Satellites : general discussion and musings

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
simonshack
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by simonshack »

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I know, this article is over four years old - yet you've gotta wonder what this is all about... :mellow:

"DARPA to re-invent GPS navigation without the use of satellites"

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/202 ... satellites

Image
Kham
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by Kham »

Thanks Simon,

Fun read. Consider this quote from the article discussing how DARPA is investing in radically new technologies that have the potential to deliver GPS-quality position:

“Ground-based systems may seem like a good alternative, but there are pitfalls. One design would involve hundreds of thousands of transmitters, which would be ridiculously difficult to build and maintain.”

Hahaha, yes, cell phone towers, aka thousands of transmitters, are quite tricky to build and maintain? I think not. The 4.7 billion uninterrupted cell phone users world wide might say the system is already in place. Hey secret military, how about this, use cell phone towers for gps.

or

Just admit you have been using cell phone towers for gps location the entire time.

(Just like satellite radio in cars are using cell phone towers, heard it from Sirius xm technician as he was installing a Sirius xm transmitter on a local cell tower.)
anonjedi2
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Kham » June 26th, 2019, 9:14 pm wrote:Thanks Simon,

Fun read. Consider this quote from the article discussing how DARPA is investing in radically new technologies that have the potential to deliver GPS-quality position:

“Ground-based systems may seem like a good alternative, but there are pitfalls. One design would involve hundreds of thousands of transmitters, which would be ridiculously difficult to build and maintain.”

Hahaha, yes, cell phone towers, aka thousands of transmitters, are quite tricky to build and maintain? I think not. The 4.7 billion uninterrupted cell phone users world wide might say the system is already in place. Hey secret military, how about this, use cell phone towers for gps.

or

Just admit you have been using cell phone towers for gps location the entire time.

(Just like satellite radio in cars are using cell phone towers, heard it from Sirius xm technician as he was installing a Sirius xm transmitter on a local cell tower.)
Ahh, yes. Ground based systems would be ridiculously difficult to build and maintain, but building and maintaining 75,000+ satellites in "Earth's orbit" is no problem. :D
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by simonshack »

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Indeed, dear Kham and anonjedi, indeed...


You may enjoy reading this ridiculous article :

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/20/7558681/space-junk

"There are 300,000 pieces of garbage orbiting earth, and it's a big problem"

Image
Caption: "An illustration of space junk — not to scale. (ESA)" :rolleyes:


Image
Caption: "A NASA graphic shows the 19,000 pieces of trackable debris in Earth's orbit. (NASA)" :rolleyes:
nokidding
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by nokidding »

Pure speculation, but when one considers all the (impossible) difficulties of navigating to and entering an orbit around a planet or the Moon, you begin to realise that some of the same difficulties are presented when entering Earth orbit (from Earth).

When a satellite is launched it follows the Great Circle by default as it falls towards the centre of gravity, and shares Earths velocity through stellar space, unlike with Moon/planets. However to be in orbit it requires that speed, direction and altitude are all spot on. Orbit may be theoretically possible but it may be much harder to achieve than is made out.

Once the rocket engine thrust stops, motion becomes ballistic. Timing of this moment is critical as the rocket is accelerating. The vector dynamics include direction which needs to be tangential. If below the tangent it will eventually crash. If too slow for the altitude it will eventually crash. (Ignore the issues of separating and braking the rocket.) This may be a long slow spiral but over time it is still a failure for a satellite.

If too fast then we are told the orbit becomes elliptical. Gravity slows it down until it is pulled back, and it enters into an orbit. Or does it perhaps fall back to Earth in a parabolic arc? In the early Explorer program there are several that ‘failed to enter orbit’. (6 out of first 11 Explorer missions 'failed to enter orbit'. Then there are none. Wikilies)

Whilst a rocket engine does maintain thrust in a vacuum its speed and direction probably cannot be accurately controlled. We can be fairly sure that when the rocket engines are stopped speed / direction / altitude will have significant errors. Orbit conditions are precise. Do satellites now have thrust and control and instrumentation to correct for final rocket ballistic errors?

Maybe in the early days it was a case of ‘Light the blue touch paper and retire’ but today rockets surely have sophisticated monitoring and control systems. However whatever the processing power these can be no better than the instruments on board. How do you measure altitude and speed above the atmosphere? GPS would be the best answer if it’s not satellite based (haha)! Aeroplanes still rely on barometric altimeters and Pitot tubes.

Apart from the question of instrumentation the rocket is steered by quite crude means: The nozzles are gimballed or the exhaust is deflected with rudder paddles, or the engines are selectively throttled. Once above the atmosphere any rotational moment imparted must be counteracted. This means continuous attitude control. The early X-15 and NF-104A rocket planes were equipped with a reaction flight control system. Michael J Adams was killed in a hypersonic spin and break up.

This is not about manned space flight, but is it possible that the Mercury project where the capsules did not go into orbit (and so fell back without the re-entry heat), were genuine? Gemini and everything thereafter are obvious frauds due to re-entry speed from orbit.

Although we can believe nothing we read, exploration programs in the late Fifties / early Sixties were probably genuine to some extent. Were the data from the Explorer missions on the Van Allen Belt faked? There seems no reason why a single parabolic trajectory into space could not be achieved. These orbits are drawn as long ellipses. Too many ‘failed to enter orbit’ missions would not have been acceptable. What changed to make achieving orbit straightforward?

‘Radiation Effects on Electronic Instruments’ by Henning Lind Olesen (perhaps shouldn’t link to libgen) is an academic paper from 1966 - when I was doing Physics at school– surprising how primitive. I was looking for early numbers on radiation in space.

Satellites seem to have turned out to be a great disappointment both commercially and militarily, perhaps scientifically too. Solid state electronics were fried or zapped. Communication Satellites weren’t practical or even needed due to refractive properties of the Ionosphere (thank you reichstag fireman!). Aeroplanes, cruise missiles / drones precision bomb and photograph your back yard much better.

I guess Space created a ‘river of gold’. The show business side was primarily to boost the funding appropriation, it was a closed cycle racket engine.

nokidding
Altair
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by Altair »

A satellite launcher would be no different than an ICBM or even a WWII V-2 rocket, just with some more muscle. They could be guided to the destination before the digital era by just a primitive analog computer that takes inputs from gyroscopes and maybe accelerometers, no more. Obviously, those inputs were very imprecise and prone to error accumulation. This sufficed to send bombs to London with a wide margin of error, or maybe even to send a nuclear missile, but it wouldn't provide the precision needed for placing an object in orbit (think also about the vibrations & so on).
In control automatics, that would fit into what's called a closed loop system: you've got a set of inputs from sensors, a set of outputs connected to actuators, and the goal is to place the system in a state where the inputs match a given set of values. In the case of a satellite, you'd be limited to get your rocket to a state where the inputs of the gyros match the desired values... and that means just a known orientation around the x-y-z axes.
GPS wasn't available (if it was at all) until the 90's, so placing a satellite in orbit just with the input of mechanical gyros seems quite of a stretch. So think about getting to the Moon...

EDIT: After writing this first part I was puzzled so as how early rockets could achieve a reasonable targetting accuracy given the primitive technology of the time. Most probably, they used just an attitude control system that allowed the rocket to fly in a straight line and stable direction until it ran out of fuel, and then continued in a ballistic trajectory. So it would be little more than a self-propelled shell.
Now, the issue is that there were no technology breakthroughs in this area until the 70's, so all the control technology employed in the 'space race' had to be essentially the same as in the V2. Simply put, as nokidding noted, a launcher would have no way to know where it was nor what speed was it travelling at, so any guidance systems would have to be blind. Even with good position/velocity feedback, achieving a reasonable accuracy would be quite difficult, so go imagine if all you have is a bunch of mechanical gyroscopes.
patrix
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by patrix »

After writing this first part I was puzzled so as how early rockets could achieve a reasonable targetting accuracy given the primitive technology of the time.
The biggest problem for satellites (as the first page in the "Rocketry" thread explains) is however that it is physically impossible (confirmed by controlled experiments) for rockets to create propulsion in space.
Altair
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by Altair »

Lies rarely go alone. While the ability for rockets to work in vacuum is the main issue, even if they worked we'd got also the technical unfeasibility of positioning a satellite exactly in the required orbit without a precise position & velocity feedback. Just imagine you're the "pilot" of a rocket and your only input consists of three pitch/roll/yaw indicators. You can steer the rocket just by directing thrust sideways. Then, go and put this thing in the required orbit.
Even a small Cessna has a lot more sensors that are used as inputs for its autopilot: compass, airspeed, vertical speed, attack angle, and many others. The only way I can figure for a rocket guidance system to work would be by being constantly tracked by radar and then sending back the telemetry data. Even so, that would depend a lot upon atmospheric conditions and radio reception issues, and should be done in digital format (which over radio has very low througput).
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by simonshack »

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Russian musical intermezzo...

"Surprise!"


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ltTnQu2BNI

Beep beep beep ! ^_^
nokidding
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by nokidding »

Wonderful thank you Simon! Here’s a paper all about the Explorer satellites going beep-beep-beep: ‘Vehicle Motions as Inferred from Radio-signal- Strength Records’

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 073999.pdf

I think it gives a glimpse of some real engineering before everything got buried by the scam. The paper includes background info on staged launch, attitude control and stability, temperature averaging, ground station monitoring, ionosphere effects, telemetry. Interesting to see the long ‘coasting’ period after Stage 1 burns out where the rocket continues up ballistically, angling over to the horizontal. The following three ‘high speed rocket stages’ (small concentrically mounted solid fuel rockets) take it into orbit. The satellite including the spent final stage rocket is 14Kg and 2m long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

It seems early ballistic rockets could enter orbit just by exceeding the required velocity for a circular orbit at a given altitude. The resulting elliptical orbit might not be known but it achieved the objectives. Explorer-1 is said to have stayed in orbit for 12 years - but the identical Explorer-3 decayed from orbit in 93 days. Periapsis was lower than planned on Explorer-3 (186Km). Not sure how a satellite gone silent is monitored.

R&D obviously continued (it’s hard to comprehend a real and fake program co-existiing) but we don’t have much idea (or have faith in) what satellites are capable of. It tells us something that the U-2 spy plane program continued to operate, now being replaced by high altitude drones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

The West Ford Needles experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford was to try and improve the skywave. HAARP officially is to research the Ionosphere (using EM induced changes). Comms satellites were also an early idea that looks like science fiction. As has been pointed out we now have a world wide cable and tower based infrastructure.

nokidding
ICfreely
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by ICfreely »

simonshack wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2014 6:06 pm *


SAT-SCAM EXIT STRATEGY?
Is a "mass-suicide" of the "man-made satellites" imminent?


Image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Debris-GEO1280.jpg

Have you ever heard of the Kessler Syndrome (aka "collisional cascade")? Well - neither had I - but hey, I'm sure you will now be thankful for hearing about it (especially if you're a "satellite-TV" addict, or if you rely on "GPS" for your daily orientational needs...). I am sure you have heard of space debris and the problem that they may cause in the long term - have you not? Allright, but then again you have also likely been comforted by those rocket scientists assuring you that space is VERY BIG - and therefore collisions between space objects are VERY FEW AND FAR BETWEEN. Have you not?

Aww - it sooo hurts me to burst your bubble folks! :( :P

The Kessler Syndrome, basically, posits / predicts that if enough collisions occur between a number of the alleged space objects mankind has purportedly placed in orbit, a "domino effect" will occur wherein ALL MAN-MADE SATELLITES WILL GET OBLITERATED.Moreover, we are told, this will make space travel utterly impossible for the foreseeable future - because the place will be utterly and terminally cluttered with tiny space-garbage projectiles! Now, do you think I am kidding you, dear readers? Well, do not blame ME - the messenger. Here's what our "favorite source of reliable, scientific information" (Wickedpedia) has to say about the matter:

"With a large enough collision (such as one between a space station and a defunct satellite), the amount of cascading debris could be enough to render low Earth orbit essentially unusable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

I can hear you say: "Duh ! Surely this won't happen in my time - probably at least a few centuries from now - at the earliest!" Uh, well - here's the expert opinion / prediction of Richard Crowther (of Britain's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) - as stated in the 2002 book "SPACE STATIC - The Space Debris Crisis" by one Antony Milne:
Image

Richard Crowther says that his computer models of satellite constellations have altered past predictions and have lowered the time scale. "Rather than the cascade reaction occuring in the next 20 to 50 years, we could expect it perhaps to occur in the next 10 to 20 years, i.e., by 2015 at the latest," he said.

http://books.google.it/books?id=hEqF8WF ... cy&f=false

By 2015? At the latest??? Oops - that sounds like NEXT YEAR, folks ! :o



[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/48118427[/vimeo]

In other words - this would mean that we at Cluesforum have only about one year left to verify if our working postulation is correct, i.e. that the numerous (exact number unknown!) purported man-made satellites are as bogus as Nasa's Space Shuttle, the ISS and the Apollo "moon missions". After which - ZZAAAPPP !!! - all the alleged man-made satellites will be officially gone - and the scam will remain forever - uh - "unpunished"... We need to hurry up, folks! <_<

To be sure, it appears that all the Major Hoaxes of this world always contain an exit strategy: as the "PGM" (Public Gullibility Mileage) runs out, it's off to the junkyard with them!...




****
You've gotta love this "SOCRATES" site
(Satellite Orbital Conjunction Reports Assessing Threatening Encounters in Space)...

https://celestrak.com/SOCRATES/

Excellent post, dear Simon. At least with NASA there was a Central Command to answer to but nowadays Wild West gunslingers like Elon Musk are putting the entire future of "space" travel and the tens of thousands of "satellites" in orbit into great jeopardy, IMHO.


Why SpaceX Blew Up A Falcon 9 Rocket On Purpose

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdZh1P57b1k
Jan 19, 2020

SpaceX and NASA on January 19 purposefully blew up a Falcon 9 rocket. The "in-flight abort" test was meant to assess the Crew Dragon escape system. The Crew Dragon is a spacecraft attached to the Falcon 9 that is designed to take human passengers to space. The planned explosion can be tied to the Apollo 1 accident in which three astronauts died during a preflight test. Some experts believe that the space race pressured NASA into cutting corners at the expense of safety while testing Apollo 1. This led to stricter regulations for space missions that still apply today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdZh1P57b1k

Elon's a bit too Fast and Furious for my liking. This might be the beginning of the end of "space" exploration - the dreaded Kessler Syndrome! ;)
roastrunner
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by roastrunner »

Can anybody explain the official story behind how GPS works? I'm usually pretty good at this sort of thing, but I can't find any officially-sanctioned detailed explanation for how consumer grade electronics could pull this off. The story goes that all GPS units share the same electronics (that's mentioned directly in Wikipedia). These electronics measure the time elapsed between a ping from a stationary satellite (all of which share perfectly synchronized time via atomic clocks), and the user's reception of that signal. And from this information it can triangulate the user's location given 10 - 20 stationary GPS satellite signals being received.

Somehow the GPS receiver can be accurate to 3 or 4 meters under reasonable conditions.

This means the electronics can detect differences of a few billionths of a second (the time it takes light to travel a few meters). Given that light travels more slowly through a medium such as air (the official story says light's speed is only constant in a vacuum), and given that the satellites themselves cannot possibly be in perfect stationary orbit given random fluctuations of the Earth's gravitation pull due to uneven distribution of mass, it seems that satellite-based GPS could never be so accurate as claimed. Probably not within orders of magnitude.

Wikipedia even states that the GPS satellites are routinely taken off-line by ground crews as they drift out of stationary orbit. So again, in the official story, these satellites aren't all that precise.

Just curious how this is explained in the engineering community.
simonshack
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by simonshack »

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DOES ANYONE SEE A PRÖBLEM HERE?


Here's how many asteroids are reckoned to populate our cosmic neighborhood (some can pass as close as 3000km from Earth's surface):

Image


Here's how many meteorids are reckoned to plunge TOWARDS Earth uninterruptedly every day (and burn up in our atmosphere at around 100km of altitude) :

Image

[As an aside, in this article we can read that "There are 300,000 pieces of garbage orbiting earth, and it's a big problem." However, this claim appears highly dubious... just HOW is this figure meant to have been computed?] https://www.vox.com/2015/1/20/7558681/space-junk

Yet, we're told that some 19,000 man-made satellites are now orbiting Earth, year after year, in all directions, at different altitudes and at various (hypersonic) speeds:

Image

Here's the standard "explanation" you will get from rocket scientists: "Space is very big - so the chances are very small for satellites to get struck by any object."

Now... why does that standard "explanation" fail to satisfy my neurons? :mellow:
SacredCowSlayer
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by SacredCowSlayer »

simonshack wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:14 pm
Here's the standard "explanation" you will get from rocket scientists: "Space is very big - so the chances are very small for satellites to get struck by any object."

Now... why does that standard "explanation" fail to satisfy my neurons? :mellow:
Dear Simon,

I think your lack of satisfaction is (probably) similar to mine. That is—if our atmosphere suddenly didn’t exist (but otherwise things remained the same), I’m quite confident that “space is very big” would do nothing to alleviate my concerns.

If I had a multi-billion dollar investment whizzing around the earth (for whatever reason) in a zone outside the protection of our atmosphere—well, the size of space would be no comfort at all. Total destruction would be a question of when, not if.
nokidding
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Re: Satellites : general discussion and musings

Unread post by nokidding »

Could the chance of a satellite meeting any random object in LEO be approximated as a volumetric ratio? ie vol of satellite / (vol of outer orbit sphere - inner orbit sphere}. This figure would then be multiplied by the number of random objects. The chance of being in in wrong place at wrong time would be very small, but obviously this changes if you are in a shipping lane.

Of interest is what is the orbital decay time. How long does a random object stay up? Not long if you look at the early Explorer satellites. Perhaps there is less junk than made out. The whole technology is obviously secret. To be of any use satellites appear to need both attitude control and altitude boosting, something like a drone with low propulsion energy requirement. How long can the fuel last? (for Newtonians only).
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