Author Topic: Eutelsat OneWeb: Constellation - General Thread (Read 682191 times)

gongora · « **Reply #980 on:** 08/21/2020 07:20 pm »

They don't seem to be moving production, and the factory said they were making about one satellite a week. They need to ramp up again.

alanr74 · « **Reply #981 on:** 08/21/2020 09:39 pm »

Quote from: gongora on 08/21/2020 07:20 pm

They don't seem to be moving production, and the factory said they were making about one satellite a week. They need to ramp up again.

THe current information is they're going to ramp back up to 7-8 a week.

Rondaz · « **Reply #982 on:** 08/23/2020 04:53 pm »

"@OneWeb has been accused of handing out 'Enron payments' to the satellite company’s directors before its collapse and rescue by the British taxpayer.Lawyers [...] say OneWeb paid out bonuses of 'millions of dollars' before declaring bankruptcy."

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1297511755279675393

gongora · « **Reply #983 on:** 08/23/2020 05:09 pm »

Quote from: Rondaz on 08/23/2020 04:53 pm

"@OneWeb has been accused of handing out 'Enron payments' to the satellite company’s directors before its collapse and rescue by the British taxpayer.Lawyers [...] say OneWeb paid out bonuses of 'millions of dollars' before declaring bankruptcy."

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1297511755279675393

OneWeb had employee retention plans with sizeable payments. That has been in the public record for months. You can find details in the bankruptcy court filings. The payments were approved by the court long before the British taxpayers came into the picture, so not sure what the heck that has to do with anything.

ChrisWilson68 · « **Reply #984 on:** 08/23/2020 05:18 pm »

Quote from: gongora on 08/23/2020 05:09 pm

Quote from: Rondaz on 08/23/2020 04:53 pm
"@OneWeb has been accused of handing out 'Enron payments' to the satellite company’s directors before its collapse and rescue by the British taxpayer.Lawyers [...] say OneWeb paid out bonuses of 'millions of dollars' before declaring bankruptcy."

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1297511755279675393

OneWeb had employee retention plans with sizeable payments. That has been in the public record for months. You can find details in the bankruptcy court filings. The payments were approved by the court long before the British taxpayers came into the picture, so not sure what the heck that has to do with anything.

The full article is behind a paywall so I haven't read it, but based on the summary in the tweet, it sure sounds to me like what the article is talking about and what you are talking about are two different things.

The retention payments happened post-bankruptcy-filing. The tweet seems to be talking about pre-filing payments. And the retention payments are to employees, not directors. The tweet says directors.

Either the text of the tweet is getting it wrong or what it's talking about is different from the retention payments.

gongora · « **Reply #985 on:** 08/23/2020 05:23 pm »

There were payments both right before and after the bankruptcy filing. The pre-filing payments were mentioned somewhere in the documents on the bankruptcy filing site (probably in opposition to the second round of payments).

gongora · « **Reply #986 on:** 08/26/2020 11:51 pm »

Personally I'm not a fan of putting thousands of satellites in MEO forever, but OneWeb's V-band constellation was approved by the FCC. 1280 satellites at 8500km, plus they can add V-band to the existing constellation. It will be interesting to see if a few (or any) of the projects from the V-band processing round ever get built.

https://www.satellitetoday.com/broadband/2020/08/26/fcc-grants-oneweb-market-access-for-2000-satellite-constellation/
FCC Filing
FCC Authorization

Rondaz · « **Reply #987 on:** 08/27/2020 12:50 pm »

Yesterday the @FCC has granted @OneWeb's license request from 2017 for a V-band constellation of 720 LEO sats @ 1200km
1280 MEO sats @ 8500km

The 720 LEOs will be hosted as separate payload on Gen2 Ku-band sats.

file: SAT-LOI-20170301-00031C/S: S2994

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1298925352014708736

Rondaz · « **Reply #988 on:** 09/01/2020 10:03 pm »

Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I Auction
Auction ID: 904
Incomplete Applications

0017434911 Hughes Network Systems, LLC [@OneWeb?]

0026043968 Space Exploration Technologies Corp [@SpaceX]

source: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-20-960A3.pdf

No application from @amazon Kuiper or @Telesat.

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1300875705933324289

gongora · « **Reply #989 on:** 09/03/2020 07:29 pm »

https://twitter.com/OneWeb/status/1301593839044616193

Quote

Don't miss - airing tonight at 9.30pm in the UK on @NatGeo's #MadeInADay check out @OneWebSatellit1 & OneWeb as we explore how to make a satellite in a day. Coming to the U.S. September 21st at 10:30am EDT.

NaN · « **Reply #990 on:** 09/03/2020 10:11 pm »

Quote from: Rondaz on 09/01/2020 10:03 pm

Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I Auction

0017434911 Hughes Network Systems, LLC [@OneWeb?]

The existing HughesNet service as described on their website does meet the requirements for RDOF (lowest tier), which is 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up, <750ms latency. Seems a stretch that this would be a filing for OneWeb.

Rondaz · « **Reply #991 on:** 09/04/2020 01:51 am »

Here is the current graph for height vs time of the OWs:

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1301610543460028416

jak Kennedy · « **Reply #992 on:** 09/04/2020 03:39 pm »

Potentially a wacky thought. But could OneWeb provide global positions without sophisticated hardware by first working out on board the position of each satellite using current GPS, Galileo, etc positions and timing and then sending out position information derived from that?
The in-space accuracy would not have to deal with atmospheric distortions, possibly just internal timing delays. It would be hard for a competing system to degrade position information so high in space in a conflict area. In case of a global attack. ie nuclear war, perhaps none of these systems will be operational for very long.
Does Starlink use GPS? And if so is that how they calculate where to aim on-board lasers for sat to sat communication?
Any thoughts on how accurate using a system like this could be?

ChrisWilson68 · « **Reply #993 on:** 09/04/2020 05:05 pm »

Quote from: jak Kennedy on 09/04/2020 03:39 pm

Potentially a wacky thought. But could OneWeb provide global positions without sophisticated hardware by first working out on board the position of each satellite using current GPS, Galileo, etc positions and timing and then sending out position information derived from that?
The in-space accuracy would not have to deal with atmospheric distortions, possibly just internal timing delays. It would be hard for a competing system to degrade position information so high in space in a conflict area. In case of a global attack. ie nuclear war, perhaps none of these systems will be operational for very long.
Does Starlink use GPS? And if so is that how they calculate where to aim on-board lasers for sat to sat communication?
Any thoughts on how accurate using a system like this could be?

You wouldn't be able to do that without hardware on the satellites specifically designed for very, very precise timing of the signal being sent.

With normal electronics, you can't tell very precisely when a signal is going to actually be transmitted. The uncertainty would translate into hundreds of kilometers of distance, making it useless for positioning.

Even if you had that sort of precision on the satellite side, you'd need to design custom electronics on the receiving side to make use of it. A standard GPS/Glonas/Galileo chipset wouldn't work because the frequencies and signal format would be all wrong, and those chips are highly specialized.

Lars-J · « **Reply #994 on:** 09/04/2020 05:14 pm »

Quote from: Rondaz on 08/27/2020 12:50 pm

Yesterday the @FCC has granted @OneWeb's license request from 2017 for a V-band constellation of 720 LEO sats @ 1200km
1280 MEO sats @ 8500km

1280 satellites at 8500km?

Seems like that will take 100s of launches, over several decades!? (when you don't have SpaceX launch cadence)

edzieba · « **Reply #995 on:** 09/04/2020 06:00 pm »

Quote from: jak Kennedy on 09/04/2020 03:39 pm

Potentially a wacky thought. But could OneWeb provide global positions without sophisticated hardware by first working out on board the position of each satellite using current GPS, Galileo, etc positions and timing and then sending out position information derived from that?
The in-space accuracy would not have to deal with atmospheric distortions, possibly just internal timing delays. It would be hard for a competing system to degrade position information so high in space in a conflict area. In case of a global attack. ie nuclear war, perhaps none of these systems will be operational for very long.
Does Starlink use GPS? And if so is that how they calculate where to aim on-board lasers for sat to sat communication?
Any thoughts on how accurate using a system like this could be?

Existing GNSS systems already all rely as a fundamental requirement of functioning on extremely precise position knowledge of all satellites in the constellation.

gmbnz · « **Reply #996 on:** 09/04/2020 11:10 pm »

Quote from: jak Kennedy on 09/04/2020 03:39 pm

Potentially a wacky thought. But could OneWeb provide global positions without sophisticated hardware by first working out on board the position of each satellite using current GPS, Galileo, etc positions and timing and then sending out position information derived from that?

Aside from the technical issues the political justification for buying OneWeb and retrofitting as a GNSS would be largely negated - if you rely on other constellations for yours to work it's not going to be much use if WWIII rolls around and the civilian bands are switched off etc

alanr74 · « **Reply #997 on:** 09/05/2020 04:39 pm »

Quote from: gmbnz on 09/04/2020 11:10 pm

Aside from the technical issues the political justification for buying OneWeb and retrofitting as a GNSS would be largely negated - if you rely on other constellations for yours to work it's not going to be much use if WWIII rolls around and the civilian bands are switched off etc

I would presume the cheaper atomic clock chips that are around would suffice for GNSS, as long as the number of satellites with them is enough (Obviously it would require them to be fitted).

I think the GNSS system being proposed will possibly be those chips and piggybacking on the other MEO GNSS systems. Even if the public chans go down in a time of war the UK will probably still have access to the military GPS or even possibly use the atomic clocks in the skynet satellites (that's if they have them but the newer ones to be built could certainly have them).

gongora · « **Reply #998 on:** 09/07/2020 02:42 am »

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-20-1015A1.pdf

SoftBank ends up with 12.3% of OneWeb between what they got for being a secured creditor and in lieu of the $91M in payments they were due from DIP financing they provided.

Swedish chef · « **Reply #999 on:** 09/07/2020 03:04 pm »

Quote from: gongora on 09/07/2020 02:42 am

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-20-1015A1.pdf

SoftBank ends up with 12.3% of OneWeb between what they got for being a secured creditor and in lieu of the $91M in payments they were due from DIP financing they provided.

I was wondering, earlier in the thread there was some mention of Iridium's former chapter 11 and all the mess with earlier contracts that where still in effect afterwards. (No I did not read the book someone recommended, I should probably do that)

So with that said and not knowing all the facts, I'm guessing SoftBank still have some contracts in Asia regarding selling the service there that is still in their favour?