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Um. Ok. Guess all of my professors were wrong.

Gravity + angular momentum has the emergent behavior of collapsing distributed masses one dimension at a time:

Clouds(3D) -> Discs(2D) -> Rings(1D) -> Point Masses (planets, stars) (0D)

So flat disc phenomena are obviously very common naturally occurring things. Space is jammed wall to wall with discs and rings.

A flat explosion is certainly interesting, it's not too hard to posit some ways they might come about, but it'll be interesting to see what conclusion their data actually suggests.

A star that collapses does in fact retain its angular momentum, so yes, neutron stars spin very fast (pulsars) and black holes are expected to spin at something very close to the speed of light, at least when they initially form - they should gradually dissipate some of that energy as gravity waves over time.

> It also holds record for launching 102 satellites at the same time.

Small correction, that record was actually broken by SpaceX launching 143 at once during a Transporter mission. But overall yes you are right, India has a distinguished history as a reliable and cheap launcher, earning them a tidy sum over the years.

Starlink v2 can and have started launching. They're planning to test it later this year with T-Mobile to create global data access via their existing phones.

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Yes: https://stellarium.org/

That's at leastsomething. Still, you'd need user terminals which, to my knowledge, haven't gotten particularly small or light, at least compared to a 4G chip. Probably using quite a bit more energy, too.

I imagine. Rockets work way better in space because no resistance/gravity

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>(eg: stellarium

Is that free to use/download?

If that happened they’d just call it a disk of matter and move on - it’s noteworthy precisely because it is distinguishable from one another.

There are lots of companies and institutions with smallsats/cubesats looking to put them into orbit, but SpaceX came into the smallsat launch market as the 800-pound gorilla, offering Falcon 9 rideshares with prices as low as just $250,000 for a 50kg cubesat to sun-synchronous orbit. That disrupted the small launch market and altered the market dynamics so that small-launch rockets are no longer profitable.

Virgin Orbit couldn't hope to compete with that, at $12 million for 450kg to SSO. ($1.33 million for a 50kg cubesat, if 9 customers would sign up for a Launcherone launch to split the $12 million cost).

Other smallsat launch companies are in similar dire straits, such as Astra, which now doesn't even have a working launch vehicle after they abandoned their Rocket 3.

Relativity doesn't even look like it will be selling Terran 1 small-launch missions but going all in with their development of the bigger Terran R.

Rocket Lab saw the Space Falcon 9 rideshare threat coming at its core business (smallsat launches on Electron). Peter Beck was able to adjust Rocket Lab's business to adapt to the threat, by diversifying Rocket Lab's business into building satellite buses and other satellite components. Beck also took a huge gamble to try to remain relevant in the launch business by developing the medium-lift Neutron to stay competitive against Falcon 9, and it remains to be seen if this high-risk gamble will pay off.

Virgin Orbit is in a particularly tough spot. They have no viable path to a more versatile medium-lift launch vehicle-- Launcherone is the biggest rocket they can hang off a 747's inboard pylon. And they couldn't diversify their business away from small launch like Rocket Lab with its satellite bus and components business.

Pretty much any software that generates starcharts (eg: stellarium) will show you the actual positions of stars (as seen from earth), considering things like proper motion. That said, this is a high precision thing, so might be extremely non-obvious (Barnard's Star is only 10.3"/year).

We are currently in the process of getting high enough precision to get proper motions for nearby galaxies. Using radial velocities alone could certainly make things misleading, and a lot of large scale maps of the universe tend to prefer going by redshift instead of making additional assumptions about how the universe has expanded.

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That makes sense, but damn, Virgin must be terrible at this.

Perfect, I'm notoriously bad at getting my shit together.

All I do is chip and pour anyway. I'd rather do it in Hawaii, honestly.

Tkx

Correct, but I believe those failures were during their first “Commercial” satellite contracts, which ended in failed orbit and destruction of client property (the satellite).

As someone in product development, this sort of failure at the start of your product launch (no pun intended) can make/break your reputation as a trusted source for that market. People will take their business to the product that is proven, rather than taking a high gamble on something that has a higher probability to fail and destroy your goods.

SpaceX has been through many failures themselves, but they broke through and created a reliable & reusable launch system at a lower cost offering. Other companies, though more expensive, have at least proven reliability and minimized failed contracts.

Two factors, reputation and price.

For example, Indian Space agency, ISRO, has a much better track record at launching satellites, and has developed means to send multiple ones in the same payload. Recently, it launched 36 (or 32?) satellites for a UK based StarLink competitor as part of the same payload. It also holds record for launching 102 satellites at the same time. It has launched satellites for countries around the world, including the USA and Israel. And it's costs are competitive.

I thought the article said there were only two failures, but I can see how that would still be a deterrent. Though, if the damned is so high I would assume some would be willing to make the gamble if the supply simply isn’t there.

Surely conceiving them wouldn't be the problem?

Hi all, Michael Sheetz here. Hope you all enjoy this deep dive into the Virgin Orbit saga, as I pulled from across all my reporting these past few years (and especially weeks) to explain what happened.

I believe the value of Virgin Orbit being a selection for launch services plummeted with repeat failures, and loss of client assets through catastrophic failures. Hard to bring in launch revenue when no one trusts your rocket reliability.

First moon phones the classic Nokia bricks that can't be killed? I think the one I have in a box somewhere still works.