SpaceX (general discussion)

Arjen said:
fredymac said:
If widespread support is on the other side, they are not about to sue China and other countries from stopping.
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Meaning 'the astronomy community' by 'they'? Why wouldn't astronomers want to sue China and other countries if they were to copy SpaceX's LEO constellation?
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Its not that they wouldn't want. Its that it would be pointless. What court? What judge? Indeed, what law (in China)?
 
Arjen said:
The International Court of Justice. Even the Russians will occasionally listen to its judgements. I would love it to have more authority, but it's the best I can come up with.

OBB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.10952.pdf
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This article is not to be trusted. Behold:
"A major limitation of space based telescopes is that they can not be maintained, refurbished or repaired after launch."

CAN NOT. Not "expensive," or "difficult," or "inconvenient." CAN NOT.

ERRR. Wrong. And not just kinda-wrong, but *absolutely* wrong. Not only was Hubble maintained, refurbished and repaired after launch, as Starlink makes space launch more profitable, space launch will make space telescope maintenance, refurbishment and repair easier and cheaper.

Additionally, later on the article says something that should utterly negate all interest in the issue:

Also, as it turns out, according to the Outer Space Treaty and its progeny, there are no private companies operating in outer space, but only governments can operate in outer space.

"Only governments can operate in outer space" is offensively wrong, both as a principle and *I* *believe* in terms of what the treaty actually says. The United States should not be party to any such treaty, but should instead promote private enterprise in the exploration and *exploitation* of outer space.

The article ends with:

The right to see the sky in natural state belongs to our rights and freedoms alikethe right to breath unpolluted air, drink cleanwater or sleep in a quiet environment during the night.

Hello... *cities?* If this is the argument they choose to make, then Starlink at its worst is a far, far lesser issue than city lights, traffic noise, trains, etc.
 
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Repair/refurbishment of space-based telescopes is of an impracticality approaching near impossibiblity. When the Shuttle was still operating, the Hubble Space Telescope was refurbished at considerable cost. I don't see any such operation repeated in the near future.
I see you skipped the part where the authors laid out the threats posed to ground-based radio astronomy. It can be found in reply #2523. Not reposting it here, because this thread is already plagued by endless quote/re-quote/re-re-quote replies. It is part of the pdf's chapter 4: The impact of large satellite constellations on ground based astronomy .

As astronomers are the people involved in everyday use of ground-based astronomical facilities, they are my first point of reference in finding out how LEO constellations will likely affect those facilities.

The authors are astronomers, not lawyers. A legal perspective is to be published in May:
Ramon J. Ryan, Note, The Fault In Our Stars: Challenging the FCC’s Treatment of Commercial Satellites as Categorically Excluded From Review Under the National Environmental Policy Act, 22 VAND. J. ENT. & TECH. L. (forthcoming May 2020)
 
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Arjen said:
Repair/refurbishment of space-based telescopes is of an impracticality approaching near impossibiblity. When the Shuttle was still operating, the Hubble Space Telescope was refurbished at considerable cost. I don't see any such operation repeated in the near future.
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If Starship works out even remotely like SpaceX hopes, it will be able to provide capabilities similar to / greater than Space Shuttle for about 1/10th the cost. If SpaceX actually achieves their goals, it'll be more on the order of 1/200th the cost.
 
Promises, promises.
To quote Hyman Rickover "It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation"
 
Arjen said:
Promises, promises.
To quote Hyman Rickover "It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation"
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Which is how you install a nuclear reactor into a submarine in the 1950's when nuclear reactors were still more of a research project than reality.

Musk is attempting something of even greater significance and relies on build a lot, test a lot. So far, evidence shows it works.
 
Arjen said:
Repair/refurbishment of space-based telescopes is of an impracticality approaching near impossibiblity. When the Shuttle was still operating, the Hubble Space Telescope was refurbished at considerable cost.
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This is what's known as "cognitive dissonance." Near impossibility =/ did it several times with fifty-year-old-tech.


I see you skipped the part where the authors ...
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Yup, because they are fundamentally wrong on their basic facts about space telescopes. When that is such a basic part of their argument and they get it wholly wrong right out of the gate, why bother with the rest of their "argument?"
 
I would think NASA and Spacex would be interested in paying these guys something to get this back (just to examine the chutes).

 
So how would an orbiting telescope be repaired with the launchers/spacecraft available today?
 
Same way as you fix Hubble. Planning years in advance to create the tools and infrastructure. If NASA were willing to let Spacex offer a "package" job, it would probably come in at a price similar to the shuttle repairs to Hubble. Of course, Starship would probably play a role in this. The timeline of a Hubble repair project spanned years and given the rate of Spacex development, Starship would be getting pretty far along.

Of course, once a space repair industry gets up and running, future repairs become much easier and more of a scheduling job. And the enabling technology will be Starship.

Arguing for today as means to stymie tomorrow would be more effective if Spacex operated on government time scales.
 
Arjen said:
So how would an orbiting telescope be repaired with the launchers/spacecraft available today?
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Well, the simplest solution would to add some kind of air lock module to Soyuz or Dragon-2 or Orion space capsule. Inflatable, probably, to reduce mass and size. So we could boost the craft with the air lock addition to the telescope, crew would preform spacewalks & inspection/repair. Not as fancy as Shuttle, but doable.
 
You would need to lock the satellite in position respective to the repair-bot/-spacecraft. The last vehicle that could do just that was the Space Shuttle with its robotic arm. It made for some very costly repair missions.
There are great benefits to have the ability to refuel/repair/refurbish satellites, but how many years will it take before that can be done on a routine basis? At a cost at which it won't frighten off customers?
 
Spent a couple minutes looking at Starlink's transmission band. It is Ku/Ka which is about 1.4-2.5cm. So on that plot of EM transmission windows it looks like this. The atmospheric window is actually still a bit opaque in this area. I would guess that Starlink does not occupy that entire hashed block but is assigned smaller sections in order to avoid interference to other satellites transmitting in this band.

Starlink Xmit Band.jpg
 
Without disrespect for the posters Involved, could we have a thread dedicated to the subject of astronomy and satelites since there are no direct relation b/w SpaceX and this. With or without Elon's firm, we will have to face the same problem, if ever it is one (but albeit certainly much later).
 
Seems that the main booster wasn't able to land. Nothing on Spacex twitter yet but the landing video did show what looked like exhaust fumes only it was out of frame from the barge. Either they couldn't reach the barge or had some final control problem. This was the 4th mission for this rocket and the ascent profile used more energy for a "direct" insertion orbit of the Starlink payload.


Update: video of launch and landing
 
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Flyaway said:
It states here the price is likely to be $10-15 million.

www.space.com

SpaceX will fly space tourists on Crew Dragon for Space Adventures

Up to four people could fly higher than any space tourists in history by 2021!
www.space.com www.space.com
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I don't get paid to be a "news blogger" but you would think this variation in pricing info would be a basic issue to settle. It would make sense that 4 paying customers would cover the total cost of launch and labor for monitoring/control during the mission. but the $50M price mentioned here would mean $200M which would be very hefty profit. And then there is the selling point that Russia charged $20M for someone to go to the ISS so you would think that would be a target price.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/...unch-private-citizens-on-spacex-crew-capsule/
Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, suggested on Twitter that the price per seat could be less than $50 million.

Responding to a question on Twitter about a possible price tag of $52 million per seat, Anderson tweeted: “Per seat price for a full group of four not quite that much (not dramatically less, but significant enough to note). Definitive pricing confidential, and dependent on client specific requests, etc.”
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Update: Doesn't add any info but here is the Space Adventures video.
 
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fredymac said:
And then there is the selling point that Russia charged $20M for someone to go to the ISS so you would think that would be a target price.
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I wouldn't say that was a target price, the Russians at the time were the only way to get to ISS, I think they were just taking advantage of the situation.
 
kitnut617 said:
fredymac said:
And then there is the selling point that Russia charged $20M for someone to go to the ISS so you would think that would be a target price.
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I wouldn't say that was a target price, the Russians at the time were the only way to get to ISS, I think they were just taking advantage of the situation.
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I wouldn't be surprised that even people rich enough to afford these kinds of things would still make a point of this regardless of how that price was established. Rich people can pay someone to do the math and come up with a "reasonable" price and might balk at what they regard as inflated pricing. It will depend on how much they really want to go.
 
But that includes accomodation in space with a space module that has to be built, designed, launched and serviced.

If you think you are going to launch VVIPs on space for them to spend their days diet on sandwiches, moping and sweeping the 6 floors of their cramped launch module...
 

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