I was reading about France first satellite [1] in 1965 (third country to launch a satellite with its own rocket). I'm not sure how much help they got but doing it all in about 2 decades is quite impressive for a small country.
Especially since at that time I guess there were not much recruitment of foreign experts, even within the EU. So they were on their own.
I'm just not sure how much help they got from the US or how many Nazi they could grab at the end of the war.
Now in the 21st century, the fact that Arianespace and the entire EU can't really figure out in two decades how to half the cost of it's launcher is worrisome.
Clearly those organisations, ability to coordinate or culture have dangerously deteriorated.
Yes, it’s especially interesting how basically all of the smaller satellite launches have moved to the – at the moment – more expensive and less reliable SpaceX, leaving Ariane without small satellites to launch.
Once again the EU is playing catch up with last gen tech. Starlink is almost 10 years old - conceptually even older. Iridium has been around for over 25 years.
If the EU was serious, it should have invested proactively in next gen satellite direct to device tech that is around the corner in the US.
AST SpaceMobile is close to starting commercial activity for satellite based 5G that is supposed to work with any smart phone. Starlink is working on something similar with T-Mobile. G-Sat already has minimal D2D capability working with the latest iPhone generation.
Also, I wonder where cost competitive launch capability is going to come from for launching hundreds of satellites. Russia? China?
2.4 billions is not enough for such a project given the EU overhead in cost. Espacially since the deadline is 2027, so 2030 with delays really, that means 350 millions a year for paying satellite design, build them, send them to space.
I am very familiar with the purchasing process of satellites by LATAM countries. Basically the Chinese or the French (i.e. Airbus) come in and offer you a satellite that ranges between 180M-380M USD in price depending on what you want. The price includes a building with a ground station, the launch, and some basic training. If you negotiate correctly, the full telemetry is send only to you and you process it all locally. If you don’t, then they have a hook on you and hand hold you through the entire process - at an additional cost.
Additionally, after a country purchases one, they tend to have their own development path for the future ones.
For example, the Argentinians did their first four satellites with the help of the US (SAC-A, SAC-B, SAC-C, SAC-D), the next two were done by themselves (ARSAT-1, ARSAT-2), two more with the Italians (SAOCOM-A, SAOCOM-B) and one with the Brazilians (SABIA-MAR).
It is a process filled with a lot of politics, questionable monetary interests, and pseudo national pride.
It is the new shortcut process by which countries are entering the space era. Buy a satellite when you don't know what you are doing, then co-build it with somebody, then build it by yourself. It effectively saves you billions in trial and error tests that other countries had to go through... but it really begs the question of when is it truly yours, because if you don’t follow the rules (e.g. taking high res imagery of an area you are not supposed to), “your” satellite can easily be temporarily or permanently disabled... and there goes your 300M
Just to confirm you are aware that spaceX will likely have the largest deployed fleet of satellites with optical links? They will have not just studies, but hands on experience operating these things at scale in space to space communication.
Europe loves to come out with these white papers and industry studies and collaborations. It's basically an exercise to hoover up govt funding. The commercial side is very weak in most cases.
They've been pushing Galileo as taking over the market AND making a ton of money in the GPS space. No way. "Due to be fully operational by 2008, Galileo would have “a four-year monopoly on the improved technology before Americans can catch up,” making the 4 billion system a profit center for the EU."
Arianspace is supposed to be launched Ariene 6 at half the price of SpaceX. "“Ariane 6 will have twice the mass and twice the volume of the Falcon 9, at less than twice the price,” Bonguet said. SpaceX is at $50M retail launch price, and cost like likely < $30M per launch internally. So this means Ariene 6 pricing is going to be in $25M range?
It can get a bit tiring to hear these things.
The one thing Europe is good at is putting attorneys and lawyers to take down US companies rather than actually competing with them.
You mentioned 2600 as the top range for the number of satellites needed for a GPS system. Let's use this number, shall we?
Second, OneWeb already has bought rights for 3 launches with Ariane 6 [1]; ArianeGroup is a joint venture of Airbus and some other company. Airbus was reported to be quite enthusiastic about the UK bid, so Soyuz is unlikely to be in the picture for long if UK wins the auction.
An Ariane 6 launch can bring between 10 and 22 tons to LEO. Let's take the middle number of 15 t, that would be 100 of their current satellites in one shot. That's in line with the 60 satellites per launch for Starlink (which are heavier at about 250kg).
They could maintain a fleet of 2600 satellites in orbit for less than 3 launches per year.
Did I mention that Airbus is the biggest OneWeb creditor? They have all the reasons to see OneWeb succeed, so I don't think they'll limit OneWeb's access to Arianne 6 launches. If anything, one could be worried about a conflict of interests, that they'll get more launches than one would strictly need.
I'm amazed how large satellites have become. They are larger than small countries, like Luxembourg, Cyprus, Trinidad, ... How do they get these huge satellites up in space? Unbelievable...
The UK has a world-leading satellite industry, and could just launch them on Falcon 9 or Starship when operational - likely at drastically lower cost than Ariane. In fact I suspect that due to technological advance and lower cost of launching on SpaceX, the UK could probably develop a superior system to Galileo at a fraction of the cost, which would be amusing.
You can get 10 launches per year and pretty high reliability and high cost. Satellite cost is maybe 10x the launch cost. Government and commercial operations are possible. Europe has to maintain this for strategic reasons, no matter the cost.
And then there's the "newspace" strategy. Low cost launch achieved by reuse brings more demand, satellite cost goes down. When price goes low enough, completely new markets become possible. You enter a virtuous spiral. This is at least the theory. Requires a large amount of political capital to do this, as it will be lossy for a long time and there will be high profile failures (because you do so many launches and iterate). So this is probably only doable by mega billionaires who "get it" (the newspace way of thinking), not by public companies or governments.
Even Elon Musk didn't "get it" originally, they were trying to fish the rockets from the sea and refurbish them. At some point he turned around completely. Grasshopper and vertical landing was done.
The problem is satellites take a long time to manufacture, upwards of 10 years, and everything is very mass optimized. The industry is too slowly adapting to cheaper more frequent launches.
They may not be able to compete on price, but they sure can when it comes to reliability and launch cadence (current strike action in French Guiana notwithstanding). Ariane 5 is currently on a 77 successful missions streak. SpaceX has a long way to go to reach those numbers.
If you're trying to get a $250 million satellite into space, price savings of $20-30 million can easily be outweighed by a long history of successful, on-time launches.
Ariane currently has a better reliability record than SpaceX. Cost isn't everything - saving $100M on a $10B satellite like the JWST (which will use an Ariane) doesn't do you any good if the $10B evaporates in a launch failure.
That is an interesting view and while the total # of satellites is impressive already, the fact that there is just 10 of them over the EU right now indicates how much more dense the network must be in order to really operate.
- "Notable: Important space officials in Germany say the best course for Europe, in the near term, would be to move six stranded Galileo satellites, which had been due to fly on Soyuz, to three Falcon 9 rockets."
- "This will almost certainly be resisted by France-based Arianespace. However it may ultimately be necessary because there are no Ariane 5 cores left, and the new Ariane 6 rocket is unlikely to have capacity for a couple of years."
I'm just not sure how much help they got from the US or how many Nazi they could grab at the end of the war.
Now in the 21st century, the fact that Arianespace and the entire EU can't really figure out in two decades how to half the cost of it's launcher is worrisome. Clearly those organisations, ability to coordinate or culture have dangerously deteriorated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ast%C3%A9rix_(satellite)
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