How OneWeb Lied About a Near-Miss Collision With a SpaceX Satellite (teslarati.com) 63
In a follow-up to a story previously reported, Slashdot reader Turkinolith shares a report from Teslarati: In the latest trials and tribulations of a SpaceX Starlink competitor that went bankrupt after spending $3 billion to launch just 74 small internet satellites, it appears that OneWeb knowingly misled both media and US regulators over a claimed 'near-miss' with a Starlink satellite. Back on April 9th, OneWeb went public with claims that SpaceX had mishandled its response to a routine satellite collision avoidance warning from the US military, which monitors the location of satellites and space debris. According to OneWeb government affairs chief Chris McLaughlin, SpaceX disabled an automated system designed to detect and automatically command Starlink satellite collision avoidance maneuvers to let OneWeb move its satellite instead. McLaughlin also stated that "Coordination is the issue -- it is not sufficient to say 'I've got an automated system.'" He also recently criticized the maneuverability of Starlink satellites, claiming that "Starlink's engineers said they couldn't do anything to avoid a collision and switched off the collision avoidance system so OneWeb could maneuver around the Starlink satellite without interference." As it turns out, OneWeb's "near-miss" appears to have been a farce and the company scrambled to promise to retract those statements in an April 20th meeting with the FCC and SpaceX.
In an apparent attempt to capitalize on vague fears of "space debris" and satellite collisions, OneWeb -- or perhaps just McLaughlin -- took it upon itself to consciously misconstrue a routine, professional process of collision-avoidance coordination between OneWeb and SpaceX. McLaughlin ran a gauntlet of media outlets to drag SpaceX through the mud and criticize both the company's technology and response, ultimately claiming that SpaceX's Starlink satellite was incapable of maneuvering out of the way. Instead, according to a precise, evidenced timeline of events presented by SpaceX to the FCC, the coordination was routine, uneventful, and entirely successful. OneWeb itself explicitly asked SpaceX to disable its autonomous collision avoidance software and allow the company to maneuver its own satellite out of the way after SpaceX made it clear that the Starlink spacecraft could also manage the task. The event was neither "urgent" or a "close call," as OneWeb and media outlets later claimed. SpaceX says it has been coordinating similar avoidance maneuvers with OneWeb since March 2020.
Most damningly, SpaceX says that immediately after OneWeb disseminated misleading quotes about the event to the media, "OneWeb met with [FCC] staff and Commissioners [to demand that] unilateral conditions [be] placed on SpaceX's operations." Those conditions could have actually made coordination harder, "demonstrating more of a concern with limiting [OneWeb's] competitors than with a genuine concern for space safety." Crucially, despite lobbying to restrict its competitors, "OneWeb [has] argued forcefully that [it] should be exempt from Commission rules for orbital debris mitigation due to their status as non-U.S. operators." In simple terms, OneWeb is trying to exploit the FCC to suppress its competition while letting it roam free of the exact same regulations.
In an apparent attempt to capitalize on vague fears of "space debris" and satellite collisions, OneWeb -- or perhaps just McLaughlin -- took it upon itself to consciously misconstrue a routine, professional process of collision-avoidance coordination between OneWeb and SpaceX. McLaughlin ran a gauntlet of media outlets to drag SpaceX through the mud and criticize both the company's technology and response, ultimately claiming that SpaceX's Starlink satellite was incapable of maneuvering out of the way. Instead, according to a precise, evidenced timeline of events presented by SpaceX to the FCC, the coordination was routine, uneventful, and entirely successful. OneWeb itself explicitly asked SpaceX to disable its autonomous collision avoidance software and allow the company to maneuver its own satellite out of the way after SpaceX made it clear that the Starlink spacecraft could also manage the task. The event was neither "urgent" or a "close call," as OneWeb and media outlets later claimed. SpaceX says it has been coordinating similar avoidance maneuvers with OneWeb since March 2020.
Most damningly, SpaceX says that immediately after OneWeb disseminated misleading quotes about the event to the media, "OneWeb met with [FCC] staff and Commissioners [to demand that] unilateral conditions [be] placed on SpaceX's operations." Those conditions could have actually made coordination harder, "demonstrating more of a concern with limiting [OneWeb's] competitors than with a genuine concern for space safety." Crucially, despite lobbying to restrict its competitors, "OneWeb [has] argued forcefully that [it] should be exempt from Commission rules for orbital debris mitigation due to their status as non-U.S. operators." In simple terms, OneWeb is trying to exploit the FCC to suppress its competition while letting it roam free of the exact same regulations.
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Are you still here? And still spewing the same ridiculous nonsense...
Your racism is not welcome. Piss off.
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I'm glad republicans aren't getting the vaccine (Score:1, Insightful)
If anyone deservers to die of an easily preventable illness, it's the people who voted for the guy whose malevolent and incompetent response to covid-19 skyrocketed America's death toll.
Lock him up, and let his supporters avoid the vaccine, their best chance to escape this pandemic without death or long term health consequences.
Re: I'm glad republicans aren't getting the vaccin (Score:3)
Andrew Cuomo?
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Why criminal defamation laws are good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we need the states to not only enforce their criminal defamation laws when appropriate, but have a federal one. If you are a PR person or corporate executive and blatantly lie to the public AND regulators your competition should be able to appeal to the US DoJ to have you criminally prosecuted. Sure, it would have a moderately chilling effect on public speech but we need that. We really do. People who are pathological liars in positions of power should fear their victims getting them tossed in prison and people who cannot articulate effectively what [NASDAP], Commie, Socialist, Fascist, pedo, etc. should not allowed to claim "my private definition is my right."
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which is the only thing regulation is designed to do
Yes, I'm sure that building codes, food standards, drug safety regulations are "designed to harm competition". Riiight.
Re:Why criminal defamation laws are good (Score:4, Informative)
The primary source for this story is a site called teslarati.com, it looks as though it is an in-house magazine for Tesla in particular and a mouthpiece for Elon Musk in general. This does not automatically mean the story is garbage but it does mean it should be taken with a pinch of salt.
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teslarati are definitely musk fanboys and produce what amounts to little more than propaganda but I don't think they are owned by any of his interests. At least I haven't seen evidence of it.
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Musk doesn't need to pay some nerds to adulate and defend him at any turn.
I like Tesla and SpaceX too but sites like Teslarati and his fans on Twitter give me chills of embarrassment sometimes.
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That's how I feel as well. Its hard to have objective discussions about Musk or any of his enterprises because such things are extremely polarizing by nature. There are always going to be frothing at the mouth fanboys and the louder they shout the more haters you will find counter balancing that. So on one hand you have teslarati acting like his shit doesn't stink and on the other you have thunderf00t who has to be dwight shrute. It's all very very dumb. I bet the same shit happened with Edison back in the
Re: Why criminal defamation laws are good (Score:2)
The Edison comparison is accurate, a smart man who is very driven to develop important tech, but personally very flawed and something of an asshole who takes undue credit for his engineers hard work and employs questionable work conditions.
On the one hand I admire his passion, we could only hope for other billionaires to be so willing to push boundaries and use their wealth towards such future goals, but the man acts like an ass much of the time, is just a bad take machine and has "born on 3rd base, thinks
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I'm predisposed to take any statement from a Musk company with a pinch of salt. Too many times in the past they have put out this kind of statement and it's turned out to be economical with the truth.
Re:Why criminal defamation laws are good (Score:4, Interesting)
It ultimately has turned into he said/she said. Here's SpaceX's complaint to the FCC claiming OneWeb is lying:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp... [arstechnica.net]
And here is OneWeb's reply to that, claiming that they retracted nothing and that their claims and the media coverage are all true:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp... [arstechnica.net]
Re:Why criminal defamation laws are good (Score:4, Insightful)
The headline is misleading. We only have SpaceX's word to go on, it's possible that they are lying.
Why would you "only have SpaceX's word to go on"? Numerous people are observing the situation in Earth's orbit. Even you can if you want to. [stuffin.space]
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Sure, it would have a moderately chilling effect on public speech but we need that. We really do.
I'm much less sure of that. Your argument here is motivated by one company that, if SpaceX is correct, is willing to lie and act in bad faith to try to gain a competitive advantage but is doing so against another company that has the power and resources to fight it.
Why would you want to hand a company willing to lie a powerful new tool that could easily be turned on individuals without the resources of a large company backing them to silence any criticism from them? Just remember that any legal tool you
Criminal law is more equal (Score:2)
Under a federal criminal defamation law, Elon Musk could have faced felony charges for his comment about that scuba guy in Thailand being a pedo because serious false allegations of sexual misconduct are defamation per se traditionally. The little guy would have had a TKO moment or Musk would have never had
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What are the chances (Score:3)
What are the actual odds any of these things collide if nobody does anything? They are all cube-sats right so not big.
Space is big, yes LEO isnt as big but its still big. Inst the most likely outcome of these things appearing to be on the same path that they sail by each other at least 1000's of meters apart? How big a problem is this?
Re:What are the chances (Score:5, Informative)
This means that it's likely if you get within about three or four meters, there will be a very significant hit.
A hit cannot be ruled out generally over the longer term if the intersection distance is under 100m.
This is as the positional uncertainty of each adds to the possible cross sectional area, so yes, if you have two satellites that are forecast to come within 100m or so, you absolultely need to move them away from each other so that that risk is zero, if you can.
Obviously, at some point, the decision has to be made of if both of them, or one of them needs to move, as if both move without coordination, they may manoever into a hit.
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Thanks for the quantification
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Obviously, at some point, the decision has to be made of if both of them, or one of them needs to move, as if both move without coordination, they may manoever into a hit.
Can't there just be rules for what gets moved when, to determine who moves and in which direction? And which take into account what happens if one party can't move for some reason (e.g. equipment failure)?
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As these near misses are predicted days in advance typically, reasonable negotiations between the operators let them work out the best options between them.
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I'm sure there are a bunch of such "rules" - some formal, some more informal.
But, obviously, the powered satellite must be the one to move if the other is using a solar sail.
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On the other hand, the "altitude" of the satellites is not precisely held (not to the approximately 5 meters size of the satellite).
And an orbit is about 40,000 km long, and a spacecraft "covers" only its length - so about one in 10 millions of it.
As such, even a "close" pass have a very small chance of actual collision.
The issue is however:
-compared to the cost of putting two satellites in orbit, a small manoeuver (and with enough forewarning the manoeuver is indeed small) will solve all issues (satellites
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From the SpaceX filing, "if a maneuver was needed, typically a single in-track burn would be conducted to reduce collision probability". So, a slight prograde or retrograde burn which will slightly raise or lower the orbit. This would, of course, not just adjust the height of the orbit but also the timing, resulting in a reduction in the probability of a collision. Also, in case you might wonder, with SpaceX's avoidance system, "maneuvers occur approximately 12 hours before the predicted closest approach
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Prograde will be more economical in the long run. It just forestalls the next station-keeping burn.
If they're even calling ion-engine thrusts 'burns' these days.
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The probability of a collision was given as 1.3%. Even if it was 1/10th of that it would still be very much worth avoiding, given the amount of debris and havoc it could create.
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Bigger than what we see for cubesats - even a 12U cubesat is only about 10x10x15 inches and spec'd at 2.9 lb per U.
OneWeb body is roughly a 3x3x3 ft cube with solar arrays sticking out, total about 300 lb.
Starlink body is about 3x6 ft area, and the solar array looks to be about 24 ft tall, total about 500 lbs.
In common units, that's a washing machine and a fridge.
Like Nuclear Fission (Score:2)
What are the actual odds any of these things collide if nobody does anything?
Think of it like nuclear fission. The odds that any one Uranium-235 nucleus will decay is 50% over a period of 700 million years and the odds that this decay is spontaneous fission is about one in 5 million so to odds of any one nucleus undergoing spontaneous fission in any one year is about one in 3,500 trillion. That does not mean that nuclear fission is incredibly rare and nothing to worry about though. The reason that fission does happen a lot is that there are many U-235 nuclei in a lump of uranium an
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If I think of it like nuclear fission, I am forced to admit that it takes a metric fuckton of work to make U-235 produce a chain-reaction. It won't happen by accident. Note that "radioactive decay" is NOT the same as "nuclear fission" ...
Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor (Score:2)
I am forced to admit that it takes a metric fuckton of work to make U-235 produce a chain-reaction. It won't happen by accident.
Not only can it happen by accident it actually has [wikipedia.org]. Of course today a natural reactor is just about impossible because the fraction of U-235 in natural uranium has decreased so much due to its faster decay rate. Also, it is not true to say that spontaneous fission is not the same a radioactive decay: it is a type of radioactive decay [wikipedia.org] with the branching ratio I stated for U-235.
However, that's not really relevant because the number and density of satellites in orbit is not a natural situation. We have ca
One web yield (Score:1, Funny)
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Obligatory related tall tale... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand
Teslarati is not detached from this issue (Score:3, Interesting)
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On a controversial issue, a normal website would look for independent views, rather than just quote the mouthpiece for one of the parties involved and assume that is all their is to say.
But: Slashdot Editors.
I mean we ran the other side of this story last week straight from the mouthpiece of OneWeb PR. Now you're complaining that Teslarati is biased?
Sue! (Score:1)
Word salad garbage from Teslarati (Score:1)
I didn’t catch the summary was from Teslarati. I would suggest editors never allow content from them be a primary source; the summary (which presumably is the entire article) provides no actual information and is just a word salad. Typical of their content— stretch a sentence into 500-2,000 words with as much useless garbage and fluff as possible.
Hit? (Score:2)
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Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
As it turns out, OneWeb's "near-miss" appears to have been a farce and the company scrambled to promise to retract those statements in an April 20th meeting with the FCC and SpaceX.
This comes from a filing by, well, SpaceX. Other, less Musk-boot-licky sources, checked on OneWeb's response - and in their own filing they say they made no such promise or offer to retract anything, and stand by the story. Also, complaints about SpaceX's behavior in this particular venture are not exactly peculiar to OneWeb. This may or may not be a publicity game, but the posted article is essentially an unquestioning parroting of the SpaceX official line.
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/te... [telegraph.co.uk]
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spa... [pcmag.com]
Pejury? (Score:4, Interesting)
Something bigger may be afoot. IIRC FCC complaints are filed under the pain of perjury. This Chris McLaughlin [theorg.com] fella sure keeps interesting company:
Somebody needs to follow-the-money on this one. China's totalitarian State stands to lose massive power if their people have access to free and unfettered information.
And determine if McLaughlin should be barred or referred for a criminal complaint.
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Bio is now on Wayback in case it disappears:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Gauntlet vs Gantlet (Score:4, Informative)
"McLaughlin ran a gauntlet of media outlets to drag SpaceX through the mud and criticize both the company's technology and response"
gauntlet: a large glove that extends above the wrist
gantlet: a form of military punishment in which the offender ran between two lines of men armed with clubs and whips, with which the offender was struck as he ran
Thus, the phrase is to "run the gantlet", meaning to traverse a route with danger close on both sides.
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Both words have the same two alternate spellings "gauntlet" and "gantlet". Apparently, "gantlet" is labeled as "American" in UK dictionaries. Which I disagree with, since I am American, one of my hobbies is etymology, and in 50 years your post is the first time I have ever seen the spelling "gantlet" and have never heard it pronounced that way.
"Run the Gantlet" is an acceptable spelling of it, but it is rarely used or seen. Both words passed through "gantlet", unless you want to make an argument for the "ga
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False. They are the same word.
Merriam Webster:
gantlet noun
less common spelling of GAUNTLET
1: a glove worn with medieval armor to protect the hand
2: any of various protective gloves used especially in industry
3: an open challenge (as to combat) —used in phrases like throw down the gauntlet
4: a dress glove extending above the wrist
Collins:
gantlet
in British English
NOUN
1. a section of a railway where two tracks overlap
2. US a variant spelling of gauntlet
Oxford:
gantlet
is a variant of gauntlet in American
COLREGs for Space (Score:5, Informative)
IMHO, what is needed is a standard set of regulations on this, conceptually similar to what exists on the water.
At sea, there is a consistent set of relatively simple rules that govern which vessel is the "stand on" vessel, ie which one holds its course and speed, and which is the "give way" vessel, which maneuvers to avoid a collision. These govern interactions of all vessels at sea, from my little 27' sailboat all the way up to the world's largest supertanker. These rules include things such as when passing, the overtaking vessel gives way to the slower vessel, the vessel approaching the port side of another gives way, etc...
The rules are partially practical (as a rule, most maneuverable vessel gives way), and partially arbitrary (sailboat on a port tack gives way to one on a starboard tack), but it leads to very little question as to who has to maneuver and who is to hold steady, in practically any situation.
A conceptually similar set of rules would likely serve well in orbit, as things get more and more crowded.
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there is a consistent set of relatively simple rules
A high school friend of mine (who was a sea scout) insisted that one of those rules was "wood before plastic".
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Well, the most important unwritten rule is "The pretty boat is the stand-on vessel"