Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by irthomasthomas on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @08:28AM (#30272360)

Given Musk's email about SpaceX being close to bankruptcy, how will this affect them financially? Can SpaceX survive without a bailout? What would a bailout look like, another Solarcity?

https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/

  "Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this... 

  ...we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.

  The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.

  In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise"

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by mlindner on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @03:29PM (#30278055)

> Given Musk's email about SpaceX being close to bankruptcy, how will this affect them financially? Can SpaceX survive without a bailout?

Musk clarified that stance on Twitter. They are not in fact close to bankruptcy. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465793233729069063

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by salawat on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @09:25AM (#30272949)

Then don't balls to the wall spool up terminal production, bump out your timescale, and shift your strategy to doing more launches, and hope there is enough interest to weather things.

Frankly, I have issues with someone who defied every forseeable risk inherent in operating an LEO satcom network. There is a reason most long term comm infra tends to go to GEO... Replacing stuff in LEO because the atmo ate it is expensive.

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by irthomasthomas on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @10:46AM (#30274004)

Their products don't seem too popular. E.g. Falcon heavy flew 2 missions in 2019, and 0 since then.

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by humanwhosits on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @12:21PM (#30275226)

6 FH are scheduled for this year

https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/launches/manifest

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by mlindner on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @03:34PM (#30278109)

Musk wanted to cancel Falcon Heavy, and according to rumors did internally, but then Shotwell (SpaceX COO) reminded him that they'd already sold Falcon Heavy missions to the Air Force so it forced their hand. In reality it should've been canceled as it's not very profitable. What happened is that the Falcon 9 performance kept getting better and better and ate up the market segment that would have been put on to Falcon Heavy.

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by zakwear on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @11:36AM (#30274675)

Musk is threatening to take StarLink public, which would be akin to a crypto currency ICO. Of course, the public wouldn't be aware that the shares will never pay dividends, and the preferred distributions go to Elon/SpaceX, and not the shareholders.

Blocking astronomers, and they barely started:

https://img.bfmtv.com/i/0/0/9a6/8df134f9fd0a493fed36fcd3e66e...

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by mlindner on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @03:32PM (#30278081)

Musk has not "threatened" to take Starlink public. IF Starlink were to go public it would not be some absurd crypto currency ICO.

And no they're not "blocking astronomers". https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/palomar-survey-instrument...

Please don't spread propaganda.

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