4,400 satellites in SpaceX’s Starlink constellation

Space X's ambitious Starlink satellite launch was delayed for a 2nd time to 'triple-check everything' and update software

Sinéad Baker

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An illustration showing around 4,400 satellites in SpaceX’s Starlink constellation and SpaceX founder Elon Musk at a news conference in March.

Mark Handley/University College London/Reuters/Mike Blake/Business Insider

• SpaceX delayed its launch of 60 satellites as part of its Starlink internet project for a second time on Thursday.
• The launch was to be the first in Elon Musk's rocket company's efforts to create a network around the earth that provides high-speed internet.
• But SpaceX said that the launch was delayed "about a week" for a software update and to "triple-check everything."
• The launch was originally supposed to take place on Wednesday, but was postponed by 24 hours due to high winds in the upper atmosphere.

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SpaceX delayed the launch of 60 satellites as part of its ambitious Starlink internet project for the second time in a week, saying that the launch will now take place in "about a week" to allow time for a software update and to "triple-check everything."

SpaceX, the rocket company founded and led by Elon Musk, was planning to launch 60 internet-providing statellites into the earth's orbit — the first of 12,000 that it plans to launch in a bid to provide the planet with high-speed internet.

The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellites was due to blast off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday night, and SpaceX planned to broadcast live video of the moment.

SpaceX tweeted on Thursday that it was: "Standing down to update satellite software and triple-check everything again."

An illustration of Starlink, a fleet or constellation of internet-providing satellites that may one day surround the world.

Mark Handley/University College London

"Always want to do everything we can on the ground to maximize mission success, next launch opportunity in about a week."

Read more: SpaceX is launching 60 Starlink satellites as part of a global high-speed internet gambit

The launch was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but was delayed for 24 hours because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere. SpaceX tweeted hours before cancelling Thursday's launch that "Starlink and Falcon 9 are looking good, and winds are better for tonight's launch."

The Falcon 9 rocket was to carry a load 230 feet high and weighing almost 19 tons — the heaviest payload that the company has ever tried to launch. SpaceX successfully tested the rocket's engines on Monday.

SpaceX wants to complete the Starlink project in 2027, creating a network around the planet.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in February 2017.

REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

Elon Musk said that the launch is experimental in nature, and tweeted on Saturday that "much will likely go wrong on 1st mission."

Musk told reporters on Wednesday, Business Insider's Dave Mosher reported, that the deployment would be "very slow" and that the system allows the satellites to be ejected into space without the use of any springs.

He said that the system "will look kind of weird compared to other satellite deployments. There may even be some contact, but the satellites are designed to handle it."

These first 60 satellites are not the final design that SpaceX wants for the Starlink system, but they will allow SpaceX to test its technology in orbit.

Musk told reporters on Wednesday that around 1,000 satellites, which would take around 17 launches, are necessary to make Starlink profitable fpr SpaceX.

Memories of

Locked in a Meteorite, Memories of How Our Sun Behaved in Its Youth

Meteorites are spacefaring museums preserving physical and chemical information from a long-gone era.

Credit: gsfc/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Mywish Anand

The Sciences

4 hours ago

The formation and evolution of our Solar System is one of the cornerstone problems of modern astronomy.
One widely accepted yet incomplete model suggests that a portion of large and dense molecular cloud collapsed at a point, to form a protostar and a protoplanetary disk surrounding it. As this proto-Sun evolved to a more stable form, the gas and dust surrounding it cooled and coagulated to form small and large bodies that we see today as asteroids, comets, rocky planets and gas giants.
Scientists say that the Solar System matured to its present form about a million years from its birthdate. Today, it is around 4.5 billion years old, nearly midway in its lifecycle.
The first solids formed within the infant system’s hot bakery, and the calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) among them can help us figure out what exactly happened in those early years. CAIs can be found only inside the bodies of chondritic meteorites, and consist primarily of refractory oxides and silicates of calcium, aluminium, magnesium and titanium.
Because these meteorites first formed at the time the Solar System was going through its birth pangs, they contain the same abundance of elements and their isotopes as was prevalent at the time. So they are a sort of spacefaring museums preserving physical and chemical information from a long-gone era.
This detail is important because of beryllium.
Also read: Search for Source of Plutonium Isotope Sets Cap on Gravitational Wave Detection
Hydrogen, helium, and some lithium-7 – the lightest elements – formed shortly after the Big Bang. All the other elements and their isotopes could technically form within the wombs of stars – and they all did with the exceptions of lithium, beryllium and boron. The nuclei of these elements have very low binding energies to be able to form inside a star.
Nuclear physicists have found that the beryllium-9 and beryllium-10 isotopes in space must have been formed by spallation reactions – in which energetic hydrogen and helium atoms bombard heavier atomic nuclei and break them down into lighter atoms, including those of beryllium.
“Bombardment of carbon and oxygen atoms in the protoplanetary disk by [energetic solar particles] emitted in superflares lead to the formation of various beryllium isotopes,” Ritesh Kumar Mishra, a cosmochemist at the Heidelberg University, Germany, told The Wire.
Earlier, scientists believed that beryllium had been produced within the gas and dust floating in interstellar space before the Solar System existed. However, the abundance of beryllium-10 in the Allende meteorite – which crashed over Mexico in 1969 – suggested it had likely been produced much before the actual birth of the Solar System itself.
Recent advances in stellar nucleosynthesis have prompted scientists to consider two new production pathways for beryllium-10: the supernova explosions of low-mass stars and radiation from a young Sun.
Before coming to Earth, meteorites typically spend millions of years roaming outer space, where they are exposed to cosmic rays and other high-energy particles, thus contaminating their CAI content. So before analysing the meteorites, scientists make some corrections in their analysis to account for the actual abundance of the elements during the Solar System’s formation.
The planetary science community has suspected that the beryllium-7 isotope must have formed with beryllium-9 and beryllium-10 when the Solar System was itself being formed. However, they didn’t have evidence to validate their doubts. Beryllium-7 is a short-lived, and now extinct, nuclide, with a half-life of just 53 days, so by now it should have decayed into lithium-7, a more stable isotope.
However, older studies couldn’t properly account for the relative abundance of various isotopes and couldn’t trace any signatures of beryllium-7 in the form of an excess amount of lithium-7.
Recently, Mishra and Kuljeet Kumar Marhas, a planetary scientist at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, analysed samples from the 21-kg Efremovka meteorite that fell over present-day Kazakhstan in 1962. The Efremovka meteorite is one of the most pristine meteorites on Earth – i.e. one of the best museums of the elements of the early Solar System.
Also read: A Planetary Scientist and Her Box of Pre-Solar Grains
To their surprise, the duo found that the ratio of the abundance of lithium-7 to lithium-6 correlated with that of beryllium-9 to lithium-6, suggesting that the beryllium-7 had decayed to lithium-7 within the CAI. Also, the portions with a higher content of beryllium-9 within the sample showed a higher mean value of the lithium-7-to-lithium-6 ratio as well. This implied that the beryllium-7 and -10 isotopes could have been formed under the influence of radiation from an embryonic Sun.
As the authors write in their paper,

A late (~0.5 [million years ago]) superflare with X-ray luminosity … that irradiates precursor solids of CAI … can simultaneously explain the isotopic, petrographic and diffusivity constraints, and the model calculations. Such a superflare can provide the required flux of ~10¹⁰ protons cm^-2 s^-1 … to produce the observed isotopic abundance in the CAI.

“The nascent Sun was very dynamic and hyperactive,” Mishra said. “It used to emit superflares a million-times stronger than the strongest-ever-observed flare.”
Mishra and Marhas also found evidence to suggest that the CAIs, after formation, would have been pushed to distances 1-1.5-times the Sun-Earth distance, where they would have cooled and become trapped in other minerals that formed the present-day asteroids.
Unlike contemporary astrophysics, where one is obliged to observe and conclude, the current study highlights the experimental side of the astronomical sciences. Mishra and Marhas performed their analyses and experiments with a cutting-edge instrument called the secondary ion mass spectrometer (NanoSIMS), only one of which is available in India – at PRL, where Marhas works.
A highly sophisticated instrument, “NanoSIMS first generates the specimen from the meteorite sample by bombarding it with heavy ions,” Mishra said. “Then, it is employed to study and analyse the specimen without destroying the whole sample.”
This study provides a clearer picture of how the Sun behaved in its younger years. It also brings us a big step closer to understanding how the Solar System formed.
Mywish Anand is a winter intern at the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory. He has a masters degree in computational physics from the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda.

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Here's What Would Happen if a Solar Storm Wiped Out Technology as We Know It

PETER DOCKRILL

21 JUN 2018

It's a strange and lucky irony that the worst solar storm in recorded history happened at a time when human civilisation wasn't yet uniquely vulnerable to the Sun's inescapable geomagnetic fury.
The Carrington Event – aka the solar storm of 1859 – saw a huge solar coronal mass ejection unleashed at Earth's protective magnetosphere, producing an epic geomagnetic storm the scale of which modern civilisation had never before witnessed.
As a barrage of charged particles collided with Earth's magnetic field, intense auroras lit up skies around the world – but with strong electrical currents sweeping across the globe, the repercussions went far beyond colourful visuals.
Telegraph systems covering Europe and North America went down, as sparks flew from equipment, giving electric shocks to their human operators and even starting fires. Amid the electrified tumult, machines that had been disconnected from their power supplies eerily continued to relay their truncated messages.
It was, in other words, technological chaos. Yet from the comparatively futuristic perspective of 2018, as far as tech apocalypses go, it all sounds rather quaint and contained.
If a similar-scale solar storm were to strike Earth's pervasive technological systems right now – over a century and a half later – what would happen?
Nobody knows for sure how bad things would be, but given how scarily reliant we are on today's deep-rooted technological and electronic superstructures – compared to the primitive and relatively rare contraptions of 1859 – it would certainly be no picnic.

Perhaps our most relevant clue lies in some strange events that befell the world in the month of March, 1989.
Back then, a severe but not-Carrington-class solar storm struck Earth, courtesy of another coronal mass ejection from the Sun. Again, intense auroras resulted, leading some to think they could be seeing hazy after-effects of World War III.
Yet it wasn't a nuclear strike disrupting radio signals and satellite communication systems, but the flow of charged particles getting caught up in Earth's magnetic field lines.
The most extreme results were felt in Quebec, Canada, where the power grid went offline, meaning some 6 million people were immediately deprived of electricity. For many, the outage lasted only hours, but for others it took days for the power to come back on.
It's this kind of medieval scenario that has scientists at the White House worried a doomsday-scale geomagnetic storm on the level of the Carrington Event could effectively send the world back to the Dark Ages.
The thinking goes that "the big one", when it hits (about once every 500 years, if not sooner) would be powerful enough to knock out electrical and communications systems across Earth for days, months, or even years – nixing power grids, satellites, GPS, the internet, telephones, transportation systems, banking, you name it.

And forget taking out Quebec – we could be talking about all of Canada going offline, maybe the whole world – and with only hours of warning before technological darkness falls.
It sounds like something out of a disaster movie, but it's not the stuff of fiction. Conservative estimates suggest we could be looking at up to US$2 trillion of damage in the first year of such a calamity, with a recovery effort that could take a decade for the world to pull off.
On the more extreme side, others say US$20 trillion is a more reasonable figure – an inevitable damage bill that should perhaps make us reassess the risk factors of space-borne destruction.
"In terms of risk from the sky, most of the attention in the past was dedicated to asteroids," astrophysicist Abraham Loeb from Harvard University explained to Universe Today last year.
"But a century ago, there was not much technological infrastructure around, and technology is growing exponentially. Therefore, the damage is highly asymmetric between the past and future."
In a best-case scenario, a severe geomagnetic storm might only result in limited communications disruptions. But as history has shown, even such small-scale interference with the wrong kind of technological systems can have devastating consequences – like taking the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Just where a more powerful solar storm might take us next – or when – is the million-dollar question. Under majestic auroras, we might be forced to undergo a brutal, incalculable reset.
"An event of [Carrington] scale could be catastrophic if it happened tomorrow," director of research for MIT's Energy Initiative, Francis O'Sullivan, told CNET last week.
"It's not just the lights going off now. It's bank accounts disappearing… If you think what would happen if the stock exchange was taken offline for a week or month or if communications were down for a week or a month, you very quickly get to a point where this might be one of the most important threats the nation faces, bar none."

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Elon Musk copied 1890 pneumatic transport

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How One Inventor Secretly Built a Pneumatic Subway Under NYC

gizmodo.com

Yesterday afternoon, Elon Musk revealed his plans for a system that could revolutionize transit. This isn’t the first time a private entrepreneur has taken on transportation in America, though....

How One Inventor Secretly Built a Pneumatic Subway Under NYC

By

Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

8/13/13 2:22PM

Comments (50)

Yesterday afternoon, Elon Musk revealed his plans for a system that could revolutionize transit. This isn’t the first time a private entrepreneur has taken on transportation in America, though. In fact, another wealthy businessman and inventor named Alfred Ely Beach attempted to do the same thing in New York, in 1869. Except instead of Hyperloops, he had pneumatic tubes.

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Beach was the son of the wealthy owner of the New York Sun, and like his dad, he owned a publication: the then-young Scientific American. An inventor at heart, Beach patented all manner of ideas during his life, like a typewriter for the blind and an improvement to the cable car. But his most famous idea was the pneumatic subway. And while it’s novelty fodder for historians today, Beach’s idea had considerable traction in his own day—it even competed with the new-fangled elevator railway for funds.

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New York of the 1850s and 60s was a nightmare to navigate: a rat’s nests of horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians, and delivery carts. Beach was interested in financing an alternative. His first idea was simple: Why not just build a second street, below the ground level, where horse-drawn streetcars could run unfettered? An alternative to animal power came from London, where the first underground subway was running on steam engines. Steam was clearly a better than horses—but Beach, perhaps through his work at Scientific American, had an even more radical plan in mind.

Beach’s idea, which he patented in 1865, was relatively simple—especially compared to Musk’s 54-page thesis (though they share some core tenets, surprisingly). It centered on an underground system of circular, brick-lined tubes, at the ends of which would stand high-powered fans. Air pressure from each end would push a streetcar back and forth along the line—much like the pneumatic tubes that were being used to transport mail in 1860s London and New York. In fact, twenty years earlier, British inventor George Medhurst had actually built a prototype of a similar contraption—which he christened (with considerably more flare) the Atmospheric Railway.

Beach's prototype in 1867.

Being a man of means around the city, Beach was invited to test his idea at the American Institute Fair in 1867. In the fair’s grand hall he built a 100-foot-long plywood version of his pneumatic subway, where visitors could go for rides in the airy hold of its carriage. At either end, a giant fan blew enough air through the tube that it could propel the ten-person car from one end of the track to the other with ease. The New York Times breathlessly called it “the most novel and attractive feature of the exhibition.”

In no small part thanks to his role in the publishing world, the idea began to gain traction. Beach successfully lobbied the infamous Boss Tweed, who ran New York on bribery and blackmail, to pass a bill allowing him to construct a system of pneumatic tubes and he got to work.

Crucially, he only requested permission to build tubes for transporting mail, not people. But in secret, he and his crew were building his dream—New York’s first gas-free, soot-free, and steam-free subway. They worked day and night to excavate a 300-foot tunnel from Broadway and Warren to Murray street and finally, through which they ran a 30-person pneumatic car powered by pressurized air from two massive fans. When the car reached one stop, the fans would change direction.

Workers dig the tunnel in secret.

After two years of secret subway-tunneling, Beach took no chances unveiling his surprise to the public. According to one history, he built a 120-foot-long waiting hall decorated with fine lamps, frescoes, and a goldfish fountain, hoping that officials would be too charmed to object. The press, for their part, was enamored (“Fashionable Reception Held In The Bowels Of The Earth,” reported the Post). 

 

Image via MyNYC.

But, as they say, you can’t fight city hall—especially not Boss Tweed’s. When Beach went back to Albany to request funds to build a longer pneumatic line, Tweed introduced a similar bill—to build an elevated subway line. The governor’s plan won out. And within years, fewer people had reason to pay a quarter to ride Beach’s experiment. Soon, the space was converted for other uses and eventually, it was demolished to make way for the subway we know today.

In a way, Beach wanted the same thing as Musk: A clean, cheap, and technically brilliant solution to public transit. And interestingly, the key technical innovation of Musk’s plan—Kantrowitz limit, which dictates the behavior of a pressurized tunnel—is one of the barriers that stood in the way of pneumatic subway tubes in the first place. Of course, it’s going to be tougher for Musk to built the Hyperloop in secret, and it’s not even clear that he's interested in building it himself. But one lesson from Beach's saga still rings true: No matter how brilliant your idea, try not to piss off the people with the money.

 

 

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For an excellent history of pneumatic subways, check out Columbia professor Joseph Brennan's thorough post on the subject, from which some of these images are drawn unless otherwise noted. Meanwhile, Untapped Cities has more information on where to look for evidence of Beach's system.