> What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks?
- falcon 9 - $2700/kg
- falcon heavy - $1400/kg
- ariane 5 - $9000/kg
> If the current one works - why would they?
This is just low quality flame bait. If any of the before-mentioned (US) companies succeed commercially long-term, they will transform world-wide internet access especially in less developed countries.
For clarification: as a European citizen, I want the EU to stay competitive in the space tech sector.
What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks? Would you like to show us the reasoning here?
> it should have invested proactively in next gen satellite direct to device tech
If the current one works - why would they? For defence usage, reliable is better than next gen usually. (Something something next gen F35 still not usable)
> I wonder where cost competitive launch capability is going to come from
> It's honestly quite hard to compete with a free alternative that the US government throws billions of dollars at.
Yes, but it's not a commercial venture. Surely there is equivalent value in having a satellite system that European governments throw billions of euros at, no?
> I think this is what happens when you get politicians trying to beat capitalism at its own game.
I'm rolling on the floor laughing right now.
In the past five years, there is a country which erected multiple new trade barriers, put in place tariffs, enacted protectionist policies, publicly declared it was going to reassess its transaction with the world to put itself first and threatened repeatedly to leave the WTO. This country is the USA. A country notorious for using extraterritorial sanction to advantage its companies, a country abusing public subsidies to distort markets, a country refusing standards to protect its interest.
Let this be my last post on HN. Everytime I think this site has reached rock bottom it succeed in hitting a new low.
Edit: Anyway, let me try to add something of value to the discussion and add some perspective to the extremely poor article from ArsTechnica. The European space program is a direct descendant of the French space program which was first and foremost a military program. It was developed to put in orbit information satellite and break France depandency on US unreliable US information. This capability remains relevant now more than ever. The civil program is mostly a cost offset. If the EU has no share of the civil markets, it makes the military program more expansive. From this point of view, it makes sense to invest both as a way to develop know how and because it might not cost more than maintaining the existing knowledge anyway.
> They currently have ~3000 satellites. The total plan has ~12,000 satellites.
I gave more context below, what I'm saying is that perhaps it was foolish to lower prices for existing customers if it was going to be capped at 1TB, and given that their are combat zones depending on this connectivity (UA) than it was better to subsidize the costs to cover costs as it scales and offer tiered packages to offset this bandwidth issue. Instead you have Elon making unfounded claims, about it being given away for free, and then threatening to pull connectivity etc... obviously he got spoken to by the DoD, who pretty much prop up SpaceX, and the aerospace Industry as a whole is mainly military so that kind of behaviour will be stamped out at asap.
This is my biggest issue, that we all thought we would have created a path decentralized internet but its just as egregious as another telecoms except this one is done capable of being derailed and undoing all the immense work of amazing techs/engineers by what is essentially PT Barnem 2.0.
> What are the factors that you think would cause prices to reduce?
1) reductions in cost of launches
2) reductions in cost of satellites
3) bandwidth capacity improvements per satellite
I could keep going, but it’s obvious you’ve convinced yourself of a narrative and aren’t willing to think rationally about the topic, so I’m not going to waste my time.
I assume your motivation is (alongside with a bunch of us), "bring people closer to space than ever before", but you have provided no evidence, that polluting low earth orbit with arguably redudant satellites is a good approach.
You seem to imply that it will lead in "revolution in prices". I too, commend SpaceX for the landing boosters, but for now it doesn't reduce the price nowhere near enough to let humanity approach the space age. Starlink comparatively, IMO does nothing.
> If the main objective of the Ariane Group is to offer Europe independence by providing access to space, I think that’s worth a premium.
I mean in that case, wouldn't the superior option be having a more cost competitive private launch provider in Europe? that way you'd get both European independence and lower prices. Surely there's a way to foster that situation, since that's what the US has.
First you have to ask, for what does Europe need independent access. Then you have to ask, how likely is that this capability is actually needed. And then, what can we do to achieve this goal with the effective use of resources.
For Europe to build a huge Ariane 6 while also having Vega, Vega C and also working on small launchers makes no sense.
One Sozuy sized rocket and some basic refueling tech could do everything Europe needs.
So if it really was about independent access, then making a plan that focuses on that would make mare sense.
> The goal is not to have the cheapest or most efficient rocket.
Well I point out in other places. That's exactly what they said they wanted when they started building it.
Only now where they know they are way off they say 'oh that's never what we actually wanted'.
Europe was successful in getting commercial payloads on their rockets and that helped them finance everything. So a primary goal and justification for Ariane 6 in favor of Ariane ME was exactly this commercial market.
> If the EU wanted cheap, they'd just eat the shit sandwich of using Russian launch vehicles.
That literally exactly what they did. Arianespace launched more Soyuz then anything else.
But that simply wasn't tenable anymore.
So the reality is ESA was eating shit sandwiches until Russia tried to eat Ukraine and got diary. Now they can't handle it anymore.
> Isn’t launching a satellite much more expensive than a balloon?
Historically yes, but while I don't know the numbers, a launch provider that is able to reduce the cost by about an order of magnitude might have an advantage here (SpaceX are also launching 60 of them at once).
It also seems like satellites would be a bit less vulnerable to outside interference than balloons.
> You think subscriber agreements will permit using it as the uplink for a local ISP?
I think in the richer countries those will be special agreements, but in many places it will just be done and SpaceX will likely not spend much resources to prevent it.
> lofting new satellites, what, 4000/y? 6000/y? as those age out.
Yes, but their cost curves of all the major pieces of the puzzle get cheaper with each generation as volume goes up. Starship will make a huge difference, ground antennas will go closer and closer to being consumer electronics and they are working on sat mass manufacture.
Well, I made no such argument, the GGP did, and I'll quote:
> Look at the numbers. SpaceX is doing it’s thing for a few billion a year. That’s chump change compared to the money being spent on, let’s say professional basketball.
... but I think if the poster wants to make the argument about relative costs they should at least make a fair assessment.
> First of all, just because the trend is exponential now doesn't mean it always will be. That's silly.
Silly why? Silly as the amount of processors that are sold every year?[0] How would a 'wealth creating' technology reaching economies of scale with a variety of use-cases not continue to grow? It is possible there's some sort of saturation point... but I can only see space industry as something that will spur it's own demand by creating industries that never existed before.
> Second of all, the number of launches may be increasing at that rate because the launches have been made exponentially cheaper - why don't we look at % of GDP being put into space flight? I bet it would be flat or trending down.
And I was wondering if someone would make this argument, because it is flawed. Even if costs do 'reduce exponentially' they are reducing towards a lower limit, not to zero. At some point the cost reductions per year will start to become insignificant, much in the same way that regular flight isn't becoming exponentially more economical every year. So after the low-hanging fruit has been tackled (e.g., rocket re-use, mass production), the number of launches will correlate pretty well with costs, especially now that a whole bunch of use cases now become profitable.
> Truthfully, if Europe ever did develop a reusable rocket, one that could fly all the missions in a year, this would be unhelpful politically. What would the engine and booster factories sprinkled across Europe do if they built one rocket and then had 11 months off? The member states value the jobs too much.
It feels incredibly short-term to me. How many jobs will be created by opening up spaceflight at 1/100 the cost? How many new types of satellites, technology, human transport will be created?
>The missions are expensive today, because launches are expensive
I do not believe that. The hardware and software is expensive because regular stuff will fail in space and you can't call some guy to just go and replace parts. I know it was done but it was expensive and risky.
There are many existing communication and navigation satellites but not that many space telescopes so I think this proves that launching shit is not prohibitive expensive but I will read any claim that proves you right.
> spending a lot is not the same as having large number of machinery produced
You’ve made a series of wrong, uncited claims. This is another one. (And the last one I’m responding to. You are not arguing in good faith.)
You called out electric motors. By mass and production volume, China is outstripped by Allied production.
> cheap energy is cool but Russia too has cheap energy
Much less than America production-wise. We’re counting volumes and mass, right?
> like India going to the moon at cost that would be considered pocket change in the USA
You really keep picking terrible examples to spitball on.
The SSLV’s launch cost per kg is over 3x Falcon 9’s [1][2]. American access to space is orders of magnitude cheaper and more extensive than India, Russia and China’s combined, despite massively higher labour costs and design requirements.
That said, India actually got to the Moon. Can’t say as much about Russia [3].
> Europe is absolutely at the cutting edge of technology.
Unless that technology is launch vehicles, in which case they'll whinge and whine and eventually contract someone else to do it for them and pretend they have a competent space program.
>Just think what space telescopes will be like if the Starship reduces cost/kg to orbit to 1/10th or less of Falcon 9's already low cost.
Falcon 9 is around $60 million/launch (though when contracted by NASA or the military, launches tend to be 2x-4x the price). This is pretty much inline with what you get from Arianespace, and Roscosmos. There is no path to reduce price by another order of magnitude. We've pretty much hit the limit on what we can do with chemical rockets.
> This type of comment implies you think the world is static. I'm not saying that this good, but what makes you so sure market and social forces won't produce a better model?
They already are: multiple low or modest cost, high speed satellite providers are targeting the US market for deployment in the next four or five years.
The dumber Comcast and AT&T are about the situation, the more money SpaceX is going to make on Starlink. Amusingly, Comcast is probably going to help get us to Mars.
Regardless of the rampant cynicism about competition (plenty of which is warranted), the low earth orbit competition is coming fast. Nothing can stop it at this point.
- falcon 9 - $2700/kg
- falcon heavy - $1400/kg
- ariane 5 - $9000/kg
> If the current one works - why would they?
This is just low quality flame bait. If any of the before-mentioned (US) companies succeed commercially long-term, they will transform world-wide internet access especially in less developed countries.
For clarification: as a European citizen, I want the EU to stay competitive in the space tech sector.
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