December 29, 2022 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- SpaceX applies to build five new mega-gateway ground stations for its upgraded Starlink satellites
Soon thereafter, SpaceX applied for an additional eighteen. All 23 will be in the U.S., thus significantly enhancing access to its Starlink constellation for American customers. It also appears the company is building at least one gateway in the United Kingdom.
- Rocket Lab’s second launch out of Wallops is already being prepped
The first Wallops launch was delayed until January due to red tape. The company now plans back-to-back Wallops launches. It also plans to continue a launch pace of one launch per month for 2023.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
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Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- SpaceX applies to build five new mega-gateway ground stations for its upgraded Starlink satellites
Soon thereafter, SpaceX applied for an additional eighteen. All 23 will be in the U.S., thus significantly enhancing access to its Starlink constellation for American customers. It also appears the company is building at least one gateway in the United Kingdom.
- Rocket Lab’s second launch out of Wallops is already being prepped
The first Wallops launch was delayed until January due to red tape. The company now plans back-to-back Wallops launches. It also plans to continue a launch pace of one launch per month for 2023.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
If you have data centers near those mega-gateways then you might want to buy bandwidth on the local dark fiber the article mentions and then on the Starlink to replicate data between your centers spread out over the US, and to Europe.
I was a little miffed that NASA paperwork held up RL. The monthly launch streak was broken. But then, this is a government operation.
George C.,
There are already Starlink centers right next to server farms and data centers here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve done many commissionings at these data centers and what attracts them here is the cheap hydro power. Grant County Washington is where Grand Coulee Dam is, the weather is mild, low tectonic activity, and it is a little over an hour away from an airport. Lots of data centers- search engines, bit-coin miners, and online sellers. Grant County PUD laid fiber to the whole county and everyone has a 1 Gig connection for $35.
The same deal over at The Dalles in Oregon, most of the data centers are near the Army Corp of Engineers Dam or over where there use to be an aluminum plant. Not only is there the dam at The Dalles, but that is the place where a lot of the generation from the other dams up the Columbia and Snake Rivers flow to the transmission lines, plus there is the DC intertie that starts there and goes down to southern California.
Another one bites the dust
“Vladimir Putin’s proclaimed “rocket man” became the fourth top Russian official to die under mysterious circumstances in the past seven days, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Vladimir Nesterov, 74, pioneered the “world’s best” Angara rocket for Russia. He also formerly served as general director of the Khrunichev Center, a state research and production space center created to help Putin facilitate the nation’s first successful manned mission to the moon.”
I wonder when the nomenklatura will act to remove the Number One menace to their health