SpaceX engineering principle. Elon?

Thread Starter

jgessling

Joined Jul 31, 2009
82
”Starlink satellites are equipped with one solar array instead of two, minimizing potential points of failure. “

From SpaceX twitter. Regarding their latest launch of a bunch of small satellites. Seems backwards to me, haven’t you also eliminated the redundancy that may have allowed for recovery in a failure? Another reason I will never own a Tesla car.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
12,998
Each Starlink satellite is a short duration element of a larger array. Thousands are planned to be orbit, each with a duration of few years before replacement. The solar arrays are reliable standard items with a long history of failure rates. I'm pretty sure they are well engineered for the application.
 
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”Starlink satellites are equipped with one solar array instead of two, minimizing potential points of failure. “

From SpaceX twitter. Regarding their latest launch of a bunch of small satellites. Seems backwards to me, haven’t you also eliminated the redundancy that may have allowed for recovery in a failure? Another reason I will never own a Tesla car.
I have absolutely no insight in to SpaceX and\or their decision making process but with just imagining the costs involved with putting satellites up it's hard to accept the decisions they make aren't done for good reasons. I'm just guessing but I would bet they had historical data about the satellites to justify what they've done with solar panels. I also get news letters from Anern, a Chinese solar panel producer and there's the consideration that the panels have come a long way in power and reliability output from where they were just a few years ago. Redundancy may not now be a financially viable alternative. Considering it costs NASA $10,000 a pound to put something in to space and Orbital Science almost $45,000 a pound putting the extra weight in to space may out weight the cost of the satellites themselves. **NASA's figure is a broad base cost spread over multiple cost centers, some unrelated to the direct flight costs like R&D. Figure those costs in and I'm sure the $10,000 will look a lot different.

Then again, if SpaceX has made a bad decision they will probably know soon enough and will be kicking themselves in the pants!
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,495
Redundancy may not now be a financially viable alternative.
Bingo. I'm sure they'd rather launch two satellites than one heavier one with redundancies built in. Design the thing right so that redundancies are less important. Reduces weight, cost, complexity and risk.

I think the SpaceX engineers probably know what they're doing, and if they don't it's because nobody does.
 

Thread Starter

jgessling

Joined Jul 31, 2009
82
Interesting responses. I guess I don’t think it’s appropriate to litter our orbits with a bunch of satellites that are not designed to be dependable since it’s better to just send up a lot of them. Better meaning cheaper in an economic sense since there is no cost to them when a failed unit crashes out of orbit. Sounds like the same philosophy that has resulted in our oceans being full of plastic. What do they say about learning from history?
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
12,998
Interesting responses. I guess I don’t think it’s appropriate to litter our orbits with a bunch of satellites that are not designed to be dependable since it’s better to just send up a lot of them. Better meaning cheaper in an economic sense since there is no cost to them when a failed unit crashes out of orbit. Sounds like the same philosophy that has resulted in our oceans being full of plastic. What do they say about learning from history?
Your response sounds like an excuse for not understanding what the project was actually about before making a statement about it. Almost 2,000 active satellites, nearly 3,000 dead satellites and 34,000 pieces of “space junk” are already there. For the new ones at 500 kilometers, atmospheric drag will naturally pull them back toward Earth to burn up on reentry like the natural space objects that bombard our atmosphere daily. My guess is most of these guy will go bankrupt long before the birds go bad.
 
Interesting responses. I guess I don’t think it’s appropriate to litter our orbits with a bunch of satellites that are not designed to be dependable since it’s better to just send up a lot of them. Better meaning cheaper in an economic sense since there is no cost to them when a failed unit crashes out of orbit. Sounds like the same philosophy that has resulted in our oceans being full of plastic. What do they say about learning from history?
I can understand and accept your perspective but I can't accept your narrow application of the perspective. Look around your home and understand everything you see will one day be litter or trash for someone to deal with. How do you weigh value vs. necessity with what you have? Honestly, do you even consider what one day will become of the "things" you collect? I'm not at all trying to minimize your awareness of problems caused by trash in our seas and oceans. I do wonder though if you think about why we have the problem in terms of value vs, necessity? It's often referred to as "cost benefit analysis" but this term has been so over used it now implies a deep analysis of every potential factor involved. Whether trash in the oceans or in space, does the value of the service their creation returns to us outweigh the future problems they can cause or not? If you've seen how the people live where most of the oceans plastic comes from and the benefits plastics brings them that might affect your understanding of the problem and maybe cause you to have an effect on it. Understand there is no local recycling center in most places. You could effect that. You could also effect the outright criminal disposal of trash in the oceans. The same goes for satellites which as said will probably burn up on re-entry anyway. The problem is with the bigger stuff up there and you seem to be defending bigger. Solutions can be complicated but problems are usually self evident. What else is usually self evident but inconvenient is accepting each individuals role in the problems. Why look in a mirror if you believe you can have your cake and eat it too? I use to work as an economist for the IMF bank that represented Central America and the Caribbean and part of the job was analyzing issues just like this and applying costs as part of every loan application. Determining how loans will or will not effect these problems was a determining factor? Social benefits were more important than targeted or limited financial ones. Just something to consider.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,495

Thread Starter

jgessling

Joined Jul 31, 2009
82
Malcontent Luddites showing their jealousy. Who asked ‘em?

Seriously though, unless and until there are agreements on such things, it seems silly to raise a fuss now after six decades of exponential growth in orbiting objects.
But isn’t that exactly how these things go? Like auto traffic or similar? Or like snow machines or bikes or climbers on Everest. After it builds up to a certain point then it’s a “problem”. And I think that’s right where we are.
 
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