Space x near bankruptcy?

a reply to: gortex

Without Starlink I would be on Hughesnet. Why? Because at the end of the road is AT&T fiber, I offered what it would cost to run the line to the home, pay for excavation, permitting, etc. They wouldn't even give me a price quote. I hired an independent firm who estimated $35k give or take to get it done. I took the quote back to AT&T with cashiers check available, I spent 9 months escalating as much as I could. At the end of the day Starlink is the only reason I can work remotely.

I get the concerns, however if not them it would be another company. That's just the way things are going to go.

Think I'm having a moment.









yep I sure am.















its one of those ROCKETS DO NOT WORK IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE moments.

a reply to: gortex

There have been attempts to mitigate the reflections of the satellites, including the DarkSats which have an anti-reflective coating and the VisorSats which have a system of eaves to cut down on reflectivity. I believe both helped, and I'm sure further improvements are in development. Also, software such as PixInsight, has been able to remove satellite tracks from stacked images since at least 2019, before Starlink began its higher launch cadence. This is going to be a non-issue, despite astronomers being a fairly cantankerous bunch at times.

The satellites also orbit comparatively lower than most other satellites at only about 350 miles up once in their proper orbit, which is lower than the orbit of the ISS. The satellites are also designed to deorbit automatically at the end of their life, which is designed to be no more than five years. Kessler Syndrome is a concern, but I'd be more worried about destructive weapons tests causing that before any of the Starlink constellation doing so.

Here are some good, in depth stats on the Starlink constellation if you're interested.
Jonathan's Space Pages - Starlink Statistics

a reply to: infiniteMeow

That’s right up there with flat earth…

a reply to: Hypntick

Ditto! Did the same thing, the fiber optic infrastructure sucks, and I live in an air force town, how is it in podunck South Carolina I had high speed fiber optics, middle of nowhere. But this modern town…nope cost to much……ass backwards.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: Bluntone22

I hope not, but I think that chemical rocket solutions are also not the only ones we should be pursuing.

Space is hard.
And expensive.
Space x hasn’t had the burden of bureaucratic interference to screw up progress but they also haven’t had bureaucratic oversight to keep things on track.
They are developing a rocket that has only one customer.. themselves.. that is a problem that should have been addressed before development.

originally posted by: 38181
a reply to: Hypntick

Ditto! Did the same thing, the fiber optic infrastructure sucks, and I live in an air force town, how is it in podunck South Carolina I had high speed fiber optics, middle of nowhere. But this modern town…nope cost to much……ass backwards.

I did some research on starlink a while back. The numbers didn’t add up if I remember correctly. They had to have a certain amount of subscriptions to make it economically viable but with the required number needed they won’t have enough bandwidth available.
Honestly I would need to go back and read up of starlink agin to be sure.

a reply to: Bluntone22

If your option is dial up or traditional satellite providers, it's worth the cost even if it only lasts a few years until the standard land based carriers finally catch up to all the people working remotely, it's highly worth it. There's outages and inconsistent speeds from time to time, but it's considerably better than any of the other options.

SpaceX is nowhere bankruptcy. Elon Musk is upset because the Raptor engine is behind schedule. He is a bit of a perfectionist, a workaholic and often pushes for unreachable timelines.

SpaceX is fine financially. They have government contracts and private contracts with billions. With Elon time the Starship and raptor engines are behind schedule however the progress being made is phenomenal and once this goes to orbit, re-entry and landing there will be many more lucrative contracts.

The Raptor is a revolutionary engine using methane and a full flow combustion cycle with both oxidizer and fuel rich preburners. No one is using methane as a fuel nor a full flow cycle to launch rockets into orbit. Working out the difficulties of a new revolutionary engine take time to work out the issues then scale it up to massive production level.

The RS-25 engines uses on the Space Shuttle(and will be used again with SLS) was the most complex engine made until the Raptor, however they only needed a small inventory of 10 or less and though technically resuseable needed to essentially be rebuilt after each mission.

For the objective of the Starship, hundreds if not thousands need to be made yearly and they have to ready for resuse immediately and repeatedly without any significant maintenance.

I have no doubt Elon Musk and SpaceX will pull this off, however it will take longer than the extremely enthusiastic timeline Elon wants.

a reply to: billxam

They can not use Merlin engines for the Starship because it is not powerful enough and uses kerosene instead of methane. Using methane is crucial for future missions to Mars as it can be made and possibly mined there.

a reply to: jrod

I think you have a very optimistic view of musk’s capabilities.
Not sure where he plans on finding customers for his starship with such a huge payload capacity.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Bluntone22

Wonder if that has anything with Musk selling 10% of his Bit Coin earlier this year , personally I hope Starlink falls flat on its face but hope it doesn't drag SaceX down with it.

Aren't the Star-link satellites already in orbit? It would be a shame for them to become just more orbital debris.

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Bluntone22

Wonder if that has anything with Musk selling 10% of his Bit Coin earlier this year , personally I hope Starlink falls flat on its face but hope it doesn't drag SaceX down with it.

Aren't the Star-link satellites already in orbit? It would be a shame for them to become just more orbital debris.

Uh no….
There are around 2,000 in orbit now.
They need another 40,000 to finish the grid…. Yes you read that right. 42,000 total satellites.

And they have a five year life expectancy….
So every five years there needs to be another 42,000 satellites put in orbit.

originally posted by: Bluntone22

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Bluntone22

Wonder if that has anything with Musk selling 10% of his Bit Coin earlier this year , personally I hope Starlink falls flat on its face but hope it doesn't drag SaceX down with it.

Aren't the Star-link satellites already in orbit? It would be a shame for them to become just more orbital debris.

Uh no….
There are around 2,000 in orbit now.
They need another 40,000 to finish the grid…. Yes you read that right. 42,000 total satellites.

And they have a five year life expectancy….
So every five years there needs to be another 42,000 satellites put in orbit.

Holy smokes! Is this part of the build back better internet thingy? Sounds like overkill.

Elon Musk should stick with building those ugly cars.

a reply to: Bluntone22
Elon seems a bit inconsiderate, thd amount of work required to dig up and process the precious metals, all the infrastructure to launch these satellites every few years seems like a total waste, let alone all the extra space junk being created.

Potential of 40 thousand satellites in decaying orbits, would he payout if property or people are killed by his satellites?

Musky looks like he cares for the environment with his plastic electric cars. Overpriced batteries and solar systems.

Contradiction he is.

a reply to: Bluntone22

There is a youtuber called Common Sense Skeptic that did a lot of math on this and he said there is no way Musk can pull this off.

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: jrod

Problem with kerosene is that it is dirty and in addition methane gives you greater ISP with few of the problem of Liquid hydrogen

LH2 needs to be kept at - 425 F, hydrogen is lightest element in universe, the tankage need if very bulky because of this
Also because hydrogen is very light, the welds and seams need to be very tight to avoid leaks and possible explosion

Kerosene creates lot of soot and thermal breakdown of it (Coking) clogs channels in the cooling of the nozzle

Methan is much cleaner and avoids problems of having to clean engines after use

originally posted by: Bluntone22

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Bluntone22

Wonder if that has anything with Musk selling 10% of his Bit Coin earlier this year , personally I hope Starlink falls flat on its face but hope it doesn't drag SaceX down with it.

Aren't the Star-link satellites already in orbit? It would be a shame for them to become just more orbital debris.

Uh no….
There are around 2,000 in orbit now.
They need another 40,000 to finish the grid…. Yes you read that right. 42,000 total satellites.

And they have a five year life expectancy….
So every five years there needs to be another 42,000 satellites put in orbit.

Its called future orbital bombardment and getting Joe public to pay.

originally posted by: infiniteMeow

originally posted by: Bluntone22

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Bluntone22

Wonder if that has anything with Musk selling 10% of his Bit Coin earlier this year , personally I hope Starlink falls flat on its face but hope it doesn't drag SaceX down with it.

Aren't the Star-link satellites already in orbit? It would be a shame for them to become just more orbital debris.

Uh no….
There are around 2,000 in orbit now.
They need another 40,000 to finish the grid…. Yes you read that right. 42,000 total satellites.

And they have a five year life expectancy….
So every five years there needs to be another 42,000 satellites put in orbit.

Its called future orbital bombardment and getting Joe public to pay.

Well considering there is another company doing the same thing with only three satellites, I would have to agree with you.
The ping time will be a bit longer but that would only matter to serious gamers who wouldn't use a satellite connection anyway.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Heavy lift is a very serious market with not a lot of options right now. There will be no shortage of customers.

a reply to: robsmith

As others said, the box is open; if not Elon and SpaceX, then just some other company at this point.

The satellites are small and designed to completely burn up upon reentry. They pose no risk to anyone or their property.

a reply to: infiniteMeow

Bombardment of what? The Starlink satellites are not very big, much less capable of carrying a payload that could be concerning.

a reply to: Bluntone22

Are you talking about HughesNet? Have you ever used that service? It's apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit, but that's about where it ends.