SpaceX

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Re: SpaceX

#341 Post by PHXPhlyer » Fri Feb 12, 2021 5:47 pm

Elon Musk's SpaceX now owns about a third of all active satellites in the sky
Jackie Wattles
By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business

Updated 4:12 PM ET, Thu February 11, 2021

Austin, Texas (CNN Business)SpaceX created a swarm of about a thousand satellites that is circulating about 340 miles overhead, and building the constellation has put SpaceX in a "deep chasm" of expenses, according to CEO Elon Musk. The constellation has also raised concerns about potential in-space collisions and the impact on astronomers' ability to study the night sky. But for some early customers of the $99-per-month Starlink service, the satellites are already improving how rural communities access the internet.

With the latest SpaceX launch last week, which carried 60 more internet-beaming satellites into space, the company's Starlink internet constellation grew to include about 1,000 active satellites — by far the largest array in orbit. SpaceX now owns about one third of all the active satellites in space.
More Starlink satellites were put in orbit last year than had been launched by all the rocket providers in the world in 2019.
SpaceX has promised its satellite clusters will bring cheap, high-speed internet to the masses by beaming data to every corner of the globe. The company now says it has roughly 10,000 customers, which proves that Starlink is no longer "theoretical and experimental," the company said in a February 4 filing with the Federal Communications Commission.
For comparison, Verizon, one of the most popular fiber-optic internet providers, has more than 6 million customers.
At least one participant in Starlink's beta testing program, Steve Opfer, a manager at chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) who works out of his in rural Wisconsin home, said he "could not be happier" with his service — echoing what dozens of beta testers have said in online forums.
SpaceX gets almost $900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America
SpaceX gets almost $900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America
Whether or not Starlink will become a sustainable business, however, remains to be seen. Musk noted in a tweet Tuesday morning that the company "needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable."
He also refloated the idea of one day taking SpaceX's Starlink business public, saying that could happen "once we can predict cash flow reasonably well." Musk had said last year that the company had "zero thoughts" about a Starlink IPO.
The Starlink network is the largest and most meaningful attempt in history to build a low-latency, space-based internet service for consumers, and Musk noted Tuesday that several previous attempts to create such a network have been abandoned or endured bankruptcy (latency refers to how much lag time or delay is built into a internet service). Systems that require data to travel longer distances, such as more traditional internet satellites that orbit thousands of miles from Earth, create longer lag times. Low-Earth orbit constellations such as Starlink aim to drastically reduce latency by orbiting massive networks of satellites just a few hundred miles over ground.
The idea has its critics. Fiber-optic-based internet providers, for example, are pushing back against the federal government's decision to award SpaceX $885.5 million dollars in subsidies. Professional astronomers are also concerned about light pollution. And the sheer number of satellites that make up the Starlink constellation — and other networks planned by companies such as OneWeb and Amazon — has space experts worried about traffic jams and the risk of collisions that could create plumes of debris.
Here's where those controversies stand, and what SpaceX has done to respond to its critics.
Rural broadband
SpaceX and the FCC are facing blowback after the company was awarded nearly $900 million in subsidies through the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, despite objections from traditional telecom companies and even some regulators.
Some beta testers have reported top-of-the-line speeds, but as of late 2020, they were also reportedly experiencing intermittent outages because SpaceX hadn't launched enough satellites to guarantee continuous coverage. It also remains to be seen how affordable SpaceX's service will be. CNBC reported in October, citing emails shared with those who expressed interest in becoming Starlink customers, that the service could cost about $99 a month, plus a one-time fee of about $500 for the router and antenna. SpaceX has not yet publicly released Starlink's price points or terms of service.
Musk said in a tweet Tuesday that if Starlink doesn't fail, "the cost to end users will improve every year." Yet many still argue that the network will, ultimately, be too expensive to provide the type of paradigm-shifting internet coverage that SpaceX has advertised.
Still, beta testers such as Opfer argue that Starlink is a vast improvement over what many residents of rural areas are used to. Before Starlink, he and his wife relied on HughesNet or ViaSat, a more traditional satellite-based internet provider that has large satellties orbiting thousands of miles from Earth, whose services are known to be bogged down by frustrating lag times, or high latency.
Opfer's Starlink connection still has some spotty service, which he attributes to the fact that SpaceX is still building up the constellation. The company has said that the total number of satellites could be as high as 40,000. But "when Starlink works bad, it's not worse than the best of ViaSat," Opfer told CNN Business.
ViaSat's head of residential broadband Evan Dixon told CNN Business that ViaSat has invested "tens of millions of dollars in addressing, and mitigating latency that people will experience" using ViaSat's service. In a recent earnings report the company's executive chairman, Mark Dankberg, also indicated that the company is skeptical of Starlink's efficacy. He referred to low-Earth orbit constellations like Starlink as "technologies that are unproven and may not be able to meet the obligations that are associated with them."
Astronomy and orbital debris
Professional astronomers have been concerned about how Starlink satellites — which are fairly large at 550 lbs- — will impact the ground-based telescopes that have long been at the heart of breakthroughs in astrophysics and cosmology. Through much of last year, astronomers were working with the company on ways to make the satellites appear dimmer in space.

After initially trying a dark coating, SpaceX settled on using a retractable sun visor. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said those have been present on every Starlink satellite launched since last summer. That has made most of them invisible to the naked eye — a win for communities that want to limit light pollution in night sky.
But the satellites do still interfere with observatories that are essential to astronomers' efforts to study the cosmos. That has scientists scrambling to figure out how to scrub telescope data that is speckled with bright streaks created by the Starlink satellites. That uses up valuable resources that astronomers hoped to put toward their research rather than "trying to clean the bugs off our windshield just so we can see out of our cars," said Meredith Rawls, a research scientist with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
McDowell and Rawls applaud SpaceX's desire to keep satellites at lower altitudes, below 1,000 km (or 310 miles). Keeping Starlink satellites in a lower orbit makes them less of a nuisance for telescopes, and it guarantees that satellites that malfunction will be dragged out of orbit in a matter of months, rather than becoming uncontrollable projectiles that can threaten other satellites for centuries.
Astronomers and space traffic experts are still concerned about the lack of regulation around satellite brightness and orbital traffic. OneWeb's satellite internet constellation, for example, orbits higher than 1,000 km. And if any one of its 6,000 planned satellites malfunctions, it could become a major issue.

PP

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Re: SpaceX

#342 Post by Boac » Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:18 pm

In order to be able to light all 3 raptors during the landing manoeuvre, Musk reports that work is in hand to lower the min throttle settings to avoid over-powering the procedure - don't want it going back up again, do we? =))

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Re: SpaceX

#343 Post by Rwy in Sight » Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:39 pm

I thought a go around is always an option.

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Re: SpaceX

#344 Post by Boac » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:28 pm

Indeed, but should only be used when needed?

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Re: SpaceX

#345 Post by Rwy in Sight » Tue Feb 16, 2021 5:54 am

They have to work on that - the activation only when needed

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Re: SpaceX

#346 Post by Boac » Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:25 am

Don't we all...................

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Re: SpaceX

#347 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:26 pm

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: SpaceX

#348 Post by Boac » Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:03 pm

The FAA apparently have 'concluded' their investigation into the SpaceX 'whoopsies' and have cleared them to continue with SN10. The coming week sees several Boca Chica 'road closures' announced which presage activity, but it looks like no flight early on, so Cocoa stocks will last longer.

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Re: SpaceX

#349 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:16 am

Boac wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:03 pm
The FAA apparently have 'concluded' their investigation into the SpaceX 'whoopsies' and have cleared them to continue with SN10. The coming week sees several Boca Chica 'road closures' announced which presage activity, but it looks like no flight early on, so Cocoa stocks will last longer.
The Apollo crews used to enjoy R&R on Cocoa Beach...

It is not recorded whether or not she enjoyed the experience?

CocoaBaeach.jpg
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Re: SpaceX

#350 Post by PHXPhlyer » Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:35 pm

This 29-year-old cancer survivor is set to be the youngest American ever in space

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/22/tech/spa ... index.html


This 29-year-old cancer survivor is set to be the youngest American ever in space
By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business
Updated 3:19 PM ET, Mon February 22, 2021

Meet the 29-year-old cancer survivor set to make history in space
CNN Business

Austin, Texas (CNN Business)Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old cancer survivor and physician assistant at St. Jude children's hospital, got an out-of-the-blue question from her employer last month: Would she like to go to space?

"I remember laughing," Arceneaux told CNN Business. "And then, I just said — 'Yes! Yes, like, put my name down.'"
Arceneaux will be one of four crew members on Inspiration 4, the first spaceflight to take a group composed entirely of civilians — not professional astronauts — on a multi-day journey to orbit the Earth. It's slated to take off in October 2021. Arceneaux will be joined by billionaire and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, who is funding the mission and plans to use the event to raise more than $200 million for St. Jude's research.
Before last month, Arceneaux said she didn't know who Isaacman was.
"I definitely did not expect this. I hadn't even heard of the mission at that point because it was still a secret," Arceneaux told CNN Business.
By accepting, Arceneaux is now slated to become the youngest American, the first pediatric cancer survivor, and the first-ever person with a prosthesis to journey into space, a landmark that she said she hopes will inspire people with disabilities who previously thought such grand adventures were off limits.

"Until this mission astronauts have had to be physically perfect and, and now things are changing," Arceneaux told CNN Business. "It's just incredible for the representation and getting to show cancer patients what's possible."
Researchers and advocates have long been trying to fight the stigma that people with disabilities are less suited to space travel. The weightless environment, which can make it easier for people with disabilities to move around, and the tenacity many people develop as a result of their disability can make them ideal candidates.
Arceneaux, whose femur was replaced with an internal prosthesis during her battle with cancer, said her orthopedic surgeon put all sorts of limits on her — no skiing, no sky diving, no jumping on a trampoline.
But, he told her, "You won't have any limits in space."
Surviving cancer
Arceneaux was 10 years old and on the verge of earning a black belt in Taekwondo when a knee ache led her to discover she had Osteosarcoma, a type of cancer that causes tumors to grow around developing bones. After being referred to St. Jude, she underwent a year of chemotherapy and surgery to save her leg, and, as is custom for St. Jude patients, was never given a bill for her treatment.

Despite the circumstances, Arceneaux described her time at St. Jude as one that "allowed me to be a kid." She pulled pranks on her doctors with the other patients and put on dance performances, with an IV in tow.
"I can credit St. Jude for that because of the incredibly inspiring place that it was, and the staff that treated me like family," Arceneaux said. That's why, Arceneaux said, she became an ambassador for the hospital and, years after fully recovering from her cancer, she studied to become a physician assistant with the hope of joining the hospital's staff. She now works with leukemia and lymphoma patients.
Though she said she fell in love with space during a trip to a NASA center on a family vacation pre-cancer, and she has two siblings that work in aerospace, she didn't have any personal space-faring aspirations before the Inspiration 4 opportunity came along. She was more focused on Earthly travels, taking time away from work to visit places including Nicaragua, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mexico with the goal of one day visiting all seven continents.
Her spaceflight plans will put a hold on finishing that goal, but she said it was an opportunity she could not pass up.
"I was able to give St. Jude the definite yes just within about an hour," she said. "They came back and they kept telling me I should sleep on it and I was like, 'I'm not sleeping on it! Like, just put my name down. I'm going.'"
The mission
Isaacman, the Shift 4 CEO, said he wanted the Inspiration 4 mission to put a spotlight on charity -— and St. Jude specifically — because a lot has gone right for the billionaire in his life, he said during a press call earlier this month. He donated the first $100 million for the St. Jude fundraiser, and he pledged to give the three additional seats on the mission to a diverse crew of people who could inspire space lovers with dreams of extraterrestrial adventures.
Several wealthy thrill-seekers have flown to space after arranging to ride alongside astronauts during trips to the International Space Station in the early 2000s. But never before has an all-citizen crew flown to space, though several companies have announced plans to organize such a trip, including other promises from SpaceX that have yet to come to fruition. The company has pledged to take Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and a group of artists on a trip around the moon by 2023, for example, aboard a vehicle called Starship, which is still in the early stages of development.

The Inspiration 4 mission, however, will make use of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the vehicle designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station that made its first crewed flights last year. Though the vehicle is designed primarily for NASA's use, Crew Dragon is still privately owned by SpaceX, allowing the company to sell seats aboard to space tourists, private researchers and anyone willing to pay the roughly $50 million price of a seat. Isaacman, who is paying for all four seats on Inspiration 4, has not said how much he paid for the mission.
Isaacman and Arceneaux's mission is the first civilian trip on SpaceX's schedule.The pair will be joined by two other crewmates who have yet to be announced, both of whom will be selected from online contests: One will be an entrepreneur who uses Isaacman's Shift4 payment platform, and the other will be a person who donates to the mission's St. Jude fundraiser.
The Crew Dragon capsule, which measures about 13 feet in diameter, will be home to the four crew members during their multi-day flight to space where the relative strangers will live in close proximity as they fly through orbit at more than 17,000 miles per hour. They'll wear the same spacesuits that SpaceX designed for NASA astronauts, and they'll undergo much of the training professionals undergo in the months leading up to the mission.
Arceneaux said her training will begin shortly, kicking off with a trip in a centrifuge — a large device that spins rapidly to get astronauts acquainted with the intense G-forces involved with launching atop one of SpaceX's rockets.
The journey will be arduous, and, as with any spaceflight, it will involve life-threatening risks. But Arceneaux said her family, including her brother and sister, who are both aerospace engineers, have been very supportive.
"I was talking about sleeping sitting up, and my brother was like, 'There's no up in space!'" Arceneaux laughed. "So they've had a lot of fun getting to teach me about their world."
During the Inspiration 4 mission, the crew will be conducting some scientific experiments as they float through microgravity, Arceneaux said. But she's most looking forward to a video call she has scheduled with St. Jude patients back on the ground.
"We're going to be able to talk to them from space and to show them our views and... hopefully this will bring them a lot of joy and inspire them," Arceneaux said.

PP

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Autogenous Pressurization Systems

#351 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Feb 24, 2021 9:18 am

For those that like this sort of thing.

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Re: SpaceX

#352 Post by Boac » Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:18 am

Wow - well dug out! Fascinating I just wonder if the video could have taken the explanations a little quicker? :)) Frequent use of the pause/rewind here.

I can feel cocoa coming on.

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Re: SpaceX

#353 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:53 pm

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: SpaceX

#354 Post by Boac » Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:55 pm

aims to stick the landing
Don't we all.........? :))

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Re: SpaceX

#355 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:55 pm

Boac wrote:
Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:55 pm
aims to stick the landing
Don't we all.........? :))
;)))
Though you remain
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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: SpaceX

#356 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:02 am

SN10, could it launch today?
Elon Musk's Mars rocket is on the pad in Texas and preparations for launch are underway.

The prototype tests are coming extremely quickly for SpaceX's Starship program. Only weeks after its predecessor SN9 flew high and then crash-landed on Texas' Gulf Coast, SN10 will attempt to improve on that performance, and it could happen as soon as Wednesday. If you want to follow the high-altitude flight test live, we'll have a link right here, shortly before SpaceX's livestream begins.
https://www.cnet.com/news/new-spacex-st ... wednesday/
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Re: SpaceX

#357 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:06 am

Will the SN10 launch today?
In short, there is every possibility the SN10 could launch today, March 3.

Officials in Cameron County, Texas, have closed the roads near the Boca Chica testing facility as SpaceX prepares for lift off.

While SpaceX has not given an official time as to when the launch might happen, the planned road closure times give some indication.
Fly the cocoa supplies in...

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/wi ... r-BB1ebAsf
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Re: SpaceX

#358 Post by Boac » Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:57 am

More importantly, the remaining Boca Chica residemts have been again asked to 'move out' today.

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Re: SpaceX

#359 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Mar 03, 2021 12:34 pm

Boac wrote:
Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:57 am
More importantly, the remaining Boca Chica residemts have been again asked to 'move out' today.
I trust that their launch will not clash with my "very important" online conference... =))

London Space Innovation Centre’s Launch Event

https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/ ... unch-event

Not too late to sign up... ;)))
Though you remain
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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
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Your destination remains
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Re: SpaceX

#360 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:34 pm

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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