4 ms·

What Pentagon deployment project? I can't find any news stories about military rolling out Starlink. The only news is US paying for Ukraine's access; cutting of

What Pentagon deployment project? I can't find any news stories about military rolling out Starlink. The only news is US paying for Ukraine's access; cutting off Ukraine would not be good for SpaceX. The military doesn't need Starlink with all their communications satellites. They are looking at it for polar use where Starlink has better coverage. Are you talking about the SDA Starshield constellation? That isn't launching yet, the contract is for development. Starshield has nothing to do with Starlink except using the same platform and taking up launch slots. I like how you didn't mention that Starlink could solve capacity problems by launching more satellites.

inemesitaffia 3y ago
Starshield
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Starshield has nothing to with Starlink business. The only thing that might affect it is the military wants to launch lots of Starshield-based satellites and that keeps SpaceX from launching Starlink satellites. But then SpaceX would get paid lots of money for the launches. The military hasn't agreed to launch constellation; my suspicion is that they are waiting for Starship.
  - dkbrk 3y ago
    > Starshield has nothing to with Starlink business. Yes it does. See [0]: > SpaceX is providing a best effort and global subscription for various land, maritime, stationary and mobility platforms and users... The task order for Starshield services is provided by the Starlink satellite constellation but is differentiated from the commercial Starlink service based on unique Department of Defense terms and conditions that are not found in commercial service contracts. Translating the bureaucratese, the US military is buying access to the existing Starlink constellation under the umbrella of "Starshield". They have a special contract and no doubt lots of additional paperwork and oversight of Starlink operations. I can understand your confusion, because there's also SDA's plan to build its own in-space communications backbone, for which SpaceX has been contracted, and SpaceX's plan (under Starshield) to build custom satellites on a Starlink bus to host defense payloads, so it's easy to get the impression that there will be the civilian Starlink and military Starshield constellations and they'll be entirely independent. But that's not the case, and it would be really dumb if it were. The Starlink constellation's sheer size provides an immense amount of resiliency and reserve bandwidth that is of great military benefit, and that's been funded by commercial customers. Just like how the DoD no doubt tunnels its secure networks over the civilian internet rather than laying its own transoceanic cables etc., there's no reason for it not to make use of the existing Starlink constellation and many reasons to. [0]: https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-dod-under-unique-terms-and-conditions/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-...

inemesitaffia 3y ago

Starshield

ianburrell 3y ago
Starshield has nothing to with Starlink business. The only thing that might affect it is the military wants to launch lots of Starshield-based satellites and that keeps SpaceX from launching Starlink satellites. But then SpaceX would get paid lots of money for the launches. The military hasn't agreed to launch constellation; my suspicion is that they are waiting for Starship.
- dkbrk 3y ago
  > Starshield has nothing to with Starlink business. Yes it does. See [0]: > SpaceX is providing a best effort and global subscription for various land, maritime, stationary and mobility platforms and users... The task order for Starshield services is provided by the Starlink satellite constellation but is differentiated from the commercial Starlink service based on unique Department of Defense terms and conditions that are not found in commercial service contracts. Translating the bureaucratese, the US military is buying access to the existing Starlink constellation under the umbrella of "Starshield". They have a special contract and no doubt lots of additional paperwork and oversight of Starlink operations. I can understand your confusion, because there's also SDA's plan to build its own in-space communications backbone, for which SpaceX has been contracted, and SpaceX's plan (under Starshield) to build custom satellites on a Starlink bus to host defense payloads, so it's easy to get the impression that there will be the civilian Starlink and military Starshield constellations and they'll be entirely independent. But that's not the case, and it would be really dumb if it were. The Starlink constellation's sheer size provides an immense amount of resiliency and reserve bandwidth that is of great military benefit, and that's been funded by commercial customers. Just like how the DoD no doubt tunnels its secure networks over the civilian internet rather than laying its own transoceanic cables etc., there's no reason for it not to make use of the existing Starlink constellation and many reasons to. [0]: https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-dod-under-unique-terms-and-conditions/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-providing-starlink-services-to-...