3 ms·

It's worth saying that Ars Technica has an extremely anti-Musk viewpoint and often publishes articles targeted against him and his companies. As others have poi

It's worth saying that Ars Technica has an extremely anti-Musk viewpoint and often publishes articles targeted against him and his companies. As others have pointed out, these two companies merging is unlikely to rival Starlink and the article may be mostly wishful thinking.

panick21_ 2y ago
Not really in Space. Eric Berger is very pro Space, so much so that he is very often accused of being a SpaceX fanboy and other things. He has written a book about SpaceX and has good relationship with SpaceX and Musk. He is the Senior Editor for Space.
lxgr 2y ago
They're absolutely competing with Starlink. SES operates, among many other satellites, the O3B fleet, a MEO constellation providing high-throughput, low (compared to GEO) latency data connections for marine, aviation, and defense users. Intelsat has a partnership with OneWeb (itself owned by Eutelsat), a direct Starlink competitor in LEO. Intelsat also runs most of what used to be Gogo inflight (the satellite part of it anyway) for several US and international airlines. Just looking at the commercial aviation market (i.e. in-flight Wi-Fi), between their deployed GEO, MEO, and LEO solutions, they serve a significant fraction of the market today.
- adolph 2y ago
  OneWeb is at 634 satellites as of 2023 and hasn't had a launch since. Starlink has 10x that number. They may be competing but that isn't competitive. Before I looked just now I thought they had more in flight. https://oneweb.net/resources/launch-programme https://oneweb.net/resources/launch-programme https://spaceflightnow.com/?s=oneweb https://spaceflightnow.com/?s=oneweb
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  They are also Starlink partners though.
wil421 2y ago
They have a balance between “look at what Elon did now” and positive takes on Elon’s next big thing type stuff. The problem is post-Twitter Elon is grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons.
nba456_ 2y ago
Ars constantly gushes over SpaceX.

panick21_ 2y ago

Not really in Space. Eric Berger is very pro Space, so much so that he is very often accused of being a SpaceX fanboy and other things. He has written a book about SpaceX and has good relationship with SpaceX and Musk. He is the Senior Editor for Space.

lxgr 2y ago

They're absolutely competing with Starlink. SES operates, among many other satellites, the O3B fleet, a MEO constellation providing high-throughput, low (compared to GEO) latency data connections for marine, aviation, and defense users. Intelsat has a partnership with OneWeb (itself owned by Eutelsat), a direct Starlink competitor in LEO. Intelsat also runs most of what used to be Gogo inflight (the satellite part of it anyway) for several US and international airlines. Just looking at the commercial aviation market (i.e. in-flight Wi-Fi), between their deployed GEO, MEO, and LEO solutions, they serve a significant fraction of the market today.

adolph 2y ago
OneWeb is at 634 satellites as of 2023 and hasn't had a launch since. Starlink has 10x that number. They may be competing but that isn't competitive. Before I looked just now I thought they had more in flight. https://oneweb.net/resources/launch-programme https://oneweb.net/resources/launch-programme https://spaceflightnow.com/?s=oneweb https://spaceflightnow.com/?s=oneweb
inemesitaffia 2y ago
They are also Starlink partners though.

wil421 2y ago

They have a balance between “look at what Elon did now” and positive takes on Elon’s next big thing type stuff. The problem is post-Twitter Elon is grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons.

nba456_ 2y ago

Ars constantly gushes over SpaceX.