https://www.pcmag.com/news/despite-spacex-protests-fcc-clears-ast-spacemobiles-massive-satellite
Comment period ended in July.
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(proceedings.name:(%2225-201%22))
https://www.pcmag.com/news/despite-spacex-protests-fcc-clears-ast-spacemobiles-massive-satellite
Comment period ended in July.
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(proceedings.name:(%2225-201%22))
The source article is quite clear there's no regulatory violations here.
> "Although this IEMR abides by ITU-R guidelines, these intensities are large compared to the strongest astronomical radio sources in the sky and will therefore have the potential to disrupt astronomical observations at SKA-Low frequencies;"
> "The detected IEMR and UEMR are outside of the frequency bands protected for radio astronomy, but are at frequencies of great interest for key experiments for the SKA-Low facility, and at frequencies where RQZ protections at the SKA-Low site are in place;"
The claim stands whether a regulation will be put in place which will require SpaceX to fix or switch off their (thousands) of satellites polluting the spectrum or the band will simply be handed to SpaceX.
"This UEMR is not currently regulated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the organization responsible for managing and allocating the radio spectrum for various uses"
How is the whole Musk/Trump love affair going today?
Especially since the observations appear to be outside the protected spectrum, the answer is "that's probably okay". There's balancing that needs to be done - does the safety benefit of a world in which nobody can be out of contact of emergency services, and the economic benefit of having reasonably high speed internet available everywhere, outweigh the loss of radio astronomy potential.
I think it probably does.
If this balancing argument is merely based on short-term economics, then of course the corporation always wins. Every commons becomes a tragedy in that world.
There is also a huge safety benefit in killing all wild animals, and companies are even happy to build taxable businesses for that if allowed.
This needs to be evaluated and balanced against the economic benefit of having wild animals roam the planet free of charge...
/s
Further context: the signal strengths they're talking about are equivalents of isotropic emitters in the *milliwatt* power range, detectable down to the microwatts—detectable at ranges of thousands of kilometers,
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2023/10/aa47654-23/aa47654-23.html ("Detection of intended and unintended emissions from Starlink satellites in the SKA-Low frequency range, at the SKA-Low site, with an SKA-Low station analogue")
> "The flashes reach a maximum intensity of approximately 10^6 Jy beam^−1 at ranges of ∼500 km (EIRP ∼ 30 mW) and a minimum intensity of approximately 2000 Jy beam^−1 at ranges of ∼2000 km (EIRP ∼ 1 mW)"
Further context: part of the EMI isn't a fixable circuit design issue—it's (I understand) EMI from normal operation of ion thrusters,
> "The authors have been in communication with SpaceX (who owns, builds, and operates the Starlink constellation), who explains that this radiation is likely due to the satellites’ propulsion or avionics system and is likely over 50–200 MHz (SpaceX 2023, priv. comm.) The propulsion system is actively engaged during the time this train is detected. This radiation is therefore in the class of UEMR."
Well, that's what is required to receive a weak signal from beyond that circuit board, from outer space.
> there's no reasonable way to adapt to that
You'd be surprised what becomes reasonable and possible once a requirement is set.
> it's unreasonable to ask an entire planet to turn into a radio-quiet zone.
Noone is asking that.
It's reasonable to require radio interference of a device to stay within defined boundaries. This is the case in all other industries as well, why shouldn't it suddenly apply for a fleet of satellites which blast radio signals from outer space to earth?
No; it really isn't. There's no industry on the planet where "must accept" regulations are set by the world's most sensitive physics experiments.
Do we set acoustic noise regulations by what a LIGO interferometer can measure? Of course not. We'd have to outlaw the mechanical engine were it so. Regress to a medieval society of horse people (very small horses with noise-absorbing horseshoes).
Do we regulate nuclear power by what astrophysical neutrino detectors perceive? Also, no. Even though they see fission reactors on the other side of the planet, and it is noise to them.
The prior art is we that set noise regulations by what interferes with actual humans in their actual day-to-day functioning; and we set RF regulations by what interferes with the functioning of other circuits useful to humans. Not exotic physics experiments. This is a new thing to ask; and it is bold.
The criteria is not industry vs. "world's most sensitive physics experiments", it's industry vs. "agreed activity for public/societal benefit". And there are many examples for it.
We regulate light/noise and other pollution in consideration of wildlife and plants, we regulate nuclear waste disposal considering our responsibilities to the greater public good.
We could also not regulate anything with regards to wildlife and plants, there is no immediate economic benefit to preserve all variants of rhinos, tigers, reptiles etc., we could kill all plants except the most resilient one, it's much more economic to maintain them in long-term then.
We could also globally agree to dispose all nuclear waste in one place on earth and just never go there again.
Actually we could disband entities like the EPA, because we can figure out solutions to each environmental impact on-demand if there's enough incentive for it.
But we don't, because there is (or used to be) consensus that there are also goals beyond short-term economic growth. Areas of interest for greater society, for mankind if you will.
In that case, I'm not sure why you're concerned. Let's flip this around: set up our regulations to loosen our EMI radiation restrictions & facilitate our satellites and space exploration. According to your logic, that should be perfectly reasonable to astronomers, if that's what the regulations say, and it should be possible for them to adapt to that.
If that's not what you meant, then astronomy needs to make some concessions.
“You'd be surprised what becomes reasonable and possible once a requirement is set [and additional funding is allocated to overcome the negative consequences of said requirement]”
It is then up to the taxpayer to define whether the path of performing astronomy research in orbit of earth to preserve a for-profit business-model is more reasonable than defining regulation which allows such research to be performed on earth for a fraction of the cost (but may require for-profit companies to further invest in R&D to comply or re-evaluate their business model).
It's that simple. Astronomy won't be able to provide immediate ROI or a sales-plan of increased revenue to offset the cost-increase when researching in orbit. So if that's the only criteria, then such research is a futile activity and will be stopped.
Astronomy research?, Radio spectrum?, LOE?, Starlink operations?
All of this is global. In the end it'll be about geopolitics, although it should be a field that urgently requires global governance and consensus.
Next time it could be interference between Starlink vs. a Chinese for-profit. It would be good if there's a commonly agreed way of handling such matters in place...
> Astronomy won't be able to provide immediate ROI or a sales-plan of increased revenue to offset the cost-increase when researching in orbit.
That's too bad. I was under the impression that "You'd be surprised what becomes reasonable and possible once a requirement is set."
So your belief is that for-profit companies should not be required to comply to regulation put in place after they start business in any field.
And for-profit companies who later join to compete with them? They should, because it's not "additional"? Or also not, to ensure a competitive market?
So basically no regulation of any kind shall happen, because companies should not be expected to cope with new regulation if it incurs additional effort for them.
Congrats.
Interesting that was your takeaway, when all I actually said was "no double standards pls".
(i.e., hold astronomy and for-profits to the same standard, insofar that they have to just 'deal with it' when new regulation shows up - or not.)
That is not what they said. That's an extremely bad-faith statement that's not even a "misinterpretation", because that implies that there is a valid interpretation, and there isn't - you just made up something completely different and claimed that they said it.
You're really not helping your argument here if you have to resort to lying about other peoples' words in order to try to defend your positions.
I don't understand your comment on so many levels. The ITU treaties do exist, and they do protect observational astronomy bands, and everything here is *in compliance with* extant ITU regs. As I quoted above. I can turn your words on your head: who are astronomers to make arbitrary choices for rest of the human species? Or, who are HN to? People do want their gadgets to work. They value that more highly than many things, things more important than mere astronomy experiments—more highly than human rights, for example (to contemplate all the slave labor in the modern electronics supply chains).
On another level: you say it's just one one company, but that company is obviously just an early-adopter, leading-edge of a great horde of space companies going in for the gold rush. There will be many others, and then there will be the Chinese military, and—do you think there will be more favorable outcomes negotiating with the PLA, filing complaints to the PLA over the RFI of their prized military assets? Yeah; no. In 5-10 years the landscape will certainly be utterly unrecognizable, and it will not be a SpaceX hegemony any longer. You will be opposed to a hundred adversaries of many nations—not just that one.
And following after that, there will be humans and human tourists going up, pretty soon I'd bet; by the thousands; and they'll be bringing their electronics gadgets up to visit, and later inhabit, Earth orbit. Have you internalized the numbers we're discussing here? This telescope array can detect the equivalent of a short-range wireless Bluetooth gadget at 2,000 kilometers range—and they're complaining about it, they want that banned. (Literally—if it weren't for the earth in between us, my wireless mouse right here could be radiating greater signal power through your body, dear reader, no matter where you are right now on the planet, than these satellites flashes we're discussing here. Click, click.) No way is that compatible with a future of humans inhabiting space. The space RF environment is, incomprehensibly pristine as it stands... but that won't last, can't last, there's no way humanity moving to the stars will preserve that pristine silence, you might us well give up right away. Fighting it is futile, foolish, misguided, and more than a little misanthropic.
They also mentioned detecting narrowband transmissions from a commercial FM station, 300km from the radio observatory that reflected off the satellite.
Which, like, cool that they can detect that, but you completely lost me if want to ban all metallic objects in earth orbit.
Yes, this could cause problems, like loss of GPS, weather prediction and other scientific equipment, and enemies wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on each other as easily, leading to wars. But, maybe light pollution would be less annoying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo ("Project Echo" (1960-69))
(Here's a historic irony: the field of radio astronomy was founded by people doing this stuff. The cosmic microwave background was discovered, by accident, with an RF horn built for this satellite relay experiment).
(Here's another weird one:)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford ("Project West Ford" (1961-63)) ("The goal of the project was to place a ring of 480,000,000 copper dipole antennas in orbit to facilitate global radio communication")
They'd be begging for the FCC after that.
The only thing that they can't stop would be things like reflected unrelated ground communications off of the satellite, but that would be very weak.
Not sure this will help against the mentioned unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) likely caused by the electronics of the satellites themselves.
"This radio emission at lower frequencies from Starlink isn’t their downlink frequency, but instead unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR), thought to be caused by the onboard electronics of the satellite."
> "Communication with SpaceX engineers suggested the UEMR originated from the propulsion/avionics system of the satellites as they were orbit-raising at the time of detection."
Still I agree it is fixeable - they can tune the hall effect thruster on newer sats to not radiate in this band & avoid running the thrusters when in the field of view of that one radio telescope at the times it is operating.
However the answer is still that nothing will happen. The power level on the ground is extremely weak.
IE they're thinking of the individual phased arrays as just highly directional antennas for the satellites. The idea that they could be coherent actually means there could be more power than we might expect.
Even so, my guess is you aren't going to be frying an egg 500 km away even with the whole starlink constellation at full power!
From your article:
> Note that the thinned array curse applies only to mutually coherent sources. If the transmitting sources are not mutually coherent, the size of the ground spot does not depend on the relationship of the individual sources to one another, but is simply the sum of the individual spots from each source.
Satellites, well, first, most are below the horizon at any given moment, and unlike with the sun this doesn't just halve the number of sources visible. But let's pretend the earth is transparent. The satellite closest to you is four times brighter than the ones twice as far away as the closest, and the distant ones are about (525km/(12742km + 570km))^2 = 0.00156 times the brightness of the closest.
The point I'm making with the thinned-array curse in response to a comment about their phased array antenna is that the scenario is a thinned array, and that phased arrays, while useful, don't solve everything.
From the shell theorem, the sum of the effect of of all of them at any point inside their orbital shells can be approximated as* a constant value everywhere equal to the effect if you put them all in the middle and measure at the shell radius, so radius = 12742km/2 + 540km = 6911 km, so 8000 * (540km)^2 / (6911km)^2 ~= 48.8 times the brightness of a single satellite. So even all of them is not much.
* Approximation will diverge noticeably roughly when you're closer to the shell than the separation of sources in the shell
Then with the bank account, you can do whatever else needs to be done at a later date
Having used it it is genuinely impressive, but it will inevitably lead to everyone wanting their own independent LEO constellation for military purposes (communication and observation), which will then lead to a big interest in anti-satellite weapons since these will become major targets in a hot war.
The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk and investment in defense over-the-horizon ground radios (again) which to some degree is already happening.
If anything, the other way around. Were Starlink a traditional satellite constellation, with a few in geosynchronous orbit, they would be very appealing targets. But there are thousands, and soon tens of thousands, of Starlink satellites, which makes any sort of weapon against them other than maybe a laser impractical.
>The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk
... the Starlink portion of which naturally falls back to earth within five years.
They naturally fall out of orbit after a few years.
And no they can't be "blown into" GEO orbit.
1. The amount of "orbit slots" is vast. There is plenty of room.
2. I'm unaware of any mega constellations planned >500km. Latency would be worse and doesn't make sense for an aspiring Starlink competitor to do that.
2. All mega constellations including starlink has layers from 500-1500km. Every 100km is like 0.3ms latency but trade off is cheaper station (longer life time) keeping and wider coverage per satellite, but cost more to get there.
Related to 1&2 is this is byproduct of UN/ITU regulations... they can open up more <500km slots, increase congestion, confliction and chance of recoverable Kessler... but that would mean SpaceX (read US military) would... have to share strategic orbits with PRC and whoever comes next.
E: extrapolate to future of cheap space launch, if multiple blocs or even countries want their own mega constellations, and no changes to regulations, then they would have to start occupying higher orbit shells (assuming they follow ITU). Also geometrically, the shell lowest/closest to earth has the least volume / capacity.
China's Thousand Sails (Qianfan) is secretive but possibly targets 800 km shells; I'll just quote Mike Wall and Jonathan McDowell,
> "That number is growing all the time; SpaceX has already launched more than 50 dedicated Starlink missions this year, with many more on the docket. Elon Musk's company already has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink spacecraft in LEO, and it has applied for approval for another 30,000 on top of that."
> "Qianfan won't be quite that big, but it's in the ballpark."
> ""The satellites are similar to the V1 Starlinks, with flat-panel morphology and a mass of 300 kg [660 pounds] each. This 'G60' constellation is planned to eventually have 14,000 satellites," astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, posted on X shortly after today's Qianfan launch."
> "The Qianfan satellites will apparently orbit at an altitude of about 500 miles (800 kilometers), he added in another post. That's higher than the Starlink constellation, which orbits at about 340 miles (550 km)."
https://www.space.com/china-first-launch-internet-satellite-megaconstellation
there is no evidence that there will be a hot war, that it will involve destroying satellites, or the process of destroying the satellite would result in space junk that didn't naturally deorbit within a few years
if we have a hot war with a country capable of launch rockets into space to destroy satellites, then we're super fucked anyway, because that's also a nuclear country. satellites would be the last of my concerns, i would be digging a bunker in my backyard
Feels like this is regulatory UB, and therefore allowed.
I don't see big potential for the current US government to value scientific interests higher than the interests of SpaceX.
Wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX just continues to launch such satellites causing unintentional interference, to then claim in case of escalation how uneconomic it will be for them to correct this issue now and how the financial impact to SpaceX needs to be valued higher than scientific needs.
This LEO Direct-to-cellular strategy seems to play out similarly, with SpaceX launching massive amounts of satellites which are technically not capable to prevent interference on private spectrum while crossing country-borders, so ITU/FCC/CEPT now need to find a solution to deal with this situation.
Do not underestimate the motivating factor of spite in the current US administration.
Literally reïgnited the Epstein drama.
That may be true. But it’s definitely a hot take.
Musk and Trump have agreed a detente. We have no signs of them helping each other. Where Musk has made up is with the GOP machine, particularly in the House. That looks less like alliance than positioning.
At least Starlink satellites need to be replaced every few years anyway due to their low orbit. That is a natural ceiling for economical questions - ITU et al take years anyway until anything is actually enforceable, so SpaceX has ample time to prepare should there be a relevant movement in ITU.
The company I'm working for has its own EMC chamber (maintaining that huge room fully calibrated and standardized is ultra expensive... just looking at these EMC test receivers that go up to 40GHz my me cry in $$$$) and we invested giant engineering effort into our products to be far below every radiation limit norm in the world.
Shouldn't satellite companies have even better stuff and more strict regulations or are these unintended effects maybe caused by the harsh environment?
Most companies won't spend a penny, take a second of time, or add a gram to a satellite if it doesn't affect their mission or chance of approval. Especially not one as cost-optimized as SpaceX. They won't change a thing unless the US government forces them to do so, or if they think that a government order is imminent so they come to some voluntary agreement ahead of time to avoid what would probably be a more constraining official regulation in the future.
The actual issue is probably caused by switch-mode power supplies or some digital signal on the satellite that isn't fully shielded, possibly one that does digital control of a motor or thruster. It probably isn't the communication radios since they operate at a much higher frequency. You can fix the issue by adding filtering and/or shielding, but that takes extra components (meaning extra cost and weight) and requires testing (meaning time). Plus you have to identify the offending system, which means you have to start with testing and detective work. This interference was only detected on some Starlink satellites, so you have to do detective work to find out if it is a particular operating mode or generation of satellite that is offending, do testing to confirm it, and then work on a fix.
It might apply to some of the emerging Starlink competitors however, especially the Chinese ones and AST.
Rural communities are being enriched all over the world through high speed internet access.
Isn't that exactly what Starlink is doing?
Station-keeping must be active for very many reasons, and sats with broken thrusters fall down fairly quickly.
There's also satellites with no active attitude control at all and use passive means to maintain a somewhat static orientation. That can permanent magnets causing a tumbling linked to Earth's magnetic field, passive aerodynamic stabilization, or using Earth's gravity gradient to align the satellite.
Mitigation might have to involve some sacrifices. I don't see how policy is going to be able to mitigate much here. And of course the Chinese are under no obligation to listen to US policy makers. They might have their own debates domestically around this topic and they might be reasonable about the topic internationally even. But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
A more practical approach might be accepting that earth based observations are inevitably going to suffer a bit as the number of satellites grows from thousands to tens of thousands and eventually well beyond that. Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware. That's already happening of course. And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth. Unless of course the thing under observation is on a collision course with us.
You're right that the majority of Einstein's theories were ultimately thought experiments but getting the parameters correct involved a lot of measurements and experimenting, to get to where tech like GPS and StarLink can be accurate. We were also looking at far away stars for centuries before Einstein so that he could have the environment for his ideas to be discussed, which I was including in my phrasing "looking at things light-years away."
I wasn't saying it to start an argument, though. I wanted to counter the rather dismal view of "why do we need radio telescopes."
Because they provide data that other types of telescopes do not. We have X-ray telescopes. We have infrared telescopes. We have optical telescopes. Also as a bonus, for ground based radio telescopes, we can use them 24/7 instead of waiting for nighttime.
Your underlying question as to why some of those are launching satellites is much easier. They are apparently quite useful for things like communication, providing internet, etc. And people are willing to pay for that kind of stuff. It's not more complicated than that.
Starlink is nothing compared to the value Starshield provides, and the civilian product drives costs down.
With drone warfare being the next thing, the US probably can't afford to not have a company running a major LEO ISP.
Then whoever has the most sats will say "that's it guys, LEO is full and you need our approval to launch more" and if someone raises a stink you guessed it, they can get nuked from orbit
Improved first strike capability is worthless íf it isn't crippling, and "devastating enough" first strike capability from orbit is completely unaffordable, and impossible to build up unobserved.
Being in orbit is a hindrance more than anything, really, because maintenance becomes ruinously expensive, everything is trivially observable for all your adversaries and you have to align the orbit with your target beforehand, too (which, again, everyone can observe).
> It doesn't even have to be rational though, combinations of graft and brinkmanship would be enough.
Enough for what? Threatening to nuke some satellites? Because anything else you can do easier, cheaper and on a larger scale from the ground. Why would you bother with nuclear warheads in space when you can just build/maintain like 10 ICBM silos for the same cost?
No. Your missiles have further to fly from geostationary orbit than a missile silo on the ground, not to mention the additional complexity of designing your ICBM for reentry
From GEO, no. From LEO, still probably no.
There may be a bird positioned just right so a small deörbit burn pots Moscow quicker than an ICBM could. But the moment you start burning, you’re caught. (Same as an ICBM.) And unless you have a really obvious orbital configuration that bunches a bunch of birds in a way useful for practically nothing but such a strike, you only get one or two such “early” shots before a wall of ICBMs would have landed.
Nukes in space aren’t about nuking the ground from space. It’s about space area denial through EMP.
"Elements within the Soviet space industry convinced Leonid Brezhnev that the Shuttle was a single-orbit weapon that would be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, manoeuvre to avoid existing anti-ballistic missile sites, bomb Moscow in a first strike, and then land. Although the Soviet military was aware these claims were false, Brezhnev believed them and ordered a resumption of [satellite destroyer] testing along with a Shuttle of their own."
Nukes from LEO aren't impossible. They're just impossible to do better than the current triad. Any breakthrough in propulsion that would make a plane change easier or less visible confers the same advantages to an ICBM. There is a narrow window in which orbital nuking can outperform, and that's almost entirely taken care of--and exceeded, in stealth--by SLBMs.
Space-based missile defence is not what’s implied by weapons that are “already up” and thus “give a lot less warning in a first strike situation?”
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nuke+it+from+orbit
Humanity is what humanity is, not what we wish it'd be, so key military capabilities need to be developed or you get razed by the guy who did develop them. Doubly so now that we've rediscovered that culture is much more resilient than we'd thought, and that different people want Earth to look in different ways.
Do we all wish we'd stop ecological collapse instead? Yeah. But it's not going to happen so it's irrelevant.
To have internet everywhere you need to either accept bad latency (300-500ms round trip) or have closer satellites, which means they’re moving faster, which means you need more of them.
Yes, some of the premiere radio observatories have radio transmission exclusion zones around them, but they are also typically away from that exclusion zone impacting as few as possible. Starlink on the other hand is not attempting to do anything of the sort. It would be interesting of Starlink could respect a geofence kind of idea so that they stop broadcasting when over certain areas, especially since they do this over geopolitically exclusion zones.
Require by who and on what authority?
My point here was not to contest that but make the point that the cat is out of the bag and that it is indeed impacting SKA-Low EoR science and the people involved with that have to deal with that.
Getting the cat a little bit back in the bag via policy and other means is maybe worth trying (good luck) but I don't give it a very high chance of success.
I think you need to scope this approach when suggesting it though, since it's effectively "a policy has been broken by a company, but we can't undo it, so lets just accept it and let them get on with it" which doesn't seem like it'll lead to a better world.
I do agree with your point that the people who suffer from the policy breach have to be pragmatic in their handling. But ultimately, let's not let pragmatism and stoicism lead to businesses spectacularly breaking policies in hopes of being told "well the cats out the bag now, the victims can deal with it, you might has well continue".
I fully agree, and that's IMO the core-issue here: This strong-arm approach of just forcing the problem to be solved in your favor by scaling as fast as possible and then pleading how uneconomic it would be for you to change course, insisting that the other side should be pragmatic about this.
I don't remember this was a working strategy in the past (imagine a car-company just accelerating sales of a faulty car to scale THEIR issue and avoid having to do a recall), but nowadays it could even be turned into a geopolitical topic...
But such companies also failed already. Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom comes to mind. Even Blockbuster could be on that list...
This reasoning has some parallels to "everything that can't be explained by science must be god". It stays valid even when proven wrong...
It’s essentially a form of market extortion though, so perception of ‘survivable’ matters as much as actually survivable eh?
You're right though, it's crappy and merits a lot of geopolitical reflection. But I suspect it goes back millenia and is a manifestation of basic evolutionary biology with the business world, rather than anything that can be solved/fixed.
And we've gone full circle about the balance of working for/against humanity in the name of progress.
Today, environmental/privacy/safety laws are suddenly not that strict anymore, because now we naturally need to also take economic interests of the violating company into account.
So you might end up in a situation where an official body will officially rule that the harmed party may be right, but needs to be pragmatic about its needs just because of the increased inconvenience it would create for the opposing party if THEY would have to change their way.
In my experience, this was not the case 15 years ago.
Someone, if we stretch that metaphor, intentionally opened the bag for profit. We can and should hold them accountable.
> the people involved with that have to deal with that
Yep, and they should hold the people who caused this accountable.
> is maybe worth trying (good luck) but I don't give it a very high chance of success
You may be correct that it has a low chance of success. However, people who think like you are exactly the cause. People who value Musk's net worth more than science, people who fetishise "progress at all costs," regardless of whether or not the progress actually helps people or is what makes sense (municipal internet, folks!). Understanding physics is also critically important progress, but it doesn't make money next quarter so you don't care.
So you'll forgive me if I don't take your advice on the situation.
The Chinese (correctly) view these satellite constellations as a key military capability, and have gone all-in on creating their own version. (I mean, I don't see how that's even debatable at this point—having seen the influence of Starlink in Ukraine. Future conflicts will only amplify the gap between the haves and have-nots).
They haven't yet launched a large number (~120); they don't now have the launch volume for large-scale satellite constellations. Their race is to first catch up in launch capability. They have dozen private startups—heavily subsidized and favored by the state—in the race to build a viable, reusable launcher comparable to Falcon 9, that they would then use to launch Starlink-like constellations at the same cadence.
Some starting points:
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-racing-to-catch-up-to-spacex-74b02a95 ( https://archive.is/Ukmoa ) ("China’s Own Elon Musks Are Racing to Catch Up to SpaceX / Private sector takes bigger role in building reusable rockets, advancing Beijing’s goal of independence from Western technology")
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/23/world/asia/starlink-spacex-musk-china-satellites.html ("This Was Supposed to Be the Year China Started Catching Up With SpaceX / It’s looking unlikely. Here’s why")
Can't feasibly do VLBI or other radio astronomy at useful scale in space even if launches were free. Look up the scale of SKA or the EHT.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06708
Why can't humanity launch 2^17 small antennas into deep space, as a free-floating constellation?
> "would likely have to transmit the data via radio links"
No; you'd use free-space optical communication, which doesn't interfere at all, and which Starlink has pioneered. They have working laser links at 200 Gbps, per link,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200323 ("Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day (pcmag.com)")
The optical bandwidths potentially accessible, in vacuum, are much wider than that of microwave links to/from Earth.
> "a supercomputer with purpose built signal processing hardware"
I don't see why couldn't put that in space, today. That SKA signal processing system you're talking about amounts to 100 petaflops, drawing 2 MW of power. That's far less power than Starlink already has in orbit right now (somewhere in the 10's of megawatts). It's even within a factor-of-10 of raw compute—the figures I found say each V2 Starlink has 1.2 TFlops of local processing.
I don't understand why it'd be impractical to put an equivalent signal-processing system in orbit. At any rate, there's YC startups getting funded for space-compute proposals more ambitious than that,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977188 ("Starcloud (ycombinator.com)")
No kidding! If something is worthwhile, people should and sometimes do go to the trouble!
Just roll over is not good advice here!
Nobody anywhere is anywhere near SpaceX’s launch cadence, reusable or non.
Seems more effective for astronomers to embrace it. Perhaps by getting SpaceX to add a few dozen hundred satellites kitted out for radio astronomy. Link them together and it could be amazing for radio astronomy!
“We” as in the select few countries that have the launch capability and the space tech.
Again a public good is being commoditized and being sold to the highest bidder.
Requiring the winner of a spectrum auction to use it is a way to prevent anti-competitive tactics (since the government is granting a monopoly to the winner). The goal is to incentivize productive use of limited resources, not necessarily to benefit everyone. In theory, the winner could use the spectrum for entirely internal purposes. Though in real world spectrum auctions, the government usually has stipulations such as requiring interoperability or using open standards. This reduces the value that the government captures, but likely increases the value that is created overall.
Before spectrum auctions, the government simply mandated what frequency bands were used for what, and by whom. Getting access usually meant lobbying and back room deals. Sometimes the FCC used lotteries, which caused speculators to enter lotteries and then license access (basically capturing revenue that would have gone to the government had the spectrum been auctioned). In practice, auctions are the worst form of spectrum allocation, except for all the others.
Just like the inclosure movement, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act
With privatization, the public is paid something. Whereas StarLink's use of LEO is a taking. They're denying others open access usage. Without any possibility or threat of consequences.
"Use" is such an inadequate term, but I couldn't think of another. Commandeering?
There has never been more access to space-based imagery and other sensing. With multiple companies selling this stuff ever cheaper. Every news outlet can now afford to buy images. And that's because of cheap launches.
> Whether they like it or not,
A swarm of LEO satellites because in the current political climate it's easier to massively pollute orbits and prevent astronomy than do municipal internet is not, in fact, a law of nature; nor is it inevitable.
> But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
Ah, a challenge! Let's all give up immediately; this could make some rich people a lot of money, after all!
> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware.
Would you like to pay for launching Vera C. Rubin (8.4m, nearly 20,000kg for just the camera and mirrors) into space? How about the TMT (30m, expected ~2.6 million kg)? Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing about astronomy.
> And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth.
Apparently fundamental physics is not very relevant to us here on Earth! This is one of the most small-minded statements I've ever read.