A View From The Crow's Nest

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  • AVFTCN 022 – The Global Chokepoint Where SpaceX Is The Only Consistent Launch Provider

    5:09 am

    We’re in this really strange place where we have amazing ambitions for space, including launching 100s of thousands of satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and yet at this moment in November 2023, we have only ONE single launch provider – globally – that is consistently launching rockets – SpaceX!

    If you have been following me on social channels, you have no doubt seen that I often post about the emerging world of LEO-based Internet access. SpaceX’s Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper… and many more. At the Internet Society, I led a team in 2022 that developed a paper looking at the overall industry. I also co-authored an article in the September 2023 Internet Protocol Journal about LEO satellites for Internet access.

    I’m increasingly asked for commentary about LEO systems, and when people ask me what is the biggest challenge, my answer these days is: getting the satellites into space! (Unless you are SpaceX (or the government of China).)

    We are in this weird place where all the other major launch providers are in between rocket versions. Consider:

    • United Launch Alliance (ULA) – Historically NASA’s big launch provider (and a company formed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin), their new Vulcan Centaur has been delayed for years and may finally launch for the first time in December 2023.
    • Arianespace – Europe’s big launch provider has had many years of delays with their Ariane 6 that has been in the works since 2014. It might finally fly in 2024 (and it’s all a financial mess).
    • Blue Origin – Jeff Bezos’ rocket company has yet to launch its New Glenn rocket that would bring satellites to space. It’s been delayed and now looks for its first launch later in 2024.

    Both ULA and Arianespace are running out of their previous rockets and need these new versions to start launching more satellites.

    The Russians used to be a major launch provider with their Soyuz rockets, but ever since they invaded Ukraine few people will launch with them.

    There are a whole bunch of smaller companies such as Rocket Labs that are starting to launch more. And some of the national space agencies such as India’s ISRO and Japan’s JAXA are seeking to do more with providing launch services.

    But no one is currently able to come close to matching SpaceX in terms of consistently launching rockets!

    Here’s a chart I used in some recent presentations showing their 14 Starlink launches in August and September 2023. Some of these are only a day or two apart!

    A table showing a list of 14 rocket launches by SpaceX in August and September 2023

    And these are only the Starlink launches. SpaceX is also launching a bunch of other payloads. As of October 23, SpaceX had launched 77 rockets in 2023!

    Nobody comes close! (Except the Chinese government, who are off doing their own thing.) SpaceX is doing amazing work to launch so often and so successfully.

    So when Amazon is trying to get their 3,000+ satellites into LEO for their Project Kuiper, they went out in April 2022 and signed up for 83 launches with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin (using an “anyone-but-SpaceX” approach). But none of these companies are launching their new rockets yet! (In October 2023, Amazon finally got their two prototype Kuiper satellites into orbit using an older ULA Atlas V rocket, of which there are still a few remaining.)

    And so SpaceX has essentially a monopoly on commercial launches right now. And they are launching satellites for pretty much everyone, including competitors. (OneWeb used SpaceX for their final launches.)

    Everyone else is of course trying to catch up, and a zillion smaller startups are looking to get into the launch game from “spaceports” all around the globe.

    Meanwhile, SpaceX just keeps on launching… and launching… and launching…. (In fact, they have a Starlink launch planned for tonight.)

    For competitive and resilience reasons, and because we’ll need a LOT more launch capacity to fulfill all the fevered LEO dreams, I do hope we see the other companies getting their rockets online soon. We’ll see!

    But in the meantime, if I’m asked what the biggest challenge is for (non-SpaceX) LEO systems… it’s getting them actually launched!

    See you soon,
    Dan

    P.S. There’s a whole other conversation that can be had about whether all of these rocket launches are actually good for our climate, the environment, etc. Thankfully we’re starting to see some academic papers and reports looking into all of that. But that’s a topic for another day…

    Connect

    The best place to connect with me these days is:

    You can also find all the content I’m creating at:

    If you use Mastodon or another Fediverse system, you should be able to follow this newsletter by searching for “@crowsnest.danyork.com“

    You can of course send me email at dyork@Lodestar2.com

    You can also connect with me at these services, although I do not interact there quite as much (listed in decreasing order of usage):

    I’m also on Instagram and Threads, but don’t tend to do much there anymore.

    Disclaimer

    Disclaimer: This newsletter is a personal project I’ve been doing since 2007, several years before I joined the Internet Society in 2011. While I may at times mention information or activities from the Internet Society, all viewpoints are my personal opinion and do not represent any formal positions or views of the Internet Society. This is just me, saying some of the things on my mind.

  • AVFTCN 021 – Moving Away From Substack

    👋 Hi! It’s Dan York. And I wanted to let you all know that you’ll be getting this newsletter from a different email system now.

    I’ve decided to move away from Substack and instead host this newsletter on WordPress.com . Substack may be a fine platform for people looking to host a commercial newsletter…

    … but I’m not looking to do that.

    All I want to do is share my views on the future with those of you who want to come along for the ride. And I found the amount of nagging dialog boxes on Substack to be REALLY annoying! It’s not a great user experience, in my opinion, and I don’t want to annoy you all. So let’s try this!

    IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHY YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS EMAIL, you probably signed up way back at the beginning of this newsletter in the 2000s. Please feel free to just hit the UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of the message! No hard feelings.. I get it. You haven’t heard from me in 3 years other than a message back in February. Life changes.

    As part of this change I’m also exploring a new way to write these newsletters. Every morning our wonderful miniature poodle wakes us up around 4:30 or 5:00am. She’s 16 years old and highly unlikely to change (we’ve tried!!) and so I just roll with it. After I’ve let her out to do her thing, I usually just sit with a cup of tea and catch up on social networks (Mastodon for me), Techmeme, Memeorandum, and other similar sites.

    Instead of just being a passive consumer of info, I’m thinking I may start to turn that time into a time of creation. I’m an early morning person and I’m wide awake once I’m up.

    I’m also trying Automattic’s WordPress and JetPack apps on my iPad to see if that will help me get more into the routine of sending these out.

    So we’ll see! You may start getting more of these messages coming at you.

    Meanwhile, if you are looking to follow me or connect with me, the best place these days is Mastodon: danyork@mastodon.social

    See you soon,
    Dan

    Connect

    The best place to connect with me these days is:

    You can also find all the content I’m creating at:

    If you use Mastodon or another Fediverse system, you should be able to follow this newsletter by searching for “@crowsnest.danyork.com“

    You can of course send me email at dyork@Lodestar2.com

    You can also connect with me at these services, although I do not interact there quite as much (listed in decreasing order of usage):

    I’m also on Instagram and Threads, but don’t tend to do much there anymore.

    Disclaimer

    Disclaimer: This newsletter is a personal project I’ve been doing since 2007, several years before I joined the Internet Society in 2011. While I may at times mention information or activities from the Internet Society, all viewpoints are my personal opinion and do not represent any formal positions or views of the Internet Society. This is just me, saying some of the things on my mind.

  • AVFTCN 019 – Tap, tap, tap… is this thing on?

    Returning from a seven-year hiatus with a new plan – and a new platform…

    Tap… tap.. tap… is this thing on??

    It’s been a while… 7 years, in fact… since I last climbed up into the virtual crow’s nest, stared out at the horizon to look at what is coming, and sent out an email newsletter. MUCH has changed. We’ve sighted some amazing new things – and we’ve hit some massive icebergs like this global pandemic!

    [On that note, I hope you are doing okay during these crazy times. So far I and my family are thankfully okay, but friends have been hospitalized, everyone is anxious, and the path out of all of this is unclear.]

    IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHY YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS EMAIL, you probably signed up way back at the beginning of this newsletter. Please feel free to just hit the UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of the message! No hard feelings.. I get it. You haven’t heard from me in 7 years. Life changes.

    For those who’d like to continue reading, THIS ISSUE WILL BE DIFFERENT from what you receive next time. I want to catch you all up on a bit of what has been going on, and I want to provide some links to some of the things I’ve been doing.

    Please watch for the NEXT issue (assuming you stick around, and I hope you do!) to get more of a flavor of the new plan. So… what is that plan?

    The New Plan!

    I decided to bring this email newsletter back because:

    1. Having been online since the 1980’s, I’ve seen the evolution of the Internet from those early services, and I’ve met many remarkable people along the way.

    2. I have this amazing opportunity of working for the Internet Society and meeting some truly incredible people doing amazing things to change the world.

    I want to share those insights with you.

    (Plus, if I’m honest, there’s a “3. I wanted a distraction from the anxiety of the pandemic!”)

    In addition, I’ll bring you some of the stories and links that show the edge of what is possible – and also that concern me. I’ll also share some of the tools and services I’m finding helpful.

    I’m trying out Substack as a way of publishing. In part because they offer an integrated way to have both email and an audio podcast. We’ll see. This is an experiment. Expect it to be bumpy for a little while.

    My goal is to send this out probably monthly (but we’ll see – it could be more often) and to keep it short and *focused* on a topic. I want you to be able to read this from wherever and on whatever device. And I want it to be informative and helpful.

    THIS time, it will be a longer issue to mention some of the things I’ve been doing that I think may be of interest to readers.

    BUT FIRST…

    Emergency Response Grant Programme for COVID-19

    If you have an idea for how to use the Internet to improve people’s lives during this global COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Society Foundation will award grants to non-profit organizations. The deadline to apply is May 17! Please share this information with any non-profits you are connected to – in these unprecedented times, the Foundation would like to help people use the Internet to improve people’s lives.

    Learn more

    (I am not directly connected to the Internet Society Foundation, but it is connected to my employer, the Internet Society.)

    Help an Extrovert Out!

    And a request… DO YOU NEED A GUEST for a podcast or webinar or live stream? While I completely support the need for us to stay at home to fight this virus, it is a bit challenging for someone who loves to teach and speak and engage in conversations… and who feeds off of interaction with other people! 😀 I’d love to join your show, event, or stream to talk about… the Internet (how it works, infrastructure, standards, whatever!) … curling… live streaming… security… DNS… writing… VoIP… markdown… books… IPv6… networking… WordPress… podcasting… Vermont… Wikipedia… or……… just ask!

    Email me!

    Now… on to some of my activities over the past 7 years..

    My podcast on SoundCloud – The Dan York Report

    Since 2013, I’ve been publishing periodic podcast episodes of “The Dan York Report” at https://soundcloud.com/danyork It’s a mixture of technology, Internet topics, observations on society, and personal reflections. Sometimes I just really like the medium of audio versus writing – and it’s also a way to experiment and try out various systems related to podcasting. Some of you might enjoy my three-part series about what I’ve learned in 15+ years of remote working. Of course, that was pre-pandemic, when we could actually work from coffee shops. I also recently recorded an episode about taking virtual coffee breaks using Slack and Zoom. I have a long queue of episodes to record. You are welcome to join in the listening…

    Follow me on SoundCloud

    (P.S. I also still contribute monthly “tech reports” into the For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast… 14 years and counting!)

    Livestreaming on Twitch.tv – to edit Wikipedia and produce podcasts

    As an extrovert, one of my ways of adjusting to not traveling and speaking has been to experiment with Twitch, the massive Amazon-owned platform where millions of people watch other people… mostly playing games! I’m not much of a gamer, but I’ve been exploring the whole “IRL” / “Creative” section of Twitch where people are teaching courses, playing music, recording podcasts live, giving tutorials, … or just live streaming their coding work. It’s been absolutely fascinating – there is SO MUCH happening on Twitch beyond gaming.

    It’s also been fascinating to watch some of the Twitch gamers – as some are really pushing what can be done with livestreaming. (And a good bit of it done with the open source OBS Studio.)

    My own streaming has mostly revolved around either showing people how I edit pages on Wikipedia, or showing the process I go through to plan, produce, and record podcast episodes. I also have ideas about streaming “Watch Dan try to remember how to program in python after 10 years away 😏” and perhaps some other tutorials with Markdown and GitHub. Granted, none of this will bring 1,000s of viewers… but it’s all part of the experiment.

    I have a schedule on my Twitch page that I try to follow. I’m usually streaming every day around 11:00am-ish US Eastern for a short period. Please do follow me if you are also on Twitch. I would also like to know what YOU might be doing with Twitch. Are you streaming anything interesting or unusual? Have you found it useful? Or have you thought of it only for gaming?

    Follow me on Twitch

    A Subreddit Focused on Internet Access and Infrastructure

    A few years ago I noticed that I couldn’t find any place that listed links and stories about how the Internet was actually put together. There were many sites about Internet technologies, Internet security stories, and Internet companies … but nothing about the plumbing that holds it all together. So, being interested in learning more about Reddit at the time, I created a subreddit, r/InternetAccess, and started posting links there to some of the stories I found. Submarine cables, satellites, Internet exchange points (IXPs), 5G, community networks, research… and even Internet access via balloons!

    It’s been going for several years now, and if you are interested in this topic and use Reddit (or want to learn more about it) please do subscribe and join in. I would welcome a few more people contributing articles, and do welcome any comments and conversations. I think it’s important to help spread the word about all the great work people are doing to connect the 47% of the world that doesn’t yet have Internet access!

    Subscribe to r/InternetAccess

    Open Standards Everywhere

    Some big personal news for me in 2020 was that my role at the Internet Society changed and I became the project lead for a new “Open Standards Everywhere” project where we are working to help people operating websites make the sites more available and more secure by using the latest open Internet standards.

    We are aiming to explain in plain language a whole alphabet soup of technologies – IPv6, TLS, DNSSEC, HSTS, HTTP/2 and even more. You can see where we have started in a GitHub repository – and more info will be coming soon. I wrote a blog post about the project back in January that gives some info.

    Learn more and get involved

    No, the Internet Will NOT Fail Due to COVID-19

    With everyone shifting to working and learning and doing EVERYTHING at home, there has perhaps naturally been a flurry of hyped articles about how “the Internet is going to collapse with everyone working from home!”

    Of course that’s NOT what is happening. The global “network of networks” we call the capital-I Internet was designed in a way that this all works.

    My Internet Society colleague David Belson wrote about this back in February “Is the Internet Resilient Enough to Withstand Coronavirus?” and followed up with a new post today (May 13, 2020), “The Internet Is Resilient Enough to Withstand Coronavirus – But There’s a Catch”.

    The “catch” is one that Vint Cerf and David Isenberg also hit on in their piece: “The internet isn’t broken — but its inequalities need to be fixed”

    As David wrote, the network of networks hasn’t failed, but we’ve seen a catastrophic failure in some regions to make “last mile” broadband connectivity widely accessible and affordable.

    THAT is what we collectively need to fix.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that the Internet is a lifeline we are all depending upon – but what if you can’t access the Internet? or can’t afford to?

    Whew… you made it all the way here! Next time it SHOULD be shorter.

    Links

    A few links for those of you who made it this far:

    That’s all, folks!

    And that is the end of this super-long view from the crow’s nest.. looking mostly down at the ship I’m sailing on. I’ll be back next time with some actual gazing through that spyglass out at the horizon!

    In the meantime, you can find more of my writing and audio and the links above, or at my own danyork.me site. I also welcome email replies or connections through other channels.

    I hope you all are healthy and safe – and that you stay that way in the weeks and months ahead. Best wishes to you all!

    Until next time!

    P.S. The header artwork of the person in the crow’s nest was drawn by my daughter Chloe!

    Connect

    The best place to connect with me these days is:

    You can also find all the content I’m creating at:

    If you use Mastodon or another Fediverse system, you should be able to follow this newsletter by searching for “@crowsnest.danyork.com“

    You can of course send me email at dyork@Lodestar2.com

    You can also connect with me at these services, although I do not interact there quite as much (listed in decreasing order of usage):

    I’m also on Instagram and Threads, but don’t tend to do much there anymore.

    Disclaimer

    Disclaimer: This newsletter is a personal project I’ve been doing since 2007, several years before I joined the Internet Society in 2011. While I may at times mention information or activities from the Internet Society, all viewpoints are my personal opinion and do not represent any formal positions or views of the Internet Society. This is just me, saying some of the things on my mind.