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slowslownotbad t1_j5qruft wrote

Reply to comment by Ihadanapostrophe in Starlink Is ‘Forced’ To Finally Start Caring About The System’s Light Pollution And Harm To Scientific Research by Albion_Tourgee

Yeah. The crew processes the data. With their brains.

Ideally you’d get that data off board with zero crew and process it at home. But as you know, a modern radar produces a huge amount of data.

USAF is looking as Wedgetail, but keep getting cold feet because of cost. They’d rather use drones, but data rate is a problem. Which Starlink will solve.

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Ihadanapostrophe t1_j5quube wrote

Data rate is not the limiting factor. Power is. There are 2x200 KW klystron amplifiers pushing out those pings. Drones don't have that kind of power if you want them to loiter.

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slowslownotbad t1_j5r4w88 wrote

Yeah, but if you replace that with a distributed drone system, each TR module on something modern like a Wedgetail is waaaaay lower power. Just need data uplink.

You could essentially do the job with a collection of fighter jet radars on small drones. The power draw on an APG-81 from an F-35 would be well within the capacity of a small turbine engine.

Also, satellite AWACS from a low orbit constellation can do a lot. Expect to see these kinds of payloads launching in the near future.

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