4 X class solar flares to impact this weekend.

[dixonge]

Ask yourself, has Elon Musk ever come off to you as a guy that plans or spends money on worst case event scenarios? His whole life is based on Gambling that he will be dealt four Aces.

Do I think that Starlink Satellites along with hundreds of LEO commercial Sats have proper systems in place for this and also adequate shielding protection against an event that has not happened in the last 130 years? Nope! The event is just too rare to justify the expense.

And yet SpaceX says their on-orbit sats all weathered the storm just fine. Imagine that!

 

[JoeHam]

but the science is still in its infancy.

Given that Richard Carrington was studying this back in 1859 I don’t think infancy is remotely accurate.

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And I’ve met Dr. Skov before and her life’s work for the past decade is predicting space weather while teaching a graduate level course on the subject.

Space Weather Woman – Dr. Tamitha Skov – Dr. Tamitha Skov– The Space Weather Woman

www.spaceweatherwoman.com

 

[wpns]

Given that Richard Carrington was studying this back in 1859 I don’t think infancy is remotely accurate.

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And I’ve met Dr. Skov before and her life’s work for the past decade is predicting space weather while teaching a graduate level course on the subject.

Space Weather Woman – Dr. Tamitha Skov – Dr. Tamitha Skov– The Space Weather Woman

www.spaceweatherwoman.com

Right, but how are the CME forecasts doing? Not talking about estimating their path once they exist and chances of hitting the Earth and at what strengths and what effects they’ll have (which are demonstrably poor), but the long-term “this month will see above average CME activity”, for whatever that might be worth.
Feels to me like hurricane forecasting, every year NOAA and others publish “here’s how active we expect the hurricane season to be”, which I’ve learned to pretty much ignore. When storms start brewing it’s interesting to watch what might happen, but not until there’s an actual storm with a 5-day forecast do I start paying more than occasional attention. The 3-day forecasts are pretty good, the 5-day forecasts are more advisory in nature.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Right, but how are the CME forecasts doing? Not talking about estimating their path once they exist and chances of hitting the Earth and at what strengths and what effects they’ll have (which are demonstrably poor), but the long-term “this month will see above average CME activity”, for whatever that might be worth.
Feels to me like hurricane forecasting, every year NOAA and others publish “here’s how active we expect the hurricane season to be”, which I’ve learned to pretty much ignore. When storms start brewing it’s interesting to watch what might happen, but not until there’s an actual storm with a 5-day forecast do I start paying more than occasional attention. The 3-day forecasts are pretty good, the 5-day forecasts are more advisory in nature.

From what I've read, and I know nothing, a third of CME hit our detection satellites without being forecasted including bigger ones, so I'm not sure we can rest easy with forecasts. Once they hit the detection satellites it's a matter of minutes before they hit the atmosphere I think.

 

[JoeHam]

Right, but how are the CME forecasts doing? Not talking about estimating their path once they exist and chances of hitting the Earth and at what strengths and what effects they’ll have (which are demonstrably poor), but the long-term “this month will see above average CME activity”, for whatever that might be worth.
Feels to me like hurricane forecasting, every year NOAA and others publish “here’s how active we expect the hurricane season to be”, which I’ve learned to pretty much ignore. When storms start brewing it’s interesting to watch what might happen, but not until there’s an actual storm with a 5-day forecast do I start paying more than occasional attention. The 3-day forecasts are pretty good, the 5-day forecasts are more advisory in nature.

Of course not producing accurate forecasts is very different from the forecasting field being in its infancy. That’s my point, they’ve been at it a very long time and aren’t terribly good at it.

I can agree that forecasting has limited accuracy and utility despite being studied for well over 100 years.

As you say, just like weather forecasts, the shorter the lead time the greater the accuracy. Space weather isn’t very different in that respect.

For that matter humans are not very good at forecasting the stock market, or corn production or a tornado path or…….

 

[robby]

And yet SpaceX says their on-orbit sats all weathered the storm just fine. Imagine that!

Of course they are fine, that was just an X2.8 Flare with an Average sized CME.
If you read my post I am talking about the X8.6 that went off four days later and if it had a huge CME and hit Earth.
I also clearly stated that Satellites may not be affected in terms of dying but they will be impacted in terms of the amount of fuel that is needed to raise them back to a higher orbit.
If you think Musk is going to go Public and tell people that they used up 6 months worth of fuel during last weeks event you're crazy. That Translates to millions or billions of dollars lost and the stock would take a hit.

 

[robby]

Given that Richard Carrington was studying this back in 1859 I don’t think infancy is remotely accurate.

He did not have the tools needed but he at least kept records of the number and size of the Sunspots.
Even today as someone mentioned we can calculate out a lot of stuff once the Sunspot erupts and charged particles start to flow outward but we still have no idea when one will go off or why.
Even before Cycle 25 started they had said it would be a very inactive Cycle like 24 was.
They they changed that after the first year or two and said it was going to be Very Active.
Like Hurricane season they know when it will start and when t will end but what will happen during cycle is pretty much an unknown until things start happening.

 

[ksmithaz1]

Are we still on high danger of getting hit? How long until the sun calms down a bit?

The world ends tomorrow, film at 11PM tomorrow evening.

 

[wpns]

The world ends tomorrow, film at 11PM tomorrow evening.

I'll have advanced warning when my monitoring infrastructure sends me an email to let me know the grid went down. 8*)

 

[ksmithaz1]

If you think Musk is going to go Public and tell people that they used up 6 months worth of fuel during last weeks event you're crazy. That Translates to millions or billions of dollars lost and the stock would take a hit.

We are just doing pure speculation of course. In that light, I submit, drag is a function of the density of the medium, and the footprint + mass of what you are dragging thru the medium. I'd say Tesla/Musk/et al has a bit of experience in that department. Assuming the LEO devices are fairly "slick" with a reasonable amount of mass, once deployed the impact of traveling thru the much denser medium could be fairly light. You have to couple that with expected fuel lifetimes / life expectancy to start with. If I put fuel in for 10 years of positional adjustments, and have a life expectancy of say 8 years, then a one-time event that used "6 months" of fuel should be somewhat irrelevant. I'm sure there are a number of different optimizations that can be tweaked, ie, I can save X fuel if I'm willing to take 5X longer to reach the desired position type of things.

We are talking moving thru some pretty lightweight atmosphere.

 

[ksmithaz1]

Ask yourself, has Elon Musk ever come off to you as a guy that plans or spends money on worst case event scenarios? His whole life is based on Gambling that he will be dealt four Aces.

I keep forgetting about this. Probably why nobody will fly on his rockets/transport missions up to resupply and rotate crew for the ISS. I for one would much prefer to fly on a Russian rocket and come down in a tiny capsule than hop into one of those SpaceX death traps where nobody thought about any kind of worse case scenarios. Dunno what we were thinking there, riding on rockets and not bothering with testing any failure scenario's.

We've already seen the abject greed of Musk where he has repeatedly sacrificed principle for money as he manages X/Twitter.

Oh, wait...

 

[ksmithaz1]

I'll have advanced warning when my monitoring infrastructure sends me an email to let me know the grid went down. 8*)

Email? Don't you mean the carrier pigeon that will get released by de-activating the magnetic latch on the spring loaded cage door when the power fails?

 

[Hedges]

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/mi5-falcons.html

 

[teal95]

I have a couple of copies of DeLorme maps on laptops, including USB receivers. The early version of GPS. It did have a fit locking on the satellites the one time I used it on a plane. I can see it's internal logic, calculating speed and elevation and then deciding if can't be right and doing it again. It did finally lock on after ~20 minutes.

 

[740GLE]

I have a couple of copies of DeLorme maps on laptops, including USB receivers. The early version of GPS. It did have a fit locking on the satellites the one time I used it on a plane. I can see it's internal logic, calculating speed and elevation and then deciding if can't be right and doing it again. It did finally lock on after ~20 minutes.

You should go down memory lane and visit an icon of road side attractions.

Eartha - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[wpns]

Email? Don't you mean the carrier pigeon that will get released by de-activating the magnetic latch on the spring loaded cage door when the power fails?

Paper Pings, by Steve Savitzky

from the album Coffee, Computers, and Song

stevesavitzky.bandcamp.com

 

[robby]

We are just doing pure speculation of course. In that light, I submit, drag is a function of the density of the medium, and the footprint + mass of what you are dragging thru the medium. I'd say Tesla/Musk/et al has a bit of experience in that department. Assuming the LEO devices are fairly "slick" with a reasonable amount of mass, once deployed the impact of traveling thru the much denser medium could be fairly light. You have to couple that with expected fuel lifetimes / life expectancy to start with. If I put fuel in for 10 years of positional adjustments, and have a life expectancy of say 8 years, then a one-time event that used "6 months" of fuel should be somewhat irrelevant. I'm sure there are a number of different optimizations that can be tweaked, ie, I can save X fuel if I'm willing to take 5X longer to reach the desired position type of things.

We are talking moving thru some pretty lightweight atmosphere.

Life Span of a Starlink Satellite is 5 Years. The speed it is traveling at is 17,000 MPH !!
Normal Satellites travel at 7,000 MPH. The effect of increasing the friction at 17,000mph when traveling through energized plasma particles is not trivial.

 

[robby]

I keep forgetting about this. Probably why nobody will fly on his rockets/transport missions up to resupply and rotate crew for the ISS. I for one would much prefer to fly on a Russian rocket and come down in a tiny capsule than hop into one of those SpaceX death traps where nobody thought about any kind of worse case scenarios. Dunno what we were thinking there, riding on rockets and not bothering with testing any failure scenario's.

We've already seen the abject greed of Musk where he has repeatedly sacrificed principle for money as he manages X/Twitter.

Oh, wait...

Elon has has Zero input in SpaceX Rocket safety when it comes to manned craft or anything going to the ISS.
NASA dictates exactly what they need and they go through every design Aspect and test it to make sure it is safe for their Astronauts.
BTW the Soyuz has an excellent track record, it is simple and reliable and your statement is puzzling because both systems land with tiny capsules on Parachutes. I will take a Parachute any day of the week versus putting my faith in a heavily fueled craft making reentry and then depending on rocket engines firing to land safely. That was why NASA ditched that idea when SpaceX proposed it.

When left without oversight he gives you this. If you have young children this is worrying.

 

[Luk88]

When left without oversight he gives you this. If you have young children this is worrying.

Oh my, this reminds me when many years ago a not entirely sober friend put one of his hands so tips of his 3 longest fingers were in the doorway(furthest from the hinge) he got distracted and he slammed the rear door shut with his other hand in my Peugeot 19. The door was fully closed and he was trapped and obviously in pain, until another person opened the door ASAP but the fingers were not broken. They looked not unlike the guy's finger in the video

This was 20+ years ago and it makes me think car manufacturers do design for stuff like this. Including tesla. If they didn't the guy would have one finger less.

 

[ksmithaz1]

Elon has has Zero input in SpaceX Rocket safety when it comes to manned craft or anything going to the ISS.
NASA dictates exactly what they need and they go through every design Aspect and test it to make sure it is safe for their Astronauts.
BTW the Soyuz has an excellent track record, it is simple and reliable and your statement is puzzling because both systems land with tiny capsules on Parachutes. I will take a Parachute any day of the week versus putting my faith in a heavily fueled craft making reentry and then depending on rocket engines firing to land safely. That was why NASA ditched that idea when SpaceX proposed it.

When left without oversight he gives you this. If you have young children this is worrying.

Really? The man who built the company and sits on the board, has ZERO input on safety? Interesting. Must be because that *sshole must just want to kill people?

My finger has been closed in a car door more than once. Once as a child. I have done it myself in a regular car. This is a classic straw-man argument. "Elon Musk has no concern for safety because I can close the door of his companies CyberTruck on my finger." "It is obvious Musk went up to the engineers who designed the door, and said: 'I don't care about safety, only cost'". Like every other vehicle on the planet adjustments are made to improve safety over time, but frankly, I'm not sure how you can engineer every possible scenario of someone being stupid closing a door. The fact that it opened with the banana would indicate that at least some thought was given. Perhaps they should line the edge with camera's and electronics to detect a foreign object in the closure area. Add a few thousand bucks or so to the cost.



Two weeks ago I spun the cement mixer by hand in my back yard and pinched my pinky (gloved hand fortunately) in the gear. So is my stupidity the fault of the guy who engineered the mixer? Or should the manufacturer just send a valet with every product they sell watching over you to make sure you don't do something dumb?

Inquiring minds, because it gets increasingly expensive to engineer "safety" for every possible thing. I find it interesting that only 'Musk''y automotive products are of concern. You seem like a really intelligent guy, but I really struggle with people who go overboard with vitriolic comments about people like Musk. I think he's a very strange guy, but I have seen no evidence he doesn't care about peoples safety.

Further, you seem to react with glee thinking about how the Starlink satellites are going to fall out of the sky because of a large solar event. I wish no ill will on anyone, nor their products or business. If I had something concrete information about the satellites engineering, beyond the *one* issue they had shortly after launch causing a mass failure I might have something more specific to comment, but for all I know they've already thought about this, and have contingency for such an event. Anything we come up with is purely speculative. Apparently Elon has nothing to do with anything good, and is fully responsible for everything bad. Got it.