They really put everyone in the front row of space launches these days, they KNOW how to entertain real life. Incredible how much less (or cleaner) thrust is used to launch the starship than rockets of the past. The space shuttle looked like an H-bomb went off when it launched, this thing’s burn seems to be incredibly controlled and efficient.
Not sure people caught it (I missed it) but apparently there was a methane leak that caused a hell of an explosion after landing.
Starlink planning to roll out vehicle mounted equipment (large vehicles only (boats, transport trucks, planes, RVs, etc.) that will keep you connected even while on the move https://arstechnica.com/information...starlink-broadband-for-cars-boats-and-planes/
That was the most mild large rocket explosion I’ve ever seen. It’s fascinating how intact the hull still was after the leak reached criticality, usually there’s nothing left of anything in the vicinity.
It should be interesting. There's 2 things at play here... one is the hardware to keep the dish aligned while moving (which I personally am not interested in), and then there's the system's ability to allow your dish to find and connect to whatever satellites that are in your area. THAT is the part I'm looking forward to. That means I can pack up the dish from home, drive to a campsite with the Airstream, plop the dish down on the ground, and have it figure out where it is, sync up, and then work. Right now each dish is pre-programmed with a satellite with your known physical location (your shipping address), and in order to change that, you have to call up their tech support and give them new lat/long. They say it'll be a matter of months before they get the coverage and dynamic locating systems in place to let it happen. Still waiting for my dish to show up, so we'll see. All I have is the home installation kit so far. Not too exciting. But still exciting.
I think the fact it was an external explosion made all the difference... it was a leak, and it ignited outside, not contained within the rocket... that means there was no explosive expansion from within, only shockwaves from without. Huge difference in damage between the 2 scenarios. It's like the difference between a fire cracker on an open palm vs inside a closed fist... with the latter, you lose all your fingers.
That makes sense, but these SpaceX boosters still must use a lot less fuel than their predecessors. I remember shuttle launches costing billions, Elon turned that into a fraction of the price BEFORE inflation while also supplying truly galvanizing footage of everything they do. He NAILED the new space age. He and his crew made it fun again.
A fully loaded Space Shuttle was around 3000 tons. It had to burn fuel until it was light enough to liftoff. These test rockets have enough fuel on them for the test requirements so in many cases they are operating at 10 to 15% of their max output.
okay, might be a dumb question but I am an idiot after all. Our gate where the mailboxes are, is about a half mile from my house. If they need the lat/long of where the dish is, wouldn't the address send them a half mile away theoretically? To add, I share the same address as my sister, who's house is a quarter mile away. Like I said, I'm an idiot and don't understand how these things work. But I would assume there's some kind of define-able radius of the signal correct? Do we know how physically large that signal is?
I doubt a mile would make a difference. It’s more about sat area of coverage, so they are statically programming the dish to sat assignments to start with.
They've said that the software systems for "dynamic allocation of dishes to satellites" aren't ready yet, and they still don't have enough coverage to enable it effectively. They expect that to be fixed in the next few months. Right now each pre-defined region on the ground has a list of allowed dishes that are allowed to connect from that region, and that is "manually" maintained. There are only certain areas that are enabled for service until they get more sats up. They've also said a big part of that control is for quality of service so they don't have people saturating an area that doesn't have enough sat support, or for people to try and use it in areas that has zero support yet (PR reasons, like you said).
I'm guessing the system likely operates similar to how GPS works, where your connecting to multiple satellites instead of the traditional satellite TV/internet method of focusing on one satellite. The more satellites your receiver & transceiver can talk to. Needing your position is probably more to tune the system to provide the most robust coverage to as many subscribers as possible. I suspect the multiple satellite method may also be part of how they've been able to supposedly reduce weather interference.
I'm not sure that it would work like that, though... seeing as it's 2 way communication. While you could do some crazy multiplexing across different sats with different signal strengths, I don't think it's reasonable for what they're trying to accomplish. I think they could pick the best sat for the job based on some algorithm (saturation, signal, etc), and lock into that one, but I doubt they could use multiples at once for comms. (Whereas GPS needs multiple sats to work). I have zero info to back up that thinking, but that's just my gut feeling having worked with microwave and satellite comms in the past.
I'm also very interested to get the actual dish in my hands so I can see what capabilities it has to track signals on it's own. Whereas Direct TV required you to climb out on a ladder and tune the dish, this thing does some "self tuning"... but I have to think it's relatively slow and done infrequently... not constantly high-speed changing between satellites.
Thats why I wonder if they don't need a specific location and are attempting some sort of mosaic link from multiple satellites since Ka band is a narrow wavelength. Less than a degree off and you might as well be 180 off. It could also explain their claims of reducing weather interference without overpowering other existing systems using the same bandwidth. Or something completely different...sidelobes? Complete speculation and a WAG on my part. It could also simply be the system fine tunes its location via GPS once you set it up and they just want your general location to ensure you're within their coverage area and preset the receiver sobit doesn't take as long to find the satellite. I'll preference this is based on my distant memories of signal collections...something I haven't really looked at in over a decade.