Thread

1. paulus_magnus2 · 1790605967 · focus · HN ↗

   Starship is not yet reusable but they have the MVP and a fantastic position to iterate forward.

   -- they have an orbital launcher with the largest diameter cargo bay

   -- larger sats have bigger antennas and bigger PV area and more bus power. this scales as diam^2

   -- 26 x Starlink v3 ~40-65 tons to LEO

   -- every launch generates revenue, locks out the orbit for competitors.

   -- they can launch more volume, more mass and cheaper than anyone else by a large margin

   -- the design is validated - things will work

   -- there is technical debt, issues but the rocket did the job

   Caveats

   -- timelines for full reusability are optimistic etc

   -- there will be other issues in scaling to launching gigawats into orbit

   -- cooling will have to be

   -- Musk might go Full Villan mode before the thing works

   [meta] I really didn't like that other negative comment getting voted to the top. Looks like it's made by someone who never worked in a bigco. For every bigco I worked, at any time there were hundreds if not thousands of open issues. You could list them and try arguing the company is about to fail and you'd scare people who don't know better.

   It's the judgement of the severity of the issue that matters not #no_of_issues. And if there were 0 issues would our job exist?

   [edit] getting the formatting right is very hard, maybe we could get a preview / TinyMCE ?

   1. fluidcruft · 1790608367 · focus · HN ↗

      > Locks out the orbit for competitors

      I swear to God LinkedIn would describe taking a shit in a public park this way. The West Coast is out of their damn minds.

      1. rkagerer · 1790627116 · focus · HN ↗

         Could you elaborate on your counterpoint?

         Genuinely interested. How does or doesn't an existing satellite constrain other operators from desirable orbits? Is it irrelevant because many satellites can share the same orbit at different phase angles (i.e. satellite train), and there are more than enough similar orbits to go around? How many spacecraft would it take to actually be a concern (accounting for attrition from end-of-life ones going out of service, and the point of crowding where diminishing spatial/temporal buffers available for the collision avoidance adjustments needed to practically maintain your desired orbit become too risky).

         1. fluidcruft · 1790638287 · focus · HN ↗

            To elaborate: the park is a shared resource and people don't want to picnic next to dog shit. Suppose you have a dog that shits in the park significantly faster than other dogs. LinkedIn/California types would celebrate the dog's ability to stake claim to the entire public park (as progress as the commuter I replied to has done) without even a smidgen of self-awareness they are stealing from the commons.

            1. ggreer · 1790645466 · focus · HN ↗

               I don't think that analogy really maps, as nothing else is in those orbits, nor have those orbits ever been used by anyone. Is it really a park if nobody has ever set foot in it? Orbits seem more analogous to claiming land for a homestead. By being the first to stake your claim and do useful work on the land, you become the owner.

               Also Starlink V3 orbits are at 330–370km, which is below pretty much everything else in space. Atmospheric drag is high enough that without ion thrusters, satellites will deorbit in a couple years. If SpaceX doesn't keep launching stuff, it will self-clean and allow others to use it.

               1. rlt · 1790650009 · focus · HN ↗

                  Plus, VLEO (<400km) is only really economical at scale with Starship, or at least Falcon 9. Without SpaceX no one would be using it anyway.
               2. fluidcruft · 1790652429 · focus · HN ↗

                  It's not about the analogy, it's about what the original commenter spun about shitting out satellites fastest to claim orbital space and deny it to others as some sort of laudable SpaceX competitive advantage.

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