Paz - Falcon 9 - Vandenberg SLC-4E - 22.02.2018 11:25 UTC

[Hrono]

Дем пишет:
Замена внутреннего покрытия всяко дешевле изготовления обтекателя с нуля...

 Не обязательно, это зависит от трудоёмкости данной операции, но могу предположить, что это действительно так, поскольку всё время речь шла о дороговизне углепластиковой основной конструкции обтекателя.

[tnt22]

Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 51 мин. назад

FEATURE ARTICLE:

SpaceX's Mr. Steven, the FSV fairing catcher -

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/02/spacexs-mr-steven-fsv-fairing-catcher/ ...

 - By Micheal Baylor (@nextspaceflight)

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[Apollo13]

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/803ty9/starlink_will_be_simpler_than_ipv6_and_have_tiny/duu8bdk/

My SpaceX friends confirmed that the message was successful. Rajeev (VP of satellite development) emailed Elon informing him of its successful transmission, and Elon forwarded the email to the entire company with a congratulatory message to all.

Вроде бибикают.

[tnt22]

Jonathan McDowell‏Подлинная учетная запись @planet4589 9 мин. назад

Spain's Paz radar satellite has made some small orbit adjustments over the past few days, reducing its sun-sync nodal drift rate from 5 min/year to 1 min/year

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nitant bhartia‏ @nitantbhartia 1 ч. назад

How's the global internet project coming along?

Elon Musk‏Подлинная учетная запись @elonmusk

В ответ @nitantbhartia @ninoles и еще 2

Pretty good. TinTin A & B are both closing the link to ground w phased array at high bandwidth, low latency (25 ms). Good enough to play fast response video games.

12:07 - 26 мая 2018 г.

[Apollo13]

G C‏ @SmileSimplify 11h11 hours ago

Will TinTin A & B be the only demo units Starlink deploys before start of full production & deployment? Or will there be a few more? Do you have an (aspirational) timeline for when Starlink would begin commercial service?

Elon Musk‏Verified account @elonmusk

Replying to @SmileSimplify @nitantbhartia and 3 others

Will do another rev before final design

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Peter B. de Selding‏ @pbdes 33 мин. назад

Spain's dual-use commercial/military Paz radarsat, res up to 25cm, launched Feb by @spacex, owned by #Hisdesat (43% @Hispasat 30% #ISDEFE (Spanish MoD) 15% @AirbusDefence 7% @IndraCompany 5% #sener, produces 1st image, of Seattle.

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Eric Ralph‏ @13ericralph31 5 ч. назад

The orbit histories of @SpaceX's Tintin A/B Starlink prototype satellites, launched in February! Some thoroughly intriguing differences in behavior over the six months they've spent on-orbit. Data and visualizations generated by the lovely http://CalSky.com .

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Susanne Auer‏ @AuerSusan 5 ч. назад

#SpaceX #Starlink troubles #1 @TMFAssociates points out that test-stats TinTin A&B (launched 7 months ago) have made no serious attempt to reach their operational altitude of 1,125km and remain at ~514km, suggesting an issue with the propulsion system. http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2018/09/28/fake-it-till-you-make-it/ ...

[tnt22]

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-prototypes-unique-solar-arrays/

SpaceX's Starlink satellites may use unique solar array deployment mechanism

By Eric Ralph
Posted on October 2, 2018

Spotted on an official SpaceX T-shirt commemorating Starlink's first two prototype satellites and corroborated through analysis of limited public photos of the spacecraft, SpaceX appears to be testing a relatively unique style of solar arrays on the first two satellites launched into orbit, known as Tintin A (Alice) and B (Bob).

It's difficult to judge anything concrete fr om the nature of what may be immature prototypes, but SpaceX's decision to take a major step away from its own style of solar expertise – Cargo Dragon's traditional rigid panel arrays – is almost certainly motivated by a need to push beyond the current state of the art of satellite design and production.

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The axis Tintin solar arrays would deploy along. (SpaceX)


Just like a scissor mechanism, Tintin's solar arrays have an extremely thin sandwich of what looks like four interlocking leaves. (SpaceX)


If the thin structure is a scissor deployment mechanism, the wider black section would be a housing for wiring and the solar array panels, likely thin and flexible rectangles that fold out to reach their full 6m length. (SpaceX)

Unlike any discernible solar panel deployment mechanism with a flight history, SpaceX's Starlink engineers seem to have taken a style of deployment used successfully on the International Space Station and mixed it with a modern style of solar arrays, relying on several flexible panels that can be efficiently packed together and designed to be extremely lightweight. While a major departure from SpaceX's successful Cargo Dragon solar arrays, the mechanisms visible on the Tintins seem to have the potential to improve upon the packing efficiency, ease of manufacturing, and number of failure modes present on Dragon's panels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XRXbi3sQKWc
In essence, those three motivations are indicative of the challenges SpaceX's Starlink program must solve in a more general sense. In order to even approach SpaceX's operational aspirations for Starlink (i.e. high-speed internet delivered from space almost anywhere on Earth), the company will need to find ways to mass-produce hundreds or thousands of high-performance satellites annually at a price-per-unit unprecedented in the history of commercial satellites, all while keeping the weight and volume of each satellite as low as possible (no more than a few hundred kilograms).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=m5Pqa5USKzU
To give an idea of wh ere the industry currently stands, satellite internet provider Viasat launched its own Viasat-2 spacecraft in 2017. Weighing in around 6500 kg (14300 lb), the immense satellite cost at least $600 million and offers an instantaneous bandwidth of 300 gigabits per second, impressive but also gobsmackingly expensive at $2 million/Gbps. To ever hope to make Starlink a reality, SpaceX will need to beat that value by at least a factor of 5-10, producing Starlink satellites for no more than $1-3 million apiece ($4.5B-$13.5B alone to manufacture the initial 4,425 satellite constellation) with a bandwidth of 20 Gbps – baselined in official statements.

Compared to the state of the art, a $1 million satellite with optical (laser) interlinks, multiple phased array antennae, electric ion propulsion, two 1-2 kW solar arrays, and bandwidth on the order of 20 Gbps is – to put it nicely – wildly ambitious. Fundamentally, SpaceX will need to revolutionize design and mass-production of all of the above subcomponents, and perhaps the unfamiliar solar arrays present on the Tintin twins are a first step towards tackling at least one of those revolutions-in-waiting.

G C‏ @SmileSimplify 26 мая

Will TinTin A & B be the only demo units Starlink deploys before start of full production & deployment? Or will there be a few more? Do you have an (aspirational) timeline for when Starlink would begin commercial service?


Elon Musk ‏Подлинная учетная запись @elonmusk

Will do another rev before final design

17:19 - 26 мая 2018 г.

According to CEO Elon Musk, another set of prototype satellites will likely be launched and tested in orbit before settling on a finalized Starlink design.

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[tnt22]

 Jonathan McDowell‏ @planet4589 2 ч. назад

The two `Tintin'  Starlink  test satellites launched in Feb 2018 appear to be in the process of being retired. Their orbital decay suddenly accelerated on Mar 28.

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 Joseph Remis @jremis 10 ч. назад

Obj. 43217 TINTIN B decay prediction: August 08, 2020 UTC 19h47mn ± 35h. Prediction assuming no further maneuvering within epoch and decay

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К #272

 Jonathan McDowell @planet4589 7 ч. назад

One of SpaceX's two Starlink prototype satellites, Tintin B, reentered between about 0320 and 0440 UTC Aug 8.  Tintin A will be coming down soon too, together with a number of the V0.9 satellites.

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 T.S. Kelso @TSKelso 1 ч. назад

Kudos to @SpaceX for responsibly deorbiting 16 #Starlink & 2 TinTin satellites in just the past month, once they had completed their primary mission: https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-fourth-batch-of-starlink-satellites-tweaks-satellite-design/.... We hope to see more satellite operators follow suit.