New answers tagged spacex
24
After the pointy-shaped object leaves, the remaining blunt-nosed rocket will experience dramatically enhanced structural loading and possibly aerodynamic instability. They expect a "rapid scheduled disassembly" in flight, but if that does not happen they will either let it blow up when it hits the ocean, or blow it up as @RussellBorogove suggests if it ...
1
The krypton engine used in starlink satellites could have been developed in Poland. at the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Mixing. It is important that the working factor is krypton, which is many times cheaper than xenon.
http://www.elektroonline.pl/news/4555,Polacy-zbudowali-elektryczny-silnik-plazmowy-napedzany-kryptonem
0
It certainly 'could', there is nothing making it physically impossible, though it would require a robust docking mechanism since the the tension forces hanging 120 tonnes at the target G force would be more substantial than just docking for fuel but not insurmountable, something less than 25mm cross section in steel and it would be connecting the engine ...
3
Is there anything meaningful to this difference [?]
It shows that it's a much smaller stage with a hat.
The height of the Chinese booster includes its top cone. A quick measurement on the pictures gives its height as 4.5m, leaving a useful height of 23 m.
The stage is smaller, so the contribution of the engines to its height is larger. The length of the ...
2
Space politics is complicated - at a bare minimum you need approval from the regulatory body that has jurisdiction over the region that you plan to transmit/receive over. Depending on the launch location, you may need additional approval. Typically these requests are handled in tandem by the FCC and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and/or the ...
9
I'm going to answer a slightly different question from the other answer: "why are Starlink satellites so visible, compared to other satellites?"
The answer is that they're very close to the earth; the lower edge of what might be considered a viable long-term orbit is 300 km, and some have recently been deployed at 280 km. They are boosting to a higher ...
33
Starlink (and other satellites) categorically do not have exterior lights or illumination, that would be a waste of power for no particular benefit.
The reason that we can sometimes see satellites or other spacecraft at night is because the spacecraft is still exposed to daylight. Here is an image describing this phenomena:
(image credit: Gary Meader; ...
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