Author Topic: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight  (Read 81285 times)

Offline francesco nicoli

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In this thread, I would like to discuss the possible implications on the spaceflight sector, and on starship in particular, of a serious escalation in Ukraine.

It's a hot and saddening topic, and a hard one to discuss. I would therefore ask EVERYONE to avoid making any judgement or taking any position. Please simply discuss potential implications for spaceflight and SpaceX.

My working hypothesis is that it will accelerate starship development. Why? Multiple factors.

- deterioration of US-RU relationship may force the hand to find fast a ISS replacement.
- competition, also for space 'leadership' will ramp up. SpaceX can bankrupt roscosmos if it comes to a space race.
- military interest in fast and mass satellite deployment will skyrocket.
- point to point delivery! May also be attractive to the military.

What are your thoughts?
« Last Edit: 02/28/2022 07:24 am by zubenelgenubi »

Offline francesco nicoli

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #1 on: 02/20/2022 10:23 pm »
(@admin, this is certainly the wrong section of the website, I am not sure why it got posted here, please relocate where the most appropriate whenever you have time! Many thanks)

Offline Jim

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #2 on: 02/21/2022 01:18 am »
My working hypothesis is that it will accelerate starship development. Why? Multiple factors.

No, there is no need.  And the US gov't is not jumping on the Starship bandwagon.


- deterioration of US-RU relationship may force the hand to find fast a ISS replacement.
-

Not going to happen.  NASA is not going to build a replacement.


 bankrupt roscosmos

Already happened.

« Last Edit: 02/21/2022 01:21 am by Jim »

Offline woods170

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #3 on: 02/21/2022 07:30 am »
In this thread, I would like to discuss the possible implications on the spaceflight sector, and on starship in particular, of a serious escalation in Ukraine.

It's a hot and saddening topic, and a hard one to discuss. I would therefore ask EVERYONE to avoid making any judgement or taking any position. Please simply discuss potential implications for spaceflight and SpaceX.

My working hypothesis is that it will accelerate starship development. Why? Multiple factors.

- deterioration of US-RU relationship may force the hand to find fast a ISS replacement.
- competition, also for space 'leadership' will ramp up. SpaceX can bankrupt roscosmos if it comes to a space race.
- military interest in fast and mass satellite deployment will skyrocket.
- point to point delivery! May also be attractive to the military.

What are your thoughts?

No offense Francesco, but all four points of your post are wishful thinking IMO.

1. NASA is not going to finance an ISS replacement. They will be, at best, a tennant (amongst many) of commercial space stations. Also, ISS is not a strategic asset. Premature abandonment of the ISS serves no military goal and only hurts NASA & ESA. Crewed spaceflight is not a "must-have" but a "nice-to-have".

2. There will be no ramp up of competition for space 'leadership'. Roscosmos is already decades behind NASA, courtesy of having stood still in development ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. The only country in a position to challenge US leadership in space is China, not Russia. Getting involved in a Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not in the interest of China. These kind of wars have a tendency to upset the global financial- and trading markets which would be bad news for everyone's economy, including (and particularly) the economy of China.

3. You cannot have fast & mass satellite deployment if you don't have fast and mass satellite manufacturing. Currently the only entity that does "fast and mass satellite manufacturing" is SpaceX (Starlink). And Starlink satellites are completely useless to the military, except for local internet access (which they have already through their own dedicated military coms satellites). Other platforms for military purposes do not lend themselves for "fast and mass manufacturing". And although Russia has Nudol they are in no position to do mass damage to US orbital military assets. Also, such attacks on US assets would invoke a much bigger counter-reaction from the USA. One which Putin would not survive. And he knows it.

4. The US military are interested in point-to-point delivery, but it will not be ready anytime soon. Is also not needed in an area that is replete with military airstrips in the immediate surroundings of the conflict area, and well-stocked US military bases just a few hours flying time away.

All things considered the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the Ukraine will IMO not result in expedited development of Starship.
« Last Edit: 02/21/2022 07:38 am by woods170 »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #4 on: 02/22/2022 02:17 pm »
Starlink satellites are not useless to the military. They have secondary payload capacity, including potentially some optical and navigational capabilities. (Starlink, like Iridium, has simple localization capacity even without secondary payload, with researchers able to locate within 8 meters: https://news.osu.edu/spacex-satellite-signals-used-like-gps-to-pinpoint-location-on-earth)

Starlink, in a pinch, could be used for all three of the major military uses of satellite: communication, navigation, and surveillance.

But of course, everything in the US military is optimized for existing satellite capability, not Starlink (except a few demonstrations) so in the very near term, this is mostly academic.
« Last Edit: 02/22/2022 02:26 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline JayWee

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #5 on: 02/22/2022 03:33 pm »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
« Last Edit: 02/22/2022 03:33 pm by JayWee »

Offline DistantTemple

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #6 on: 02/22/2022 10:42 pm »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
SX also needs to have base station coverage in the arena.
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #7 on: 02/23/2022 12:42 am »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
SX also needs to have base station coverage in the arena.
Not with lasers. They’ve already been deploying them.
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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #8 on: 02/23/2022 08:35 am »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
SX also needs to have base station coverage in the arena.
Not with lasers. They’ve already been deploying them.
Thus far, that only applies to areas within LOS of the new laser-equipped satellites, which is only a few bands. The currently built out constellation is subject to the groundstation coverage issue and will remain so until the entire new constellation is launched. The current laser-link equipped satellites have also only been launched to service polar obits, so that likely means waiting for the larger 'Starlink 2' birds to build out the next constellation layer for regular global coverage.
Incidentally, the mass-growth 'Starlink 2' does somewhat resemble the much enlarged Starlink-derived satellites for the DoD 'Transport Layer' contract.

Offline woods170

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #9 on: 02/23/2022 12:03 pm »
Incidentally, the mass-growth 'Starlink 2' does somewhat resemble the much enlarged Starlink-derived satellites for the DoD 'Transport Layer' contract.

Not surprising. The current v1.5 Starlink bus doesn't have any room to host sensors for the DoD.
« Last Edit: 02/23/2022 12:03 pm by woods170 »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #10 on: 02/23/2022 01:00 pm »
Incidentally, the mass-growth 'Starlink 2' does somewhat resemble the much enlarged Starlink-derived satellites for the DoD 'Transport Layer' contract.

Not surprising. The current v1.5 Starlink bus doesn't have any room to host sensors for the DoD.
Yeah, the hosted payloads are supposed to be for Starlink Gen2.
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #11 on: 02/23/2022 01:02 pm »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
SX also needs to have base station coverage in the arena.
Not with lasers. They’ve already been deploying them.
Thus far, that only applies to areas within LOS of the new laser-equipped satellites, which is only a few bands. The currently built out constellation is subject to the groundstation coverage issue and will remain so until the entire new constellation is launched. The current laser-link equipped satellites have also only been launched to service polar obits, so that likely means waiting for the larger 'Starlink 2' birds to build out the next constellation layer for regular global coverage.
Incidentally, the mass-growth 'Starlink 2' does somewhat resemble the much enlarged Starlink-derived satellites for the DoD 'Transport Layer' contract.
Not true. You don’t need the ENTIRE constellation launched to take advantage of it.

Additionally, there’s the possibility of hopping using regular Starlink terminals (gateways work at a greater angle, tho).
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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #12 on: 02/23/2022 01:39 pm »
How do compare military satcom and starlink terminals in size/weight/easyness of install? Say, I could imagine usefulness of starlink for internet access in danger areas.
SX also needs to have base station coverage in the arena.
Not with lasers. They’ve already been deploying them.
Thus far, that only applies to areas within LOS of the new laser-equipped satellites, which is only a few bands. The currently built out constellation is subject to the groundstation coverage issue and will remain so until the entire new constellation is launched. The current laser-link equipped satellites have also only been launched to service polar obits, so that likely means waiting for the larger 'Starlink 2' birds to build out the next constellation layer for regular global coverage.
Incidentally, the mass-growth 'Starlink 2' does somewhat resemble the much enlarged Starlink-derived satellites for the DoD 'Transport Layer' contract.
Not true. You don’t need the ENTIRE constellation launched to take advantage of it.
You do if you need regular coverage. Each interlink-equipped polar ring gets you a limited period of coverage every 12 hours if you do not have a groundstation.
Quote
Additionally, there’s the possibility of hopping using regular Starlink terminals (gateways work at a greater angle, tho).
User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. That's more of a challenge than is immediately obvious, and even if a modified firmware could implement it performance of the network as a whole would be hobbled by the throughput limitation (which will be much lower than raw uplink or downlink bandwidth due to packet processing) and latency increase. It's why your average home router will happily push hundreds of megabits to a single device, but if you tell it to serve 100 devices and perform DPI (e.g. through flashing DD-WRT or a similar more flexible firmware) it will drop to extremely low performance levels if it works at all. Or that your home PC could act as a core BGP router but it would be an enormously bad idea.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #13 on: 02/23/2022 01:54 pm »
Oh, they wouldn’t be as high performance?? Now compare that to nothing after asats take out everything else. But the military has options such as putting a Ka band Gateway on an airplane: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10470/air-force-one-jet-reemerges-with-upgraded-communications-for-world-trip

And no, you do not need the whole constellation. Absurd assertion. You need more than one ring, sure, but you definitely don’t need all 30,000 Starlinks or whatever.
« Last Edit: 02/23/2022 02:15 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #14 on: 02/23/2022 02:17 pm »
…User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. …
Source?
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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #15 on: 02/24/2022 09:04 am »
Oh, they wouldn’t be as high performance?? Now compare that to nothing after asats take out everything else. But the military has options such as putting a Ka band Gateway on an airplane: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10470/air-force-one-jet-reemerges-with-upgraded-communications-for-world-trip

And no, you do not need the whole constellation. Absurd assertion. You need more than one ring, sure, but you definitely don’t need all 30,000 Starlinks or whatever.
You need full coverage for full coverage. That's hardly a contentious assertion. The current ~1800 operational satellites is now just sufficient (requires continuous overflights, as any missed slots means connection dropout) for full coverage in some locations, but has not yet achieved global coverage (all locations continuous overflights). That puts a reasonable floor on a similar number of laser-equipped Starlinks needed for full coverage without a local ground station - as both the satellite overhead that you are talking to and all satellites in the chain back to the nearest ground station or Starlink endpoint endpoint must all have laser links too.
…User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. …
Source?
The user router is based on a Qualcomm IPQ4018, which relies on ASIC local routing for packet handling. It's not capable of any reasonable SDN (it's ARM cores for the host OS could maybe handle a few packets per second if you demanded they do the routing and switching instead) and does not have the hardware for global routing.
Remember that the routing performance of consumer combo-box devices are masked by hardware switching: add a fast host link and you can often see consumer devices start to cap at well below line-speed (and hit latency issues before then due to bufferbloat) due to routing speed limitations, even without adding acting as a BGP router into the mix. It's why you can have a little desktop box for a home router, but an enterprise router is a 7U rackmount monster with a single network input and a single network output, sucking down hundreds of watts just on the task of routing with no switching involved.

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #16 on: 02/24/2022 01:05 pm »
Oh, they wouldn’t be as high performance?? Now compare that to nothing after asats take out everything else. But the military has options such as putting a Ka band Gateway on an airplane: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10470/air-force-one-jet-reemerges-with-upgraded-communications-for-world-trip

And no, you do not need the whole constellation. Absurd assertion. You need more than one ring, sure, but you definitely don’t need all 30,000 Starlinks or whatever.
You need full coverage for full coverage. That's hardly a contentious assertion. The current ~1800 operational satellites is now just sufficient (requires continuous overflights, as any missed slots means connection dropout) for full coverage in some locations, but has not yet achieved global coverage (all locations continuous overflights). That puts a reasonable floor on a similar number of laser-equipped Starlinks needed for full coverage without a local ground station - as both the satellite overhead that you are talking to and all satellites in the chain back to the nearest ground station or Starlink endpoint endpoint must all have laser links too.
…User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. …
Source?
The user router is based on a Qualcomm IPQ4018, which relies on ASIC local routing for packet handling. It's not capable of any reasonable SDN (it's ARM cores for the host OS could maybe handle a few packets per second if you demanded they do the routing and switching instead) and does not have the hardware for global routing.
Remember that the routing performance of consumer combo-box devices are masked by hardware switching: add a fast host link and you can often see consumer devices start to cap at well below line-speed (and hit latency issues before then due to bufferbloat) due to routing speed limitations, even without adding acting as a BGP router into the mix. It's why you can have a little desktop box for a home router, but an enterprise router is a 7U rackmount monster with a single network input and a single network output, sucking down hundreds of watts just on the task of routing with no switching involved.
I’m sorry, that’s nonsense.

Expanding my terse response.

Routers (if indeed that is what you mean - in the sense that the process accepts input from one or more sources and selects next-destination addresses for packets available from one or more direct connections available to the routing process) work load depends to a large extent on how dynamic the routing table information is, the rate at which updates of routing information arrive, and the amount of local processing necessary to compute new routing tables based on the new information in contrast to prior information.

Packet routing decisions are based on the routing table information.

So - when you say "an enterprise router is a 7U rackmount monster with a single network input and a single network output, sucking down hundreds of watts just on the task of routing with no switching involved" you're going to have to be more specific.  You dismiss BGP routers, which are largely statically configured, aren't they?  Are you thinking local routers even run much of a routing protocol?  I doubt seriously anyone is running anything other than RIP with their edge devices.

In my experience, router performance is more limited by memory and bus bandwidth necessary to keep up with aggregate inputs and outputs - DMA sort of activities, and minimizing those.

So - it matters whether you're talking SS7 switches, ATM switches, Fiber SONET, 1G/10G/100G/1000G (all of which suffer relatively low bandwidth utilization of their respective media, due to the nature of Ethernet bus contention protocols).

I'm sorry if I over-reacted ... the notion that "real Enterprise routers" are 7U rack mount monsters, and how that relates to whatever we're talking about here set me off.

</rant>
« Last Edit: 02/24/2022 01:31 pm by Eer »
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Offline spacenut

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #17 on: 02/24/2022 01:11 pm »
Well it is hot now.  ISS will not be the only thing affected. 

Offline DanClemmensen

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #18 on: 02/24/2022 01:26 pm »
Oh, they wouldn’t be as high performance?? Now compare that to nothing after asats take out everything else. But the military has options such as putting a Ka band Gateway on an airplane: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10470/air-force-one-jet-reemerges-with-upgraded-communications-for-world-trip

And no, you do not need the whole constellation. Absurd assertion. You need more than one ring, sure, but you definitely don’t need all 30,000 Starlinks or whatever.
You need full coverage for full coverage. That's hardly a contentious assertion. The current ~1800 operational satellites is now just sufficient (requires continuous overflights, as any missed slots means connection dropout) for full coverage in some locations, but has not yet achieved global coverage (all locations continuous overflights). That puts a reasonable floor on a similar number of laser-equipped Starlinks needed for full coverage without a local ground station - as both the satellite overhead that you are talking to and all satellites in the chain back to the nearest ground station or Starlink endpoint endpoint must all have laser links too.
…User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. …
Source?
The user router is based on a Qualcomm IPQ4018, which relies on ASIC local routing for packet handling. It's not capable of any reasonable SDN (it's ARM cores for the host OS could maybe handle a few packets per second if you demanded they do the routing and switching instead) and does not have the hardware for global routing.
Remember that the routing performance of consumer combo-box devices are masked by hardware switching: add a fast host link and you can often see consumer devices start to cap at well below line-speed (and hit latency issues before then due to bufferbloat) due to routing speed limitations, even without adding acting as a BGP router into the mix. It's why you can have a little desktop box for a home router, but an enterprise router is a 7U rackmount monster with a single network input and a single network output, sucking down hundreds of watts just on the task of routing with no switching involved.

The original ARPANET ran on Honeywell 716 minicomputers. They had 56 Kbps trunks and 32 kilobytes of memory. They were about 1000 times less capable than an ARM.  I assure you: an ARM can handle a whole lot more than "a few packets per second". There is no need for BGP in an area mesh. However, the terminals will need the same specialized type of forwarding table updates that must be used by the satellites and the teleports in order to efficiently transition between satellites as the satellites move. the requirements for this type of forwarding table update are quite different than those needed for other types of dynamic mesh networks. Not really harder, just very different.

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Re: Implications of Russo-Ukrainian War for spaceflight
« Reply #19 on: 02/24/2022 01:37 pm »
Oh, they wouldn’t be as high performance?? Now compare that to nothing after asats take out everything else. But the military has options such as putting a Ka band Gateway on an airplane: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10470/air-force-one-jet-reemerges-with-upgraded-communications-for-world-trip

And no, you do not need the whole constellation. Absurd assertion. You need more than one ring, sure, but you definitely don’t need all 30,000 Starlinks or whatever.
You need full coverage for full coverage. That's hardly a contentious assertion. The current ~1800 operational satellites is now just sufficient (requires continuous overflights, as any missed slots means connection dropout) for full coverage in some locations, but has not yet achieved global coverage (all locations continuous overflights). That puts a reasonable floor on a similar number of laser-equipped Starlinks needed for full coverage without a local ground station - as both the satellite overhead that you are talking to and all satellites in the chain back to the nearest ground station or Starlink endpoint endpoint must all have laser links too.
…User terminals are not set up for global packet routing. …
Source?
The user router is based on a Qualcomm IPQ4018, which relies on ASIC local routing for packet handling. It's not capable of any reasonable SDN (it's ARM cores for the host OS could maybe handle a few packets per second if you demanded they do the routing and switching instead) and does not have the hardware for global routing.
Remember that the routing performance of consumer combo-box devices are masked by hardware switching: add a fast host link and you can often see consumer devices start to cap at well below line-speed (and hit latency issues before then due to bufferbloat) due to routing speed limitations, even without adding acting as a BGP router into the mix. It's why you can have a little desktop box for a home router, but an enterprise router is a 7U rackmount monster with a single network input and a single network output, sucking down hundreds of watts just on the task of routing with no switching involved.

The original ARPANET ran on Honeywell 716 minicomputers. They had 56 Kbps trunks and 32 kilobytes of memory. They were about 1000 times less capable than an ARM.  I assure you: an ARM can handle a whole lot more than "a few packets per second". There is no need for BGP in an area mesh. However, the terminals will need the same specialized type of forwarding table updates that must be used by the satellites and the teleports in order to efficiently transition between satellites as the satellites move. the requirements for this type of forwarding table update are quite different than those needed for other types of dynamic mesh networks. Not really harder, just very different.
ARPANET had a near-static routing table that could fit the entire network's table into every node. Starlink has well over 100,000 user terminals, 2000 satellites, and a constantly changing routing table just for internal traffic. Very different scale of problem.

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