SpaceX's Bandwagon Program Is a Big Deal (techcrunch.com) 21
Under a new initiative, named Bandwagon, SpaceX is expanding its rideshare program to cater to the demand for launches to mid-inclination orbits. TechCrunch reports: Orbital inclination refers to what part of the Earth is visible to a satellite as it rotates around the planet. A satellite in an equatorial orbit is at 0 degrees inclination; a satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) is slightly higher than 90 degrees; and a mid-inclination orbit is around 45 degrees. Currently, SpaceX offers rideshare services on the Falcon 9 rocket to SSO through the Transporter program, which is in notoriously high demand. But mid-inclination orbits (MIOs) are appealing to a growing number of customers, especially to remote sensing companies that want to strengthen their coverage over areas like parts of Asia and the Middle East. Right now, companies must often purchase a dedicated launch from Rocket Lab if they want to position a satellite in MIO.
With the new rideshare program, called Bandwagon, SpaceX is going after this slice of the market. According to SpaceX's website, it currently has two Bandwagon missions booked for 2024 and two for 2025. If they become even close to the popularity of the Rideshare program, they could be a major threat to all other small launch providers: According to Jarrod McLachlan, director of rideshare sales at SpaceX, who spoke at the industry conference, SpaceX has delivered 682 spacecraft to orbit to date via rideshare missions.
With the new rideshare program, called Bandwagon, SpaceX is going after this slice of the market. According to SpaceX's website, it currently has two Bandwagon missions booked for 2024 and two for 2025. If they become even close to the popularity of the Rideshare program, they could be a major threat to all other small launch providers: According to Jarrod McLachlan, director of rideshare sales at SpaceX, who spoke at the industry conference, SpaceX has delivered 682 spacecraft to orbit to date via rideshare missions.
Guess what the next initiative will be called? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Guess what the next initiative will be called? (Score:2)
I mean, as much as I love to dunk on Elon âthe Fascistâ(TM) Musk, SpaceX is far from a dumpster fire. Iâ(TM)d guess that thatâ(TM)s primarily down to Gwynn Shotwell running the place and Musk only providing âoeI want to set up a fascist dictatorship on Marsâ as management input.
Who cares? The cage fight between Elon and Mark is (Score:1, Funny)
all that matters.
The rest is just a distraction.
The Walrus (Score:1)
I guess Elon is still prefecting his master move to crush baby Mark.
Re: (Score:1)
zuck called musk out to put up or shut up
musk was never serious because he has become a silly person. twitter is breaking his brain.
$40b in self destructive behavior
Re:Sounds like generative AI nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
An inclination greater than 90 means a retrograde orbit, orbiting earth backwards. An inclination of 180 would just mean a 'backwards' equatorial orbit.
For a Sun-Synchronous orbit to work, the orbit has to be near polar and slightly retrograde. Only then will the Earth's equatorial bulge rotate the spacecraft's orbit by about 1 per day, keeping it in the same position with respect to the Sun.
Re:Sounds like generative AI nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
Since it looks like maybe a key character was formatted away:
Only then will the Earth's equatorial bulge rotate the spacecraft's orbit by about 1 degree per day, keeping it in the same position with respect to the Sun.
Also, to be completely clear for other readers - it's only the orbit that keeps the same "position". The orbital plane gets slowly rotated to maintain the same angle with the sun.
The satellite itself orbits once every ~24 hours so that at a given time of day it will always be directly above the same patch of ground.
I guess that technically also makes it a geosynchronous orbit, though it's really not what most people think of when the term is used. Especially since it's using the precession to "cheat" - such a sun-synchronous orbit isn't even possible around a more spherical planet like Venus.
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If I understand wikipedia correctly, it is not necessarily a 24h orbit.
It can be any. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The key factor is that the orbital plane is rotating by one degree per day.
Typical orbits like that are actually pretty low: Typical Sun-synchronous orbits around Earth are about 600â"800 km (370â"500 mi) in altitude, with periods in the 96â"100-minute range, and inclinations of around 98Â. This is slightly retrograde compared to the direction of Earth's rotation: 0
Re: (Score:2)
And if I understand Wikipedia correctly, a 24-hour orbit would be too high to work [wikipedia.org]:
... between 7 and 16 orbits per day, as doing less than 7 orbits would require an altitude above the maximum for a Sun-synchronous orbit.
Orbits above ~5200km may be too far away from Earth's equatorial bulge for it to have an effect.
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Hmm, okay, I must have misunderstood. I guess the fact that it's above the same spot at the same time every day, does NOT imply that's the *only* time its over that spot.
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The "synchronous" part is that the orbital plane is rotating synchronous with the earth movement.
I guess I have to read all that stuff up again. There are many extremly counterintuitive orbits possible.
I mean: how exactly do you even make the orbital plane rotating by 1 degree a day? Does it happen automatically when you have a polar orbit? I don't think so ... but perhaps. Some people indicated it only works for relatively quick orbits, max is 7 rounds per day?
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It is because of gyroscopic precession, and the Earth's equatorial bulge.
Firstly, gyroscopic precession - when you have an object spinning on one axis, you apply a force in one of the other axis, the result is motion in the third axis. The neat demonstration is a spinning bicycle wheel, supported from a string tied to one end of the axel. The wheel is spinning on its axle - one horizontal axis; the weight of the wheel hanging off one end of that axel makes an unbalanced force trying to rotate it in the oth
Re: (Score:2)
Availability and inclinations (Score:2)
In order for small to medium launch providers to compete with SpaceX, they have to offer what SpaceX cannot readily do. Transporter launch are on a fix schedule and mostly do sun synchronous orbit. With Bandwagon, SpaceX is going to try knocking out the remaining small providers.
In more relevant SpaceX news (Score:2)
Shoving in this story because /. seems to care more about putting out Elon Musk press releases (that inspire all of 10 comments after 10 hours) than stuff that actually matters.
It turns out Elon Musk lied when he said he hadn't spoken to Putin back in October [bloomberg.com]:
Elon Musk told Pentagon officials during a call about the satellite-based internet that SpaceX supplies to Ukraine’s military that he’d spoken personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the New Yorker reported.
[...]
In October, Musk,
Re: In more relevant SpaceX news (Score:2)
I don't understand -- the complaint is that he spoke to Putin before this war even started, but didn't mention that earlier?
And how is that related to the loss of connectivity on the battlefield?
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I don't understand -- the complaint is that he spoke to Putin before this war even started, but didn't mention that earlier?
And how is that related to the loss of connectivity on the battlefield?
It's a bit unclear exactly when they spoke (don't know if it's been reported or not), but it seems clear that he spoke to Putin AFTER the war started, and Putin somehow convinced him that he only wanted peace and that was the whole basis for Musk's "peace plan" and geofencing (and threatening to cut off) of Starlink.
Re: In more relevant SpaceX news (Score:2)
I don't see how that's unclear. Your source, and even the bit you quoted, says 18 months prior to October, which is the date of that tweet. That places this basically March 2021, Russia invaded late February 2022, so this would be basically a year prior to the invasion.
Re: (Score:2)
From the New Yorker article [newyorker.com]:
To the dismay of Pentagon officials, Musk volunteered that he had spoken with Putin personally. Another individual told me that Musk had made the same assertion in the weeks before he tweeted his pro-Russia peace plan, and had said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular. (Musk later denied having spoken with Putin about Ukraine.) On the phone, Musk said that he was looking at his laptop and could see “the entire war unfolding” through a map of Starlink a
Re: In more relevant SpaceX news (Score:2)
I don't know but that's not what your first source claimed. And your second source is (deliberately?) misconstruing the whole thing around Starlink funding. That actually occurred an entire month before Musk even made these comments, only somebody leaked it the day of, then the SpaceX hate club had a field day with it pretending that the two events were directly related despite very strong evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, it had nothing to do with politics, rather SpaceX bearing the costs of it. That'