NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.
A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.
What a great project. Really puts perspective on what can be accomplished with public funds and vision. Meanwhile shit like Starlink exists and lasts maybe a couple of years. I wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???
As much as I’d like to agree, those projects have very different goals and constraints.
As much as I hate Musk and most of his idiot projects, Starlink isn’t that bad of an idea. Traditional SATCOM internet is more expensive for shittier service. From what I’ve read, Starlink has been fairly reliable, not overly expensive, and performance is pretty solid. Sure, in areas that already have “excellent” terrestrial internet providers available, it is pretty useless. But for rural areas, it’s a godsend.
It’s 100% a good idea, it just shouldn’t be privately owned
But private companies can do things public companies can’t do!1
Because private companies don’t have the GOP actively sabotaging them whenever they are in power so that they can argue that private companies work better than public ones.2
Unless your private company supports groups that the GOP hates.
Please don’t help infect this place with partisan politics. This is my safe haven.
Very well. What government would you like to trust with this that can pull it off?
The US government? Heck I am confident that somewhere deep in federal bowls is my entire porn viewing history with my name on it. Also the US government only has SLS so to launch these they would have to build a new rocket or give the launch contracts to, well you guessed it SpaceX. Unless of course there is some more lobbying in which case ULA (Boeing) or Bezos. Tell me which poison you would prefer.
Russia? Seriously? Not even as a joke.
China? Maybe Russia wasn’t such a bad pick.
The minor space powers? South Korea, India, Israel, Japan? Even combined they couldn’t.
That just leaves the ESA (basically France and Luxembourg) which they are multiple years away from finishing their reusable rocket and only have one big launch site.
I am not against the idea of some government deciding that being an ISP to oceans and rural areas would be a good service and a nice revenue stream I just don’t see which government can do it and be trust too.
Because they’re low orbit communication satellites that require a lot of fuel to maintain said orbit, and are designed to deorbit pretty quickly so as to not pollute LEO with junk?
It isn’t apple to apples. I saw a doc once on it where they interviewed the engineers involved and one was honest how he didn’t really follow orders and padded it. If there were two options for a given component he picked the one that would last longer not the cheaper one. While other systems are designed to use as little material and cheap material as possible because they are intended to die after a few months and be mass produced.
Additionally it didn’t have vision. The original plan was to do the whole solar system. NASA was concerned about overpromising and budget issues so they told their staff to set the goal of up to Saturn only.
I personally think there is plenty of room for both commercial and public. Ideally I would like to see public take on this very scientific no practical application stuff and projects that are too risky while commercial brings down the cost.
That is just another way of saying imposes negative externalities.
I am wary of commercial anything, I don’t really trust any company. We are still having major pollution events, some being planned to this day. And even some of the smallest, most seemingly benevolent startups sometimes turnout out to be so evil they are literally scamming people out of life.
Maybe once we have real jail time for executives and the corporate death penalty by destruction of charter and a little bit of a time period without an event of awful corporate negligence, maybe then space commercialization might be a net benefit.
I think you know that you were oversimplifying here. It isn’t some weird-ass energy balance thing where all you can do is move the problem around. About half of my work is on government contracts and I can tell you first hand that it is very easy to make a bad project that costs more and gain nothing from it. I have personally been in multihour meetings with 6 or so engineers (with those billable hours) just to endlessly discuss the solution to the problem that had already been solved.
Just go ahead and pick some process you do in your daily life and try to do it inefficiently with no gain. You will find that it is trivially easy to do. There are more ways for something to be wrong vs being right. Which means that being right one way doesn’t mean that all ways of being right are equal.
I won’t tell you not to be. Go ahead and be wary of it makes you feel better. I am wary of spending another 50 years stuck in LEO.
There is and never was a space program without commercial partners. It is only the question of to what degree. As of right now the HLS operating costs are far below the space shuttle program, less polluting, and should be safer. Given that half of the program failed that is even more of an achievement with the remaining 50%.