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You are aware that some of the bidding companies were operating satellite constellations when Elon was at school? Think their collective hands on experience of
by notahacker 5y ago
You are aware that some of the bidding companies were operating satellite constellations when Elon was at school? Think their collective hands on experience of satellite telecoms might even exceed SpaceX's beta program! And if I was going to bat for the superiority of SpaceX (and US programs) to the European space industry, accuracy of projections and the proportion of revenue coming from government really, really isn't where I'd focus...
- GoOnThenDoTell 5y agoOperating a few dozen sats decades ago is very different experience from operating a thousand at once today
- notahacker 5y agoBy the same token, operating mission critical satcoms for the entire global shipping fleet is quite different from running a beta program for 10k customers with an uncharacteristically frank admission they're not sure whether it'll scale up to work properly in urban areas...
- slownews45 5y agoI am - I've used their products. I don't think you realize how expensive their products have been historically. These were govt / large industry class products. They had a market because of carriage requirement and govt contract. ie, large container ships could only use certified products and these guys were only products out there. This all may have changed (I'm 6+ years away from details). And no - these large players generally have not needed to use optical space links - they are much higher orbit so can downlink on land in almost all cases.