Are we ready to see satellites built on an assembly line approach?

https://blog.satsearch.co/2021-04-22-agile-manufacturing-in-the-newspace-sector-with-nanoavionics

by cosmosguru • 5 years ago

45 44 5 years ago

blog.satsearch.co

trothamel2• 5 years ago

With 1,300 Starlink satellites in orbit, and many thousands scheduled to go up, I think we're already seeing the assembly line approach to building satellites.

cosmosguru5• 5 years ago

There are favorites coming up in Europe, China, India and Japan apart from the US.

It almost seems like taking a leaf out of the auto industry. The question is, how many of these can survive eventually!

TrainedMonkey• 5 years ago

Very few, capital cost to build and launch is quite significant, cost to operate is significantly less, but still substantial. You need a lot of subscribers to make this worthwhile and this is likely will be winner take most tech market. Left alone global LEO market would probably support 1-2 constellations. Given geopolitical nature it is likely that some constellations will be outlawed in certain areas. SpaceX will likely capture a 75%+ portion of the market everywhere it is not prohibited.

It is feasible to see project Kupier and One Web eventually getting competitive with Starlink 1.0, but they are not launching or innovating fast enough. By the time they are ready to start offering V1 constellation SpaceX will be launching V2 and testing V3. Long term the only real competitor is China because they have a large protected market and capable of subsidizing launch and scaling up incredibly rapidly.

walrus01• 5 years ago

This URL appears to be specific to 1U through 6U cubesats, which are considerably smaller and less capable than a single starlink satellite. Or Oneweb, the most recent other medium large volume satellite manufacturing project.

Of course neither company is publishing any photos/schematics or details whatsoever about their assembly line, because that's a competitive advantage.

cosmosguru5• 5 years ago

These smaller satellites can support cameras, low data rate communications like IOT via space, etc.

I guess if you consider space as the 'highway', the size of the satellites can be motorcycles, small cars to big trucks!

portillo• 5 years ago

There are multiple pictures of OneWeb´s assembly line in their website, https://onewebsatellites.com/factory/ , including pseudo-blueprints: https://bit.ly/32QSDBS

Still far from what you would expect from a truly automated production line, but it has dedicated stations that allows workers to assemble multiple satellites in parallel.

legulere• 5 years ago

Are we ready to just see satellites and no stars anymore?

cosmosguru5• 5 years ago

Something that many in the astronomy community are asking https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/elon-musks-spacex-reducing-s...

bpodgursky• 5 years ago

The opacity desires of astronomy are different than human eyes. Painting satellites black (ongoing w/ Starlink) is enough to make them dark to the human eye.

milesvp• 5 years ago

I see a double edged sword here. We already have enough light pollution that stars are hard to see in most cities. That amount of pollution grows yearly as cost per lumen drops. The problem ground based astronomers are having is the pollution these low earth sats are having. This is the down side. What makes me hopeful is how much better orbital optics can be. Couple this with signal processing and scores of telescopes in orbit, and you could create a virtual lens many times larger and clearer than anything planet side.

As the price for getting satellites into orbit drops I imagine astronomy having some pretty major breakthroughs.

That’s at least my hope. Most of what I’ve been watching is low orbit satellites but I don’t know how high an orbit you’d want for the kinds of things I’m imagining.

turbinerneiter• 5 years ago

I wonder if it will make sense to go back to multi sensor platforms. We could have a fleet of platforms in different altitudes, combining different sensors and comm tech. Might be better than to have a fleet for every specific wavelength (for observation) and radio band.

cosmosguru5• 5 years ago

The problem is how do you do that when 20 companies are flying the same type of satellites and are fighting for customers with almost similar capabilities. If it was a question of science or governmental cooperation, such agreements may be easier.

ratsmack• 5 years ago

With the number of satellites slated to go up, there will be enough shade to cool the earth and save us from climate change.

dmd• 5 years ago

I know you're not being serious, but I like estimating stuff like this.

The biggest solar panel array in space right now, AFAIK, is the ISS at 2500 m^2.

There are currently ~6000 satellites in (any) orbit. Starlink has 12000 more planned. Let's go nuts and say there's gonna be 50000 total satellites.

Let's say ALL of them are as big as the ISS's, ridiculous as that is. And let's say they cast a 1:1 shadow, even though that's also patently ridiculous. I'm just making all of these number as big as possible so nobody can possibly say "no, it's bigger".

2500 m^2 * 50000 = 125 square kilometers.

So with many times the number of satellites planned, with each one being anywhere between 50 and 100 times as big as it really is, with each one casting a shadow as big as it is... we shade - out of the entire planet - an area about 1.5 the size of Manhattan.

Kye3• 5 years ago

You don't need to cover the whole planet, just the parts under the sun. I'm not an orbital machinist, but maybe we could park just enough blockers in an orbit that's always between the sun and Earth to halt the warming. How much of the sun would need to be blocked to bend the curve down? Everything necessary on the ground to stop putting CO2 in the air is already underway. All we need is more time.

bernardlunn• 5 years ago

Anybody know how dead ones are recycled or is it junkyard in space?

distribot• 5 years ago

Like any other externality that isn't constrained by regulation, the problem is raging out of control.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-17/space-...

cosmosguru5• 5 years ago

There is a junkyard for GEO i.e 360000km orbit. But there are now concepts and companies coming up to solve the junk problems for the 500-2000km orbits - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56420047

GlenTheMachine2• 5 years ago

"Recycled"? None.

Deorbited: quite a few. Depends on orbital altitude. Low-earth orbit satellites generally deorbit by themselves eventually, but at the upper range of low-earth orbit that can take a few thousand years unless they are intentionally deorbited.

In geosynchronous orbit, nothing is ever deorbited, it's too costly in terms of fuel. They are instead raised in altitude a few hundred klicks to get them out of the way.

volkk• 5 years ago

random question for anybody that can answer:

for satellites that are scheduled to be "deprecated," can we use a different rocket to gently nudge them out of orbit and have them float off into space? even if you nudge them at something super low velocity like 100MPH into a direction, presumably it would continue floating endlessly at 100MPH until it would hit something?

i'm guessing the building a separate "rocket that nudges dead satellites out of earths orbit" is extremely expensive?

knowaveragejoe• 5 years ago

You would deorbit the sat and let it burn up into the atmosphere. In orbit, you can't really "drift off into" space like you're saying here.

dmurray• 5 years ago

It doesn't work like this. If you nudge something in a circular orbit by 100MPH, in general it moves into a very slightly higher, lower, or more elliptical orbit. For a typical satellite in LEO, the size of the "nudge" you need to get it to "drift away" is comparable to all the rocket fuel that went into getting it there in the first place.

GlenTheMachine2• 5 years ago

"I'm guessing the building a separate "rocket that nudges dead satellites out of earths orbit" is extremely expensive?"

Yes, at least as expensive as launching the original satellite, if not more (because it has to have the ability to intercept).

Also, just adding a little nudge doesn't really help. It changes the orbit slightly, but it isn't like an additional 44 meters per second (which is what 100 mph is) of velocity is going to make the derelict spacecraft achieve escape velocity. You'll just change the shape of the orbit some. You need to add an additional ~ 3300 m/sec (7400 mph!) in velocity to get to escape velocity.

Decreasing the velocity, such that the derelict eventually de-orbits and burns up in the atmosphere is typically much less expensive. A few hundred m/sec would probably do it, but it depends a lot on what orbit the derelict starts in.

cookingrobot• 5 years ago

If you give a satellite a shove, it will end up on a slightly higher or lower (or eccentric) orbit depending which way you shove. It won’t keep floating off endlessly into space unless you shove it with enough energy to get to escape velocity.

simonh• 5 years ago

I seriously recommend investing in a copy of Kerbal Space Program. There is no better way to gain an intuitive grasp of orbital mechanics.

kjrose• 5 years ago

I think it is an interesting idea, but I fear that unless we find a way to bring down the broken, disabled, etc. satellites we have, this will lead to accelerating the possibility of a Kessler Syndrome phenomena.

modeless2• 5 years ago

There is a simple and comprehensive solution to this problem which SpaceX has already implemented for Starlink. Simply put all of the satellites under 600 km altitude. Anything at that altitude will fall out of orbit in a few years due to atmospheric drag, unless it continuously boosts itself up. And before you ask: no, collision debris is not ejected into orbits that decay significantly slower than the original orbits, just due to how orbital mechanics work.

KiwiJohnno• 5 years ago

collision debris is not ejected into orbits that decay significantly slower than the original orbits, just due to how orbital mechanics work.

True, but debris can (and has been) thrown into orbits with an apoapsis (high point) much higher than the original collision. Yes, the periapsis is still at the original altitude of the collision but the debris may collide with other satellites or debris creating secondary debris clouds at a much higher altitude than the original collision, and so on.

Are we ready to see satellites built on an assembly line approach?

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