Starlink! Why, how so?

• Too much competition to the UK OneWeb constellation?
  
  
• Too likely a guaranteed killer-off of our decrepit de-facto telecoms monopolist and the silly expensive cost to bail them out yet again?
  
  
• Or too much potential for too much internet pollution out there where we at present have a cleaner less hurried and a non-internet less harried way of life?
  

(And note: "Fibre Broadband" isn't fibre broadband unless it is fibre all the way to your computer! 200-years-old telegraph wires simply isn't glass fibre speeds!!)

Keep searchin'!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

(And note: "Fibre Broadband" isn't fibre broadband unless it is fibre all the way to your computer! 200-years-old telegraph wires simply isn't glass fibre speeds!!)

You mean FTTC and FTTP. I'm currently on FTTC with BT Halo 3. I get 54mbps download. Fast enough for me. I also have home wifi with a disk for each room. I'm first in line for an upgrade to ultrafast when it is rolled out in my area.

Stacked and getting ready to go.

SpaceX's Starship will reach orbit this year on road to Mars, Elon Musk says.

Cheers.

(And note: "Fibre Broadband" isn't fibre broadband unless it is fibre all the way to your computer! 200-years-old telegraph wires simply isn't glass fibre speeds!!)

You mean FTTC and FTTP. I'm currently on FTTC with BT... 54mbps download...

Which is as fast as can be done over an old twisted pair of old telegraph wires going via an irksome ugly old wooden pole to your building...

That is a world away from the lesser expensive provision of fibre giving 1000 Mb/s or more.

And how all that is Marketed bears little resemblance to the cost of the fibre... Where's the truly open competition?...


Enjoy!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

In South London we don't have wooden Telegraph poles. We have underground local copper cabling from the cabinet to houses. All new housing estates are FTTP because it costs in to provide it from new, rather than upgrade later. In rural areas it is cheaper to have overhead cabling. In remote areas of Scotland they have wireless links.

I am a private citizen, I don't run a business from my house, why do I need 1000 Mbps ?

After 7yrs of floating about astronomers predict SpaceX space junk will hit the Moon....

There's been a correction on whose rocket it is.

Rocket poised to hit moon is Chinese, not SpaceX Falcon 9, student observations confirm.

Cheers.

Just heard that forty of the jast forty nine satellites spaceX launched will be deorbiting due to an exceptionally strong solar storm affecting the upper atmosphere

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Just heard that forty of the jast forty nine satellites spaceX launched will be deorbiting due to an exceptionally strong solar storm affecting the upper atmosphere

They should be well and truly burnt up history by now Bob. ;-)

Unfortunately the down side of putting so many satellites on top of one launch vehicle is if the launch vehicle fails to deliver said satellites to the designed orbit a lot of valuable hardware gets trashed. I haven't done the research so I don't know how many of these launches have failed or partially failed. If this is the only one then I guess it is a minor loss.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Note that the rocket and indeed the launch didn't fail. All 49 Starlink satellites were launched into their intended orbit. So far, the SpaceX Falcon 9 can boast the best success record of any rocket so far!


Unfortunately, and presumably unexpectedly, a solar flare from our sun, later briefly heated the Earth's upper atmosphere...

That extra heating caused the upper atmosphere to expand into the orbit of those recently released Starlinks. Critically, that hit before 40 of those 49 had had a chance to raise their orbit.

The trailing 40 suffered x50 the expected atmospheric drag and they entered into a safe mode for minimum drag to ride out the atmospheric storm...

... Unfortunately, the heated atmosphere dragged them down into a deorbit. They never saw a low enough drag to be able to emerge from safe mode...


Hopefully SpaceX will be keeping closer watch on the space weather and boost their launch margin a little as needed.

For that fateful launch, were SpaceX also compromising their margins to try to dodge inclement weather down here on Earth?


Keep searchin'!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

SpaceX Falcon 9 milestone.

SpaceX launches 46 Starlink satellites, lands Falcon 9 rocket for 100th time.

..A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with 46 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 9:44 a.m. EST (1444 GMT), soaring into a clear, blue sky.

About nine minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's first stage came back down to Earth for a vertical touchdown on SpaceX's droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the Florida coast. It was the 100th Falcon 9 rocket landing for SpaceX and the company's 107th landing overall, including touchdowns by Falcon Heavy boosters. (The company aced its 100th overall landing back in December.)..

Cheers.

While the FAA delays SpaceX Starship environmental review another month to April 29 the SpaceX's private Ax-1 astronaut flight cleared for launch pending NASA Artemis 1 moon rocket test.

Cheers.

SpaceX pausing production of new Crew Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX says it will no longer build new vehicles of its Crew Dragon capsule, the spacecraft the company uses to take humans to and from the International Space Station, according to a report in Reuters. The plan for now is to cap the Crew Dragon fleet for carrying humans at four, which SpaceX will re-fly again and again to get crews to space.

“We are finishing our final [capsule], but we still are manufacturing components, because we’ll be refurbishing,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters. After each flight of a Crew Dragon, the spacecraft must go through a refurbishment process in Florida, where certain hardware is tweaked or swapped out to make the vehicle flight-ready again. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
“We are finishing our final [capsule], but we still are manufacturing components.”

SpaceX initially developed the Crew Dragon for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative to spur the creation of private vehicles to ferry agency astronauts back and forth from the ISS. As part of that program, SpaceX has launched four crews of NASA astronauts to the ISS on the Crew Dragon. In September of last year, the company launched its first fully private crew, carrying four civilian astronauts to Earth orbit for a three-day trip.

The company has plenty of future trips planned for the four Crew Dragons, each of which has been named by their first astronaut crews: Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom....

Cheers.

That's the efficient beauty of reuse!


Keep searchin'!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

That's the efficient beauty of reuse

And savings when you can just fix and replace what necessary versus replacement of the whole big thing.

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Move aside Artemis 1 and make way for something that actually works.

SpaceX rolls Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon capsule out to pad for Ax-1 astronaut launch.

The hardware that will launch the first-ever all-private astronaut mission to the International Space Station has made its way to the pad.

On Tuesday (April 5), SpaceX rolled the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule that will fly the Ax-1 mission out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. SpaceX posted photos of the rollout on Twitter.

Ax-1, which was organized by Houston company Axiom Space, is scheduled to lift off on Friday (April 8). It will send three paying customers and Axiom employee Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut who's commanding the mission, to the orbiting lab for an eight-day stay....

Cheers.

After a week of weather delays Ax-1 is set to return.

First all-private astronaut team aboard space station ready to fly home.

Cheers.

The Ax-1 "Endeavour" Dragon spacecraft has just splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean with 4 American astronauts aboard. On April 27 a Dragon will start with other 4 astronauts, including Samantha Cristoforetti on her second mission to the ISS.
Tullio
I watched the fishing of a very big fish aboard a ship. Why they chose to land at sea and not on land?

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I watched the fishing of a very big fish aboard a ship. Why they chose to land at sea and not on land?

I found the best explanation on this SPACE.COM article from 2017 starting with 4th paragraph:

Jeff Hanley, program manager of NASA's Constellation Program, which includes Orion and other hardware needed to return astronauts to the moon, said the team has made a strong case that landing in water offers safety and performance advantages over land landings.

"There area couple of aspects that pop out to us," he told reporters during the Dec. 10 media roundtable, "Looking at the landing event itself -- the event of actually touching down -- water comes out to be preferable. And that kind of makes sense. ...

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Dragon "Freedom" is now in orbit heading to the ISS.
Tullio

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