Europe's Major Satellite Players Line Up To Build Starlink Competitor - Slashdot

Europe's Major Satellite Players Line Up To Build Starlink Competitor

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• Re:

  Yeah,
  The problem for possible competitors is that SpaceX has a advantage in launch costs.

  If you are anyone else your choices are
  1) buy launches from SpaceX and pay the launch cost+SpaceX margin.
  2) buy launches from someone else at higher cost.

  Whereas SpaceX can launch without the profit margin. So competing with someone who has lower costs is hard..

  • Re: Money grave

    This, and that. You are not going to make it cheaper than SpaceX. Because of that, you are not going to win customers to get economies of scale either. With so many entrenched lobbyists also, this will end up a boondoggle whos justification is military or government, but whos actual purpose is government grifting to an industry that canâ(TM)t compete with SpaceX at all, and are looking for a way to hold onto revenue by fleecing the taxpayer. Point? It was SpaceX who provided Ukraine connectivity. They

    • This is why it may get made though...

      You are not going to make it cheaper than SpaceX.

      Agree 100%

      Point? It was SpaceX who provided Ukraine connectivity.

      And this is why I think it may get made anyway even if they are paying SpaceX for every launch, or some much absurdly higher fee - because a global communications network like what StarLink has now, can easily be seen as a national security issue.

      I don't think any nation is comfortable with a nation they are supporting in war being at the mercy of a single company (Elon Musk or no) for communic

      • Or it may even come about because lots of other nations together may simply decide, there must be some non-US competitor in this space.

        It isn't the nations that are deciding. It is lobbyists for European defense contractors who have lost a mother-fuck ton of business to SpaceX doing what they know how to do: get government bodies to hand them over mother-fuck tons of cash for boondoggles that will be over budget, behind schedule, and re-scoped to provide far less than originally intended.

        They want to be able to decide who can have battlefield communications provided... and who cannot...

        No one is going to stop Starlink from providing communications to their military adversaries. If that was possible Russia would have done it.

        even if they are paying SpaceX for every launch, or some much absurdly higher fee

        They will pay astronomically higher fees, because the whole REAL point of this is to gain government cash to European out-classed space launch providers.

• Re:

  Galileo works fine and while expensive the cost wasn't prohibitive. This new constellation will require some solution with launchers so it may take some years for Ariane to resolve their problems (or possibly they may just launch with SpaceX?)

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  • • Re:

      Competition is good. But Ariane? Fat chance of them making it happen. Their customers are governments. They are used to Cost+10% contracts. It isnt in their DNA to become cost competitive. Jeff Bezos had the best chance at cracking that. Richard Branson, while rich, didnt have the engineering prowess of Musk nor the financial might of Musk and his investors. Jeff has engineering talent under him, and has financial might. His divorce distracted him and all the top talent was already working for SpaceX. Musk

    • Re:

      LOL. If you want to look for competition to Elon, look to Rocket Lab's Electron and their other stuff, not Ariane. The only reason for Ariane's existence is EU, and tons of taxpayer subsidies, either in direct subsidies, or their "we don't buy orbital access for our satellites from dem dam capitalist pigdogs like Elon, we proudly pay 10x more for good socialist equipment with EU flag proudly painted on its side, comrade!" attitude. Ariane wouldn't last a day in a free market.

      • Re:

        You might be right. These satellite internet services just need "a shitload of generic satellites in low earth orbit." So you can give the launch contract to anyone who can lob a few kilograms to LEO. If you're not happy with the launch provider, hell, change launch provider and send the next load up with someone else.

  • Re:

    Ummm, who exactly uses Galileo rather than GPS? If we blew a ton of money to provide a navigational system that would be justifiable, but the goal of Galileo wasn't to provide navigational system, that's covered by GPS. The goal of Galileo was to stoke egos of EUcrates, and allow them to say "see, socialist Europe can do navigational systems just as well as US". *Every* other use-case was already being covered by GPS.

    • Re:

      Galileo Open Services (the GPS-like signals) are useful to improve accuracy compared to GPS alone. Using more satellites gives a better position solution. A lot of GPS satellites are too old to broadcast a second civil-use signal (L2C or L5) on a different frequency, whereas all Galileo satellites do -- and using a second frequency allows correction for about 99% of ionospheric timing error, which is the largest error source for this kind of position solution.

      Galileo is also developing precise point posit

      • Re:

        And it is *actually used*...where exactly?

        • Re:

          Phones, watches, geodetic survey receivers, lots of places.

          • Re:

            Yeah, they all run on GPS.

• Re: Money grave

  Europe just wants another participation trophy. That's basically the only reason they built Galileo, and why they're always trying to astroturf European versions of American companies and American technology by dumping huge amounts of money into projects that ultimately go nowhere.

  For those who don't recall, here's ground zero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Re:

    Galileo is vital for national security. As well as providing location services, it provides timing. Sub microsecond timing is very important for a lot of infrastructure, such as cellular networks, and there aren't many good alternatives.

    It's so important that when the UK was booted out of Galileo it immediately began looking for alternatives, including bringing back old WW2 era systems in the hope that they could be improved.

  • Re:

    I guess the US was 'astroturfing' then by developing satellites and human spaceflight capability as it was not the first to launch either.
    As for Galileo, if the situation was reversed, would the U.S. rely for its critical infrastructure on a system controlled by a foreign military? I think not.

• Re:

  Or they could just swallow their pride and buy orbital access from Elon. So I guess now we'll see whether they're planning an actual business venture or is it a "hey, socialist Europe can do interwebz from orbit too, as long as we get enough taxpayer funding, and only 10 years late to the game" ego project, kinda like Galileo.

• Re:

  Arianespace and some others are looking at reusable vehicles and lower costs, but I imagine at least initially this group will be using other commercial launch services for their constellation.

  The bigger worry is the shear number of satellites that are going up. I'm sure everyone involved will claim that they are taking every precaution and fully cooperating to avoid collisions, but all it needs is one unexpected failure mode.

• Re:

  And you forgot to mention "working just fine". Sure the budget was blown, but the entire western civilisation is built upon blown budgets. SpaceX is very much a complete oddity. Yet we still built bridges, we still went to the moon, and society has not just endured but progressed.