Design Engineer’s Weekly

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Cover Story

Space has a Real Estate Problem

Amazon recently launched two satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) as part of Project Kuiper, the company’s LEO broadband initiative. If everything goes according to plan, those two satellites will be joined by another 3,234 over the next five years. Compare that to Starlink, which has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit and another 42,000 planned. 

Then there’s China, which intends to launch nearly 13,000 of its own LEO broadband satellites, some of which may include “anti-Starlink” payloads designed to spy on their communications. It’s starting to look a bit crowded up there, not to mention the other launches filed with the International Telecommunication Union that could push the total number of LEO satellites north of 70,000. 

For context, there are only around 8,000 satellites in low Earth orbit today.

Concerns about Elon Musk’s influence in satellite Internet have already been raised, along with numerous complaints from astronomers. What’s scarier is the increasing probability of Kessler Syndrome: a cascade reaction in which collisions of space debris increase the likelihood of further collisions by creating more debris, to the point where space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges becomes impossible. Donald J. Kessler introduced the idea in 1978, then conducted a historical review of the concept in 2009 that reached the following conclusion: 

The control of future debris requires, at a minimum,
that we not leave future payloads and rocket bodies in orbit
after their useful life and might require that we plan
launches to return some objects already in orbit.

Kessler’s conclusion touches on the two ways to deal with orbital debris: mitigation and remediation. One example of the former is SpaceX’s decision to operate most of the Starlink constellation at 500 km, as opposed to 1,150 km as was originally planned. This lower altitude will cause the satellites to deorbit on their own within five years. Remediation is a much more complicated problem, with proposed solutions ranging from laser brooms to tractor beams.

One final issue with LEO space junk that even Kessler didn’t consider closely resembles the microplastic pollution problems we’re seeing in the oceans. A study conducted earlier this year found vaporized metals from space debris polluting the stratosphere. The full impact of this discovery is still unclear, but one thing is certain: more satellites (and more debris) mean more pollution.

On the one hand, the growing availability of LEO broadband is good news for design engineers working on products that require Internet connectivity: more availability means a larger design space with more options from which to choose. But, by the same token, if you're an engineer working on payloads that are slated to be launched into LEO, your designs could be more constrained to avoid adding to the problem.

In the News

Biden’s A.I. Order Misses the I.P. Mark

The tech industry was abuzz this week over President Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Although there were some notable absences in its “sweeping” actions, the order’s actual impact on the development and use of A.I. is, for now, largely speculative. 

As a result, engineers may be wondering whether that executive order (or A.I. itself) will have any real impact on their daily lives. You might be even more skeptical if you’ve heard about the MIT study showing that generative AI struggles with innovative designs in engineering. Will the average engineer really see any impact from A.I. on their job anytime soon?

Biden’s executive order coincided with another announcement, this one from Nvidia CTO Bill Dally. In a keynote address, Dally revealed that Nvidia has been testing a large language model as an assistant for its chip designers. The results aren’t in, but Dally seems optimistic that Nvidia’s archive of design documents will ensure the tool is helpful and give it an edge over third-party chip design tools, which lack that training data. As Dally put it, “Even if we made them 5% more productive, that’s a huge win.”

The Poll

Exposure

Formula 1, Exploded

You’re looking at an F1 racing chassis separated into 3,200 components and suspended from a custom frame by Dutch artist Paul Veroude. View Suspended II, as the piece is known, debuted in Shanghai before being moved to its permanent home at Mercedes Benz World. Veroude has also created a follow-up piece for Nissan called Journey in Motion that gave a similar treatment to the most popular car in China, the Teana. 

Recommendations

Solar-Powered Cars Shouldn’t Be Able to Do This…

What does it take for a solar-powered car to complete a 1,000 km test drive over some of the world’s roughest terrain? The key is the addition of a lithium-ion battery to the power system that doubled its conversion efficiency to 97%. Stella Terra, the world’s first off-road solar-powered car, nearly doubled its originally calculated range of 500 km in a journey that took it across riverbeds, through forests and along mountain trails to reach the Sahara Desert. 

A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling

If you’ve ever retiled a bathroom floor, you’re probably familiar with how tricky repeating patterns can be. Tilings and tessellations have a long and fascinating history in mathematics, one that includes contributions from dedicated amateurs, mathematical artists and cutting-edge computing. The discovery earlier this year of an infinite family of aperiodic monotiles, also known as “einsteins”, is only the most recent development in a field of study spanning centuries. 

This Commercial Spaceplane is Almost Ready to Fly

After nearly two decades of development, the spaceplane known as Dream Chaser is nearly ready for its maiden voyage this coming April. With a contract to resupply to International Space Station as a cargo-only vehicle, Dream Chaser’s engineering team has developed a uniquely green fuel system that runs on kerosene and hydrogen peroxide. A human-rated version is currently in the design phase, along with inflatable, orbital habitats that could one day become the basis for a commercial space station.

From engineering.com

Onshape Pro Offers 6-month Free Trial

In its latest bid to woo mechanical CAD users away from SOLIDWORKS, PTC is offering engineers a chance to try Onshape Professional at no cost for up to six months. The idea is to give users enough time to explore the benefits of the program and (hopefully) get so used to using it that they’re reluctant to leave. Is this the move that will finally put pure-cloud MCAD on top? 

How to 4X Battery Performance

Forget about new battery chemistries: what if the secret to better performance is smarter charging? That’s the theory at work at Iontra, a Colorado-based startup that promises two- to four-times faster charging and longer life via a new charge controller, some minor circuitry changes and a custom algorithm. The company offers three million cycling hours of in-house battery testing as proof.

Will A.I. Ease the Skills Gap?

The short answer is, “Yes” but it comes with some major caveats. We sat down with two experts from Deloitte to talk about generative A.I. and its impact on manufacturing. The need to fill 2.1 million manufacturing jobs by 2030 combined with the potential to use A.I. to attract new talent makes for an interesting, if uncertain, future for the sector.

Poll Results

Last week, we asked which would achieve widespread deployment first: delivery drones or robotaxis. It was a three-way tie, with “Neither will be widely adopted” as the spoiler third choice.