FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites

Megalith

Megalith

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According to the FCC, Swarm Technologies is responsible for the first-ever unauthorized launch of commercial satellites: despite having their application denied on safety grounds, the company managed to send four of their “SpaceBee” satellites out into space. Their goal is to develop a space-based Internet of Things communications network.

One serious question is how Swarm was able to launch its satellites without FCC authorization. Jenny Barna, director of launch for Spire Global, a satellite data company with more than 50 CubeSats in orbit, says, “If you’re a secondary passenger, you typically have to produce evidence of a license before you integrate.”
 
I'm a libertarian small-government guy, but I cannot countenance letting private entities launch shit into orbit in a willy-nilly free-for-all. We're already creating a cage of dangerous space junk around the planet which could potentially get so bad that we won't even be able to launch anything.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
I'm a libertarian small-government guy, but I cannot countenance letting private entities launch shit into orbit in a willy-nilly free-for-all. We're already creating a cage of dangerous space junk around the planet which could potentially get so bad that we won't even be able to launch anything.
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On the bright side, Cubesats are deployed low enough that they'll burn up within 25 years max. These are rated for 6 months to 2 years.

With launchers getting ever-cheaper it's only a matter of time before they're running massive constellations of these disposable com sats.
 
At least we can get an answer to the "Can we detect and track them question" that the FCC was so worried about.
 
Sets up some interesting legal precedents. What about Lunar, Mars and Asteroid territory in the future? I am sure someone here on Earth is going to claim rights to control territory there too. Makes you wonder how accurate all the SciFi movies and books will be talk about Earth colonies demanding independence? Or even if we build a large orbital space station and it declares independence? What will the laws do?

Maybe we will see such things in our lifetime after all.
 
Master_shake_ said:
seriously though now that they are up there what is the FCC gonna do? go get them?
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Not let them launch any more satellites.

For a company who's business model is "satellites", you might consider that the death sentence.
fightingfi said:
LESS Govt MORE FREEDOM plz thanks ......................
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You live on an island median between superhighways in the land of always-night. Every time you want to go to the grocery store, you have to wait for a break in traffic and sprint across the highway.

A couple tech-dude-bros want to flood the unlit highways with self-driving cars with no headlights, taillights, or other indicators. Regulators say "no", because that's obviously stupid. Our Randian flunkies ignore it and put them on the road anyway. They celebrate by posting tired platitudes about "progress" on some new hipster social media platform no one cares about.

Three days later, someone in an orange vest is cleaning the contents of your skull off the road with a mop.


How about that freedom?
 
XenIneX said:
Not let them launch any more satellites.

For a company who's business model is "satellites", you might consider that the death sentence.

You live on an island median between superhighways in the land of always-night. Every time you want to go to the grocery store, you have to wait for a break in traffic and sprint across the highway.

A couple tech-dude-bros want to flood the unlit highways with self-driving cars with no headlights, taillights, or other indicators. Regulators say "no", because that's obviously stupid. Our Randian flunkies ignore it and put them on the road anyway. They celebrate by posting tired platitudes about "progress" on some new hipster social media platform no one cares about.

Three days later, someone in an orange vest is cleaning the contents of your skull off the road with a mop.


How about that freedom?
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i wonder if they move to india how much if any, fucks that company would give about the FCC?
 
So........what exactly are our satellites looking for???

You would think that a private launch pad would be totally easy to see :confused:

...could give some identified aggressors - N-korea - ideas.
 
jedijeb13 said:
Sets up some interesting legal precedents. What about Lunar, Mars and Asteroid territory in the future? I am sure someone here on Earth is going to claim rights to control territory there too. Makes you wonder how accurate all the SciFi movies and books will be talk about Earth colonies demanding independence? Or even if we build a large orbital space station and it declares independence? What will the laws do?

Maybe we will see such things in our lifetime after all.
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When you really break down law and civilizations in general it ends up being a might makes right situation. If space expansion grows beyond a government or civilizations ability to police and enforce its will on parts of that civilization there is the chance those elements will create their own government or civilization. What is even more disturbing is that people are surprised by this. I'd hazard to guess the majority of people think that a law is enforced just by existing. In reality a law has to be enforced several times from several different enforcement bodies to actually have any effect on a society. IE the police forces must act on enforcement, the judgement element must consistently judge in favor of the law, and the military must support and protect the jurisdiction of both against foreign powers.

We are still monkeys. The monkey with the biggest stick or the most friends decides what we can enforce or not.
 
XenIneX said:
Not let them launch any more satellites.

For a company who's business model is "satellites", you might consider that the death sentence.

You live on an island median between superhighways in the land of always-night. Every time you want to go to the grocery store, you have to wait for a break in traffic and sprint across the highway.

A couple tech-dude-bros want to flood the unlit highways with self-driving cars with no headlights, taillights, or other indicators. Regulators say "no", because that's obviously stupid. Our Randian flunkies ignore it and put them on the road anyway. They celebrate by posting tired platitudes about "progress" on some new hipster social media platform no one cares about.

Three days later, someone in an orange vest is cleaning the contents of your skull off the road with a mop.


How about that freedom?
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You can't have freedom without responsibility.

Recently, we are seeing a trend to people behaving less responsibly, and therefore we are moving to a less free society to try to compensate.

People want to behave like ignorant animals, and therefore they get treated as such.

That's where the government comes in: to keep everybody "safe".
 
This could get ugly and expensive for somebody, in addition to being too small to be tracked they are apparently too small to effectively hold their designed orbit and are very likely to end up colliding with things they shouldn't. It looks like they may have done a bait and switch, the FCC said their design was too small and was not approved they then resubmitted with a new larger design which was pending launch approval but then they went ahead and launched the rejected ones anyways while waiting to hear back on the larger design.
 
Lakados said:
This could get ugly and expensive for somebody, in addition to being too small to be tracked they are apparently too small to effectively hold their designed orbit and are very likely to end up colliding with things they shouldn't.
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There were concerns cubesats would be hard to track, but in practice tracking these things with military radar has not been an issue. They actually have radar signature-enhancing materials on each of these probes.

The government concern was that their time in orbit is actually extended by being very small (less drag), and there's some concern that these cubesats could survive beyond the internationally-agreed limit of 25 years. Reading their application to the FCC, they wanted to put these things in an orbit above 500km. Higher than the ISS and a bit below the Hubble Space Telescope. The company anticipated an orbital lifetime of about 7 years, but the density of the exosphere is so unpredictable that nobody can really say how long they'll be up there.
 
craigdt said:
You can't have freedom without responsibility.

Recently, we are seeing a trend to people behaving less responsibly, and therefore we are moving to a less free society to try to compensate...
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This is a very interesting point that a lot of "me too" libertarians don't understand.

1) Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is the right of the majority to tell the minority what to do.
2) You cannot demand or declare your own freedom. Freedom is only obtained when people around you grant it to you (although there are circumstances where you can create your own dictatorship, but that's not real freedom.)

A true libertarian society would be a polite society. Because of this, a true libertarian society might be impossible.
 
Lakados said:
This could get ugly and expensive for somebody, in addition to being too small to be tracked they are apparently too small to effectively hold their designed orbit and are very likely to end up colliding with things they shouldn't. It looks like they may have done a bait and switch, the FCC said their design was too small and was not approved they then resubmitted with a new larger design which was pending launch approval but then they went ahead and launched the rejected ones anyways while waiting to hear back on the larger design.
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The gyro scopes in these things could easily plummet the satellite back into atmosphere is less than a 180 days in a safe way. Remember, all of these mini satellites WILL fall back to earth....it is part of their life cycle.
 
I wonder if india was misled by this company. and if so, if it will not earn itself a black mark to other potential launchers
 
seanreisk said:
This is a very interesting point that a lot of "me too" libertarians don't understand.

1) Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is the right of the majority to tell the minority what to do.
2) You cannot demand or declare your own freedom. Freedom is only obtained when people around you grant it to you (although there are circumstances where you can create your own dictatorship, but that's not real freedom.)

A true libertarian society would be a polite society. Because of this, a true libertarian society might be impossible.
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Exactly. Always important to remember stuff like this: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was booed at the libertarian national convention because he supported drivers' licenses. He believes there should be some basic test of competency before allowing people to pilot 5000lb Yukon Denalis on the road. But I guess that would cause all the smart innovators and job creators to disappear, Atlas Shrugged style. FREEDOM!
 
I do CNC and worked on some equipment racks/boxes for satellites a couple years ago. Started out as an approximately 770lb block of aluminum and finished weight was around 20 lbs. Worked at a job shop at the time and naturally the guys out on the floor don't know who it's for exactly, but they were for a foreign company. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the place.

I'll try finding some of the pics I took.
 
hmmm,,, if these sats just happen to damage an Israeli military sat (or Russian)...im pretty sure NO ONE would ever dare to commit this foolishness again
 
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Unfortunately, we're never going to be able to enforce launch licenses. It's cheap to develop your own rocket, now that telemetry and simulation is cheap. With launch pads everywhere, you couldn't stop a launch if you tried.

Welcome to the future, where we will (eventually fire trash into orbit daily. Hopefully the trash will not be a nuisance tot eh good satellites up there.

To me, the best part of this whole mess is his: the cheaper the rocket, the shorter the stay in LEO. So at least libertarian prices will keep out most of the biggest pieces of trash :D
 
XenIneX said:
Not let them launch any more satellites.

For a company who's business model is "satellites", you might consider that the death sentence.

You live on an island median between superhighways in the land of always-night. Every time you want to go to the grocery store, you have to wait for a break in traffic and sprint across the highway.

A couple tech-dude-bros want to flood the unlit highways with self-driving cars with no headlights, taillights, or other indicators. Regulators say "no", because that's obviously stupid. Our Randian flunkies ignore it and put them on the road anyway. They celebrate by posting tired platitudes about "progress" on some new hipster social media platform no one cares about.

Three days later, someone in an orange vest is cleaning the contents of your skull off the road with a mop.


How about that freedom?
Click to expand...

Wouldn't surprise me if some 3 letter agency came storming in with a warrant and seize every computer and piece of paper, effectively shutting them down as a lesson.

Government: If we can't prosecute you on evidence, well find some other way of ruining your life (IE: Tax evasion/seizure/eminent domain/asset forfeiture before trial) I'm not saying our government is corrupt. But there have been abuses in the past which pretty much says the government will do what it has to in certain situations IF you piss them off too much.
 
Nafensoriel said:
When you really break down law and civilizations in general it ends up being a might makes right situation. If space expansion grows beyond a government or civilizations ability to police and enforce its will on parts of that civilization there is the chance those elements will create their own government or civilization. What is even more disturbing is that people are surprised by this.
Click to expand...
Plus that on the few occasions on which anarchic (or libertarian if you will) societies have formed in modern times, they invariably lead to feudalism. Kowloon Walled City is such an example.
Nafensoriel said:
I'd hazard to guess the majority of people think that a law is enforced just by existing.
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They would not be always wrong. Some laws would be largely adhered to even if they were not enforced by authorities, but simply because imitating the others is a smart strategy. Example is which side of the road to drive on.

Other laws where individuals gain from transgression need enforcing though, like not launching your space junk into orbit uncontrolled.

The interesting question here is whether the company found a legal loophole and/or sold its satellites and launch slot to some entity outside FCC jurisdiction.
 
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In the future it'll be like one of those anime where low earth orbit space is cluttered with space junk.
 
Trepidati0n said:
The gyro scopes in these things could easily plummet the satellite back into atmosphere is less than a 180 days in a safe way. Remember, all of these mini satellites WILL fall back to earth....it is part of their life cycle.
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Gyros don't produce thrust.

And Swarm's (optimistic) estimate on the decay time for their orbit is nearly 8 years. Depending on solar conditions, that could extend for decades.


Also, these things contain no gyros or thrusters of any kind.

(It's in the FCC application documents, which are publicly available.
Search @ https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/els/reports/GenericSearch.cfm (Assuming their site hasn't shit itself. They're surprisingly <unsurprisingly?> bad at Internet.)
< Unauthorized Swarm launch -- File Number: 0305-EX-CN-2017 >
< Future Swarm launch that FCC is now having a good hard think about -- File Number: 0026-EX-ST-2018 >)

DigitalGriffin said:
Wouldn't surprise me if some 3 letter agency came storming in with a warrant and seize every computer and piece of paper, effectively shutting them down as a lesson.
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"FCC" is three letters. It's one of those agencies that no one thinks has any teeth until they show up to make your life very hard.

Kind of like Postal Inspectors.

BettiePage said:
Good time to test out those space weapons to shoot down satellites in space.
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More untrackable shrapnel doesn't make this better. Also, these things are 4"x4"x1"; good luck hitting that.

Skillz said:
Yeah because it worked the first time.
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Everyone's naive once.
 
seanreisk said:
This is a very interesting point that a lot of "me too" libertarians don't understand.

1) Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is the right of the majority to tell the minority what to do.
2) You cannot demand or declare your own freedom. Freedom is only obtained when people around you grant it to you (although there are circumstances where you can create your own dictatorship, but that's not real freedom.)

A true libertarian society would be a polite society. Because of this, a true libertarian society might be impossible.
Click to expand...

The thing people forget about freedom is that ones freedom ends where another's freedom begins. My freedom to own some land ends where my neighbor's property begins.

thesmokingman said:
In the future it'll be like one of those anime where low earth orbit space is cluttered with space junk.
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There was a old TV show called "Quark" that was about a crew that worked more or less as orbital trash collectors. Their ship cruised around picking up space junk. Sounds like it was an idea way before its time that is now becoming something we actually need to develop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series)
 
XenIneX said:
Gyros don't produce thrust.

And Swarm's (optimistic) estimate on the decay time for their orbit is nearly 8 years. Depending on solar conditions, that could extend for decades.

Also, these things contain no gyros or thrusters of any kind.
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The ISS uses Gryo's to control attitude for dodging debris...I was making a reasonable assumption that this micro satellites could to in order to accelerate their decay by increasing drag (even in low altitude space there is drag). This was something I heard a talk about on from a cubesat designer. How effective it really is I can't be sure though.
 
Master_shake_ said:
does the FCC have jurisdiction in india?
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The headline is misleading, the rocket launch itself was scheduled and approved. It was just a minor part of the payload that wasn't "approved" by FCC.
The FCC claim is to have jurisdiction in Space, which seems stupid to me. There needs to be a recognized international body to handle space traffic and other related legal matters, just like there is for the open sea (international water).
 
Trepidati0n said:
The ISS uses Gryo's to control attitude for dodging debris...I was making a reasonable assumption that this micro satellites could to in order to accelerate their decay by increasing drag (even in low altitude space there is drag). This was something I heard a talk about on from a cubesat designer. How effective it really is I can't be sure though.
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Gyros alter pitch roll angle through the law of angular momentum conservation (similar to reaction wheels) but with less energy. You rotate in one direction, the attached body is forced in the opposite direction. However you can use two counter acting gimbal gyros to impart torque to the central rotational axis
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Wouldn't surprise me if some 3 letter agency came storming in with a warrant and seize every computer and piece of paper, effectively shutting them down as a lesson.

Government: If we can't prosecute you on evidence, well find some other way of ruining your life (IE: Tax evasion/seizure/eminent domain/asset forfeiture before trial) I'm not saying our government is corrupt. But there have been abuses in the past which pretty much says the government will do what it has to in certain situations IF you piss them off too much.
Click to expand...

The government will always find a way to get what it wants, thats the bottom line. Cant win in court? Seize assets, arrest the CEO, fine them into bankrupty etc
 
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