6 ms·

The European Union wants its own satellite network to counter Starlink. It will be build by SpaceRISE, a consortium that include Airbus, Thales, Deutsche Teleko

The European Union wants its own satellite network to counter Starlink. It will be build by SpaceRISE, a consortium that include Airbus, Thales, Deutsche Telekom... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2 https://www.spacerise.eu/ https://www.spacerise.eu/ https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-secure-connectivity_en https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-s...

UltraSane 2y ago
So between the US, the EU, and China's version of starlink how many satellites will that require? I see Starlink will use 42,000 when fully completed so that is 3 * 42,000?
bpodgursky 2y ago
I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan. I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch). The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.
- varjag 2y ago
  A6 maiden launch wasn't completely successful but that hardly matters in a debate involving SpaceX.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    What matters more is that it won't launch again until 2025 and will never be cheap to launch due to the expensive SRBs. And ESA knows this - hence the spluttering of paltry funds towards cheaper vehicles.
    - varjag 2y ago
      Naturally, as every other carrier elsewhere in the world save for Falcon.
panick21_ 2y ago
That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink. It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market. And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious. But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.
inemesitaffia 2y ago
Expect it to be worse than OneWeb for more money
rdm_blackhole 2y ago
That's not going to happen. Remember when the EU wanted to build it's own internet browser? Or it's own search engine? Or it's own sovereign cloud? None of these initiatives panned out. This is just political posturing when they have literally zero plans on how to achieve that.
- palotasb 2y ago
  But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) panned out and that's a closer analogue.
  - rdm_blackhole 2y ago
    It took roughly 20 years for the EU to deploy 30 satellites. How long do you think it's going to take to deploy 300 or so of them when the Ariane 6 had only one launch (with a partial failure) in the last 14 years? If you want to build a constellation, you need the means to send payloads in space at a relatively low cost. The EU can't do that so it will be an expensive and slow endeavor and by the time those 300 satellites are up there, Space X will have deployed 10s of thousands of them. You can say, that the EU does not want to compete with Space X or that their goals are not the same but either way, it's just too little too late IMHO.
    - rplnt 2y ago
      I agree with your overall point, but that's a super deceptive metric to use. First Ariane 6 was scheduled for 2020 and only the first one ever launched.
- verzali 2y ago
  Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use? Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others? Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson? The world's largest passenger aircraft? The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine? The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?
flanked-evergl 2y ago
The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.
mschuster91 2y ago
Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests. SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.
perlgeek 2y ago
Any consortium that includes Deutsche Telekom is doomed to failure. We've seen that when Germany introduced the Autobahn toll, it was a complete disaster. If I had to guess who's going to have a Starlink competitor up next, I'd point to China.

UltraSane 2y ago

So between the US, the EU, and China's version of starlink how many satellites will that require? I see Starlink will use 42,000 when fully completed so that is 3 * 42,000?

bpodgursky 2y ago

I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan. I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch). The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.

varjag 2y ago
A6 maiden launch wasn't completely successful but that hardly matters in a debate involving SpaceX.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  What matters more is that it won't launch again until 2025 and will never be cheap to launch due to the expensive SRBs. And ESA knows this - hence the spluttering of paltry funds towards cheaper vehicles.
  - varjag 2y ago
    Naturally, as every other carrier elsewhere in the world save for Falcon.

panick21_ 2y ago

That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink. It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market. And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious. But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.

inemesitaffia 2y ago

Expect it to be worse than OneWeb for more money

rdm_blackhole 2y ago

That's not going to happen. Remember when the EU wanted to build it's own internet browser? Or it's own search engine? Or it's own sovereign cloud? None of these initiatives panned out. This is just political posturing when they have literally zero plans on how to achieve that.

palotasb 2y ago
But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) panned out and that's a closer analogue.
- rdm_blackhole 2y ago
  It took roughly 20 years for the EU to deploy 30 satellites. How long do you think it's going to take to deploy 300 or so of them when the Ariane 6 had only one launch (with a partial failure) in the last 14 years? If you want to build a constellation, you need the means to send payloads in space at a relatively low cost. The EU can't do that so it will be an expensive and slow endeavor and by the time those 300 satellites are up there, Space X will have deployed 10s of thousands of them. You can say, that the EU does not want to compete with Space X or that their goals are not the same but either way, it's just too little too late IMHO.
  - rplnt 2y ago
    I agree with your overall point, but that's a super deceptive metric to use. First Ariane 6 was scheduled for 2020 and only the first one ever launched.
verzali 2y ago
Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use? Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others? Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson? The world's largest passenger aircraft? The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine? The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?

flanked-evergl 2y ago

The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.

mschuster91 2y ago

Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests. SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.

perlgeek 2y ago

Any consortium that includes Deutsche Telekom is doomed to failure. We've seen that when Germany introduced the Autobahn toll, it was a complete disaster. If I had to guess who's going to have a Starlink competitor up next, I'd point to China.