their strategy - they might not insist on billing. E.g. they might offer high-speed internet anywhere in the world for $$$, or anonymous dial-up equivalent for anyone who wants it - on the theory that giving away otherwise unused capacity costs them nothing, and can do a great deal of good for the poorest segments of the global population.

      • Would this constellation provide unfiltered internet access to people in censorship countries, like China?

        Others have pointed out how an authoritarian government can crack down on users they don't like. To get around it you would need at minimum:

        * Well hidden ground units.

        * Physical separation between the ground unit and the actual users. In other words when the authorities eventually find one they have no way to trace who actually owned it or used it.

        * A way to pay for it that can't be traced. Blockchain currencies are oversold in this area but there could be better ways.

        * A sensor system to detec

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        No. SpaceX will not have landing rights for those countries, therefore they will not support service in those countries. This is how all satcom systems work.

        For example, Iridium has had a global satellite network for the past 20 years almost. However, until recently, the phones would simply to refuse to work in a number of countries (India, China, Russia among others). It wasn’t until Iridium installed hub stations in those countries that they were enabled. Still not sure about China.

        It’s the sa

    • Re:National Security Threat (Score:4, Informative)

      by cbhacking ( 979169 ) <been_out_cruisin ... m ['hoo' in gap]> on Monday November 11, 2019 @08:34PM (#59405158) Homepage Journal

      Starlink uses highly-directional beams to connect a user to the satellite. Both the user terminal and the satellite have to know where the other is to enable high-speed connectivity. For typical high-bandwidth communication satellites in geostationary orbit, the "footprint" per beam is relatively large, but those satellites have terrible latency (the distance to GEO is roughly the circumference of the planet, so your round-trip time, even at light speed, is quite significant). Starlink uses a low earth orbit, only a few hundred miles (or KM) up. This means that the footprint of each beam is tiny, so it needs to know fairly precisely where the users are.

      Why does this matter? Well, if China wants to say "no using Starlink in this country until they let us censor everything" and Starlink doesn't enable that censorship, then they won't be licensed to operate in China. That doesn't physically stop them from aiming beams at China, of course, but that would be detectable (and in violation of the bandwidth allocation by the Chinese equivalent of the FCC). Because the beam footprints are so tiny, you can't really say "Oh sorry, we have a customer in Nepal, we didn't mean to let people in Tibet access the system"; that excuse just wouldn't fly. If Starlink doesn't have approval from China, they probably just won't aim any beams at it.

      Also, China could just arrest anybody with a Starlink user terminal. Phased array antennas are not small or particularly subtle; they're roughly the size of a pizza box. Even if SpaceX were willing to allow service in China without government approval, and deal with the resultant incident (which would probably get them in hot water with the US government, for violating international agreements about national sovereignty and spectrum use and so on), the user on the ground still needs hardware.

      Or, to put it differently: Starlink doesn't enable connectivity anywhere that Iridium doesn't already provide, it's just much faster and (hopefully) cheaper. Iridium user terminals are small enough to hold in one hand, though, because they don't use phased arrays. One way or another, the Chinese government (and everybody else) can endure this problem; they already are, and have been for decades.

      • Also, there's nothing in SpaceX's or Starlink's mission goals about fighting government censorship. They're not going to inexplicably decide to shoot themselves in the foot by taking a political stance that will deny them access to the majority of the world market (most large countries are censoring their internet one way or another) and delay their ability to reach Mars.

        Presumably, in order to keep things simple for SpaceX, censorship will be implemented through the ground stations in each country. SpaceX

      • That doesn't physically stop them from aiming beams at China, of course, but that would be detectable (and in violation of the bandwidth allocation by the Chinese equivalent of the FCC).

        I call BS on that one. No way spaceborn operators have to receive emissions approval from every country on earth because the transmissions of their satellites / spacecraft can be received in that country at some point in time. What China can do is enforce their rules against operators on the ground within their country, but they cannot control what satellites do in space above their country. It doesn't work that way. While it may be more feasible technically for these low orbit satellites to not operate

        • There absolutely are licensing requirements for high-bandwidth purposes like communication satellites. It's not a problem, though, because they use directional antennas that aren't just indiscriminately spraying the planet, and they can (and must) steer those antennas as they pass overhead (or, if they're in GEO, they aim at a particular region).

          There are some bands which are, by international agreement, unlicensed - WiFi uses these, for example - but even those aren't fully unregulated (there are still pro

  • They better get going. Really tired of this idea that everything needs to be wired though.

    • They better get going.

      SpaceX President Gywnne Shotwell in October told a crowd of investors in New York City that SpaceX aims to “get to a cadence of launching 60 every other week to fill out the constellation” for Starlink.

      Source [cnbc.com]
      SpaceFlightNow launch schedule [spaceflightnow.com]

      • That will take 20 years. Talk about the long haul.
        • "as many as 30,000 satellites" is a huge wiggle word though. How many are actually need for global coverage, vs. adding capacity? Scaling capacity as needed to keep up with demand seems pretty reasonable vs. launching 30,000 satellites up front in the hopes that "if you build it they will come."

    • 24 launches have been stated as the minimum for global coverage. The rest are just to ensure there's enough bandwidth for high-traffic areas. This system isn't (just) intended to compete with geostationary satellite connectivity for people in the middle of nowhere; it's also meant to be an alternative to your local ISP.

    • The first year or two will be probably 30-40 Falcon 9 launches. Their hope is to move to Starship for launching which will be substantially fewer launches.

  • What we nerds really need is the tracking info- anybody outside seeing the deployment of the last batch of sats would be forgiven for thinking aliens were invading. I really, really want to see that myself.

  • Lunar far side telescopes needed more than ever (Score:5, Insightful)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Monday November 11, 2019 @06:43PM (#59404854)

    30k of the things? That's some serious light pollution for astronomy :(

    • Yes, we are already complaining.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chromal ( 56550 )
        It's going to be very interesting to see how this impacts the LSST, among other things.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          It'll mean that it has to filter out 3x more streaks (~45k vs. 15k). And life will go on.

          • Re:Lunar far side telescopes needed more than ever (Score:4, Informative)

            by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Monday November 11, 2019 @07:42PM (#59405028)
            That's not what I'm reading; "Dr. Tyson is the chief scientist for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope — a 27-foot, billion-dollar telescope under construction in Chile that will scan the entire sky every three days... Dr. Tyson’s simulations showed that the telescope would pick up Starlink-like objects even if they were darkened. And they wouldn’t just affect a single pixel in a photograph. When there is a single bright object in the image, it can create fainter artifacts as well because of internal reflections within the telescope’s detector. Moreover, whenever a satellite photobombs a long-exposure image, it causes a bright streak of light that can cross directly in front of an object astronomers wish to observe. “It’s really a mess,” Dr. Tyson said." (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/spacex-starlink-satellites.html)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              LSST’s frequent imaging of the same region of sky will be a strength, providing enough uncontaminated images to reject the images that contain satellite trails or other anomalies,” the statement says. It says that at most, 0.01 per cent of the telescope’s pixels will be affected by Starlink satellites. “For LSST, Starlink satellites will be a nuisance rather than a real problem.”

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Chromal ( 56550 )
                What are you even quoting quoting? It's not from (Ibid) (the NYT article). Are they referring to the trails themselves, are they taking into account artifacts stray bright light sources create in a digital telescope system? Citation please. With a 3200-megapixel sensor, even if it were only 0.01 percent (and I'm expecting this is a wildly optimistic figure for 30000 LEO satellites transiting the terminator), that's 32 megapixels of defect per exposure. How many megapixels do you have in your dSLR?

                • That's... not how math works. 0.01 percent of 3200 is 0.32.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Chromal ( 56550 )
                    Math stands correct, but the larger points loom on the merits. What are they even quoting from? It's not from the NYT article. Without a citation, we're not going to waste effort discussing maths when there's no credible reason to think 0.01 percent of anything is meaningful with respect to the LSST or this issue. What does the 0.01 percent number represent specifically, and why is it credible? Does it even take into account for the "internal reflections within the telescope’s detector," or is it jus

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Rei ( 128717 )

                      Let me google that for you [lmgtfy.com].

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Chromal ( 56550 )
                      Sorry, if you think you've got a convincing argument with citations to make, make it. I'm not going to do your intellectual heavy lifting for you. You lose, better luck next debate. In the meantime, let's cite some real-world numbers: "“In this case, 1 out of about 40 exposures we took during our half-night of observations was affected by the satellite trails,” Johnson told Gizmodo in an email. “And in the case of that single exposure, a maximum of 15 percent of the image was affected by t

          • You know as it is those 15k objects cause problems that have a noticeable impact on performance.

            Would you be happy if you're Tesla had 1/3rd of the range? (Not really a suitable car analogy but pick something else that is affecting you and make it three times worse).

            Stick to supporting Tesla's car and space projects. They do not deserve any defending for this stupid internet plan.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Rei ( 128717 )

              In your view, Starlink will block out 2/3rds of the pixels on the sensors?

              Meanwhile, in the real world... [newscientist.com]

              “LSST’s frequent imaging of the same region of sky will be a strength, providing enough uncontaminated images to reject the images that contain satellite trails or other anomalies,” the statement says. It says that at most, 0.01 per cent of the telescope’s pixels will be affected by Starlink satellites. “For LSST, Starlink satellites will be a nuisance rather than a real pr

          • At least not with the satellites as they're currently designed. They're bright enough during dawn and dusk that they saturate the LSST's sensor [lsst.org], obliterating any data behind a streak. They've asked Musk to paint the satellites black to minimize their light signature, but Musk is insisting that it's not necessary.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Tripling the number of streaks astronomers have to filter from their data vs. providing the entire planet with broadband net access. Yeah, gee, I can't figure out which aspect is more important here....

        Musk wants to build interferometric optical and radio telescopes based on the Starlink design, which would allow for capabilities vastly beyond what any current system can offer (as well as putting a huge amount of effort into Starship, which will be able to launch up to ~150t 9x9x~20m space telescopes, with

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          Nobody is *giving* the planet anything. They are *taking* the planet's night sky and *selling* wireless back to some of its inhabitants.

          Secondly, this is a false dichotomy. This is simply the easiest way for a private company at present to offer this service.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            Nobody said "giving". If you have to change wording to try to argue against something, that's literally the definition of a straw man.

            "Providing" is the standard word for offering up internet service. It's literally right there in the name "ISP": Internet Service Provider. Nobody is talking about giving it away for free; it's about making it available to the vast number of the world's people who currently cannot get it, while breaking up monopolies elsewhere.

            This is simply the easiest way for a private c

    • How is tthe ban on airplanes,which donâ(TM)t even have a predictable flight plan, working out? If there is a for astronomers to deal with airplanes, dealing with satellites are 100x easier.

    • We need far-lunar telescopes anyway, though, and L-point telescopes too. With our current level of technology it's senseless not to have them. It's a much better use of money than bombing brown people for oil.

  • AMBITIOUS PLANT

  • Kudos to Musk n SpaceX for up-ending the space lift biz. Somewhere 2 ish years ago I remember watching live, in awe, as those two boosters landed simultaneously. Now I read about it on Slashdot and won't even look for the video. I can understand, while before my time, how Apollo 13 was already old news after 11.

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