Can you explain what you mean by this? Still not sure how SAR would fit in here...
SpaceX is the only launch provider and satellite operator that is progressing at a rapid pace and driving costs down.
Always a good answer. ;-)
At the same time: coverage comes cheap to Starlink. Which makes it perfect for serving areas no one wants to serve. Such as rural areas, anything outside the largest cities in underdeveloped countries, the open ocean, and so it goes.
We should have done that A LOT slower without breaking shit left and right.
Edit: Because of the one downvote: It affects astronomy and a PRIVATE company has impact on a war like in ukraine. And they are violating shit just because its Musk
The number of people that benefits from security provided by the military is not the same as the number of people that subscribe to starlink internet.
These are Starshields, not Starlinks. These are not operated by SpaceX. In the same way Boeing isn't spying on comms by building / launching an NRO satellite.
You need only to track it and shoot your laser up there (its only 500km) and if it can't dissipate the energy fast enough, it would overheat.
Consumer grade / privat buyable laser can easily be bought.
And would i destroy a soda can by overheating it slowly and steadily because the can has no easy way of dissipating heat and has electronics in it which are not heat resistent?
Edit: what kind of laser would you be using to pull this off though? the amount of time the satellite would be visible and in range of your beam would be limited. they roughly have the same orbital period as the ISS which I've personally seen many times which is my point of reference. it's only visible for a very short time, so you'd need a very hot beam to work in that time frame. would it be effective as an additive heating. as in, would it cool off before the next time it came within range?
And of course all communication managed by modern ICs is done with some kind of spread spectrum protocol with the property that "interference" is a routine/expected thing that doesn't degrade service. You can't break a modern satellite with an accidental transmission, you have to deliberately "jam" it.
Is the ITU rule in question being violated? Probably. Is that actually impactful to real systems? Almost certainly not. Old rules are old. Our goal should be to work together to update them for the benefit of all (to be sure, not to violate them with impunity!), and not to scream about them as part of a proxy war about the CEO's political and conspiracy proclivities.
(2) Defending these norms is important to prevent chaos on the radio bands. If we can do this, why not China? Russia? Europe? Erosion of norms has real consequences when you are dealing with a scarce resource like RF spectrum.
> Erosion of norms has real consequences when you are dealing with a scarce resource like RF spectrum.
So... no, that's wrong. Like 99% of all wireless data transferred anywhere is squeezed into a paltry 100 MHz in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, with no effective guardrails of any kind about who can use it, or with how many devices.
Technology fixed this problem, dedicated bands have little to no value anymore[1], haven't for like two decades now, and any discussion like this needs to treat with that as a prior.
Again, we all know this story isn't about rigorous adherence to international norms. It's about Musk doing shady spy stuff.
[1] Outside some otherwise important edge cases like radio astronomy which aren't "communication" as generally understood.
Citation needed. Cellular devices are an obvious application that needs dedicated spectrum allocation. Amateur bands (including volunteer civil defense helpers) and private terrestrial radio systems count on their spectrum being clean enough for use. Emergency responders have critical radio systems with dedicated frequencies. Ships and airplanes use dedicated spectrum allocations for navigation and reporting their positions, weather satellites have dedicated bands, safety equipment like avalanche beacons have dedicated frequencies, and so on.
None of this stuff would work if there were a free-for-all competition for whoever could shout the loudest on each band. To say that these bands are not important (or even critical to life safety) just because more data goes over unlicensed spectrum is frankly ignorant.
>The use of those frequencies to "downlink" data runs counter to standards set by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency
So, just another instance of the current admin violating an international treaty the US is part of.
Might that be the point? A space-based means of "hacking" satellites? Or is that kind of a dumb thing to do when you could do the same Earth-based?
gchokov•1h ago