Before I steer people in my neighborhood wrong, am I correct in thinking there should be an excellent sighting opportunity in the central United States about 90 minutes after launch (i.e., around 10:00pm local time?)
Check heavens-above.com for your location to confirm passes. They have a placeholder for L7 on their homepage. For southern MN the first visible evening pass is tomorrow night at 10:08 PM.
Quote from: cppetrie on 06/03/2020 09:36 pmCheck heavens-above.com for your location to confirm passes. They have a placeholder for L7 on their homepage. For southern MN the first visible evening pass is tomorrow night at 10:08 PM. Thanks! I didn't expect they'd have sighting opportunities prepared before launch.West Texas does have a sighting opportunity from 10:00 to 10:01 tonight.
Wonder what they've been wanting to hide for so long? Glad they did show it though.
WOW. They actually showed the deployment this time :-) So fascinating I wonder if the fact that OneWeb as the main competitor has gone bankrupt has anything to do with it. Probably not, they never had the architecture to even try and adapt to this. Blue Origin possibly could, if Kuiper eventually becomes reality, but then again by the looks of it Starlink will probably be on-line and serve customers before Blue Origin makes their first successful orbital launch.I think, when your technological lead has become far enough that even a fast follower would take years to get to where you are now, you can show your tricks safely, knowing that by the time someone could duplicate them, you wont need them anymore.Specifically in this case, by the time Kuiper sats could benefit from a bulk deployer on top of New Shepperd Glenn SpaceX would already shovel them out of Starships cargo hold in bulk quantities with an entirely different method.If this deployer has been compared to a dump truck dumping its load versus individual offloading of palettes, then what Starlink might be doing could be closer to pressure pumping concrete through a construction pipeline...
Quote from: CorvusCorax on 06/04/2020 01:50 amWOW. They actually showed the deployment this time :-) So fascinating I wonder if the fact that OneWeb as the main competitor has gone bankrupt has anything to do with it. Probably not, they never had the architecture to even try and adapt to this. Blue Origin possibly could, if Kuiper eventually becomes reality, but then again by the looks of it Starlink will probably be on-line and serve customers before Blue Origin makes their first successful orbital launch.I think, when your technological lead has become far enough that even a fast follower would take years to get to where you are now, you can show your tricks safely, knowing that by the time someone could duplicate them, you wont need them anymore.Specifically in this case, by the time Kuiper sats could benefit from a bulk deployer on top of New Shepperd Glenn SpaceX would already shovel them out of Starships cargo hold in bulk quantities with an entirely different method.If this deployer has been compared to a dump truck dumping its load versus individual offloading of palettes, then what Starlink might be doing could be closer to pressure pumping concrete through a construction pipeline...I must admit, I briefly considered the "hey Oneweb just went bankrupt" angle as well, but I'll stick with "unexpected interference due to shock/moving metal that they've only just worked around" for now.
Quote from: AndrewRG10 on 06/04/2020 01:42 amWonder what they've been wanting to hide for so long? Glad they did show it though.Maybe the fact that they produces space debris by jetisoning the clamp?
