Unpopular opinion: we don’t need freaking internet from satellites, just get cat6 in every home and everyone is happy. I’m sure the cost would be lower then having to launch 999999.91 satellites to have similar speeds
There are remote areas where cable won’t reach. For example, I need surveillance on a remote farm and I would love to get internet there.
Cable will reach anywhere. There is not such a place that cable “will not reach”. Is there a profit incentive to serve you as a customer in a capitalist system? Maybe not. But cable will reach.
I understand, but that is the exception. Even in your case probably getting 4G / 5G to that area would be cheaper / easier long term. Also Europe has a relatively high density compared with other continents
supporting this motion
If only I wasn’t too chicken shit to start investing… I was looking at Eutelsats stocks earlier in the week. But it’d be my first steps on the market so decided against it.
I finally got brave enough to do it. Between August and January I had made over 800%.
Trump has ruined that for me. Oh well.
It’ll be interesting to see what the Canadian telesat LEO system will be capable of. They’re supposed to be launching satellites next year and are using a higher orbit so will need much fewer satellites than starlink.
But sadly increased latency. Also don’t hold your breath on Canada telecom anything, we have a history of being the worst at it.
I don’t mind a bit more latency (should still be nicely below 100ms) but my use case is more related to mid-Atlantic mobile connectivity than remote region broadband.
Their planned implementation just seems much better than others with beam shaping, linked satellites and less than 200 satellites to maintain and replace.
Although you’re not wrong about our telecom track record…
Your internet and mobile phone service kicks the UKs arse.
Oh no, oh dear everything no. Maybe in a few cities sure, but where I am I literally have no functioning internet anymore (they let the lines degrade below 1 Mbps) and have massive patches where cell phones don’t work at all (love when I hit a antelope and have to stand on the roof of my car to maybe get enough signal to call a tow).
Like no joke we have the worst and most expensive telecom in the developed (and a lot of the developing) world.
I should have considered the fact that I was always within an hour or so of Toronto.
The GTA is not really indicative of Canada at this point. It is the center of the universe after all…
No, appreciated. I had heard good things though.
Maybe from Telus/Rogers/Bell media. Its an issue really, the pro Canadian telecom propaganda is very much a thing here. I am told I have “great internet available” even where I am and then if I try to actually get it they ether say never mind or try and give me a cell modem. I am not alone on this ether, its a major issue.
Is starlink business model like uber/airbnb? Killing the market with low prices by circumventing regulations to establish their monopoly?
No, it just vertical integration. You need to send up rockets to make money, so you make sure they never have an empty slot on them by filling it yourself. You get enough satellites up, then you have a revenue generating payload you can send up steady from then on.
Then it is a monopoly building if you take the limited slots before others companies 😁
I was wondering because starlink’s terminals are around $500 while eutelsat’s are 10k. It seems it can be only possible if you accept massive losses on first years, with help of to investors to keep the company running, to take down competitors. Like uber and many others did, which had years of losses before having income.
SpaceX isn’t an Uber model, its a goverment leech model. It’s had heavily, heavily goverment subsidies to the tune of 18 billion dollars over its 10yr lifetime.
Terminal prices are likely just an economy of scale issue. Much cheaper per unit to make 100,000 than 1,000. Im sure as eutelsat grows the prices will come down.
If Eutelsat and the EU rocket program get 18 billion in goverment investment like SpaceX, im betting they can also accelerate all of the above.
SpaceX doesnt have a moat, it just has the lead. Rocket labs in new Zealand is already hot on their tails. No reason the EU cant join or surpass them.
Bye bye future space launches once we have full or partial Kessler syndrome.
Bye bye earth based astronomy.
But dang this tech is so much better than Hughesnet
<ButtonPressingMeme>
Kessler syndrome doesn’t really apply for purely LEO satellites. They all burn up in a single digit amount of years.
It’s not something to worry about yet.
This is true at 500km altitude, but not so at higher LEO altitudes.
On the contrary, I think it is something to avoid. Imagine letting a single person ground all space launches for 9 years. And all the pollution that adds to the atmosphere. All the junk landing on people’s farms or houses.
It doesn’t work that way. I dislike Elon as much as the next sane person but we don’t need to invent new reasons to dislike him on top of all of the bad reasons that exist.
“European Starlink rival” is a bit far fetched when there’s merely rumours that they might be able to offer a similar service. But that’s the stock market for you.
They have both GEO and LEO satellites. Not on the scale of Starlink (for LEO), but they do have a network.
I am not commenting on the nature of the stock market or anything like that. Just pointing out that they do have a working network, it’s not 100% speculation (like you see with crypto schemes).
You’re correct but their LEO constellation is over 10x smaller than Starlink, so they’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.
They are doing much better than other fabled starlink competitors though, like amazon kuiper which is still not a real thing after all this time.
They have very, very different business models. Constellation size is meaningless on its own, you have to account for the satellites capabilities, orbits, and the number and needs of your customers.
They have one strong competitive advantage that Starlink will never have; they are not American.
By definition, you cannot trust an American service. Even if the people who run a given service are not degenerates, there are enough degenerates in the US that they could elect a degenerate who will fuck you over.
Alphane_Moon just convinced me to take out a huge loan with my house as security, and invest in Eutelsat. I suggest everyone else does the same.
Now they have to offer a similar service. No pressure then 😊
They do offer a better service, albeit marginally - better download speeds, lower latency, slower upload speeds though. Problem is their antennas - they cost 8.000€ compared to 300€ the starlink ones…
Eutelsat are aimed at a different market: infrastructure. Their intended customers are larger and more demanding: research outposts, small villages, oil rigs, mobile phone towers, ships, and so on, as opposed to Starlink who focus on consumers directly, which is much more low-stakes. I’m genuinely curious if Eutelsat can move into Starlink’s territory.
They will surely do in the future. For example in Spain the government is subsidizing satellite internet through Hispasat for remote communities. I’m sure many other governments do the same in their backyard. If EU throws starlink contracts out the window and start subsidizing EU satellite related businesses and startups things will definitely improve for everybody and the more contracts they sign the lower the prices will go for their clients.
A man can dream
Good. Fuck Starlink.
What will they launch on? Star Link is barely feasible because they can launch at cost on falcon 9.
Look up Ariane 6. It’s still more costly than the Falcon 9 but who in their right mind would trust the numbers Elon is sharing? Seems like they both cost around 100million $ per launch. Elon is claming 30million per launch and that he will make it cost 2 million…
Yeah I’m familiar with Ariane 6. It costs almost double what SpaceX changes external customers per launch, not even counting that their internal rate would be even lower. Plus you’d need more launches since the payload capacity is lower. You’d end up paying 3x or more the cost. At that point, why not just buy falcon 9 launches? Otherwise it seems like there’d be very little way to compete.
I didn’t read the article but I’d bet the “why” is because it’s been on the news and people think it’s an easy way to make a quick buck. However, these people are amateurs - when it’s in the news you’re already too late.
Not if you bought in at 100% or 200% or 300% when it was also in the news. You will still have made tons and tons of money.
The real positive for the company and maybe the world is if they issue some new stock now and get a nice war chest of cash so they can expand their network rapidly. That will hurt the investors above, but hopefully they take gains now when it’s fruitful or in the farther future when the company dramatically increases its market share.
A European Starlink rival’s shares skyrocketed 390% in a week — here’s why
OOOH!!! OOH!!! I KNOW THIS ONE!!! STARLINK GO BOOM! PEOPLE GO NOPE! TESLAS STOCK PRICE GO (bomb falling sound effects) KABOOM!!!
Easy there, Powder… Although you are absolutely right
That’s Lemmy for you…
I’m stuck with star link as of present. I would defiantly like for a competent and competent competitor in the market. Competition is the core of capitalism and the driving force behind development.
Competition is the core of capitalism
Lemmy tells me that exploitation is the core of capitalism. Not so?
But also, we cannot have so many god-damn satellites polluting the night sky. Starlink should never have been allowed to get up there as a private actor in the first place.
It’s a tricky situation, as international cooperation would be extremely difficult to maintain, especially during situations like the Ukraine war. But having private companies compete to fill the orbit with space waste as soon as possible is hardly a good solution either.
The states has been moving towards authoritarian corporate control for a long time though. The freedom cities controlled by big tech, setup in whatever country they want, operating outside ‘local’ regulations, with services via satellite and protection via US military, very much fits with what Starlink has done. Techs push for ‘rare earth’ (uranium) is likely about powering these sorts of cities, without needing to rely on a ‘countries’ power grid – to make them autonomous and impervious to local issues.
A few big military powers to allow for the “constant enemy” setup similar to 1984, with a corporate backend to prop up oligarchs that can act based on the whims of the oligarch without fear of repudiation.
Authoritarianism is on a big upswing lately, and egalitarian ideals are busy eating themselves alive – mired in demographic politics. And the conspiracy gremlin in me says it’s been intentional on the part of the democrats/progressive sorts, as they’re just as beholden to ‘rich’ authoritarian leaning tech people as the right wing/republican sorts.
There’s so much more room out there than there is here on this finite planet.
There are a number of concerns, from hindering science by blocking pictures taken by Hubble to flat out malfunctioning and crashing into the ISS. For every new satellite the risk increases. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/satellites-spacex-problem-space-pollution
So? The ISS is due to be decommissioned soon and the HST has been failing from orbit for a while now.
Telescopes on the far side of the moon would see far far more than any telescope in earth orbit and especially any on the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope
Things in space don’t veer wildly out of control when they fail. They stay pretty much in their existing orbit.
It’s not like these satellites have big thrusters or engines just propelling them constantly around the planet. They’re in a state of free fall. They’re just also moving sideways fast enough that the earth also falls away from them at around the same speed that they are falling towards it.
Lower orbits have far more atmospheric drag, and any debris in those orbits will simply slow down enough to stop missing the planet.
So we will have a bunch of trash circulating the earth, left there by opporunistic billionaires. No thank you. What they have done to the night sky alone is a crime against all of us as far as I’m concerned.
And to think that lower orbit is not interesting any more now that NASA wants to build a telescope on the moon is beyond me.
Guess it’s ok when governments leave debris by shooting at satellites, but not when businesses do?
Weird.
As the headlins in the article I linked earlier kindly informs us, half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. And it’s increasing fast. If other companies enter the scene and start competing, the earth will be orbited by a shitload of useful satelites launched into space by billionaires with a penis complex.
Governments are supposed to provide services for their population. Some of these needs might justify launching satellites. It is not unproblematic, and I would rather see it being governed by an international organization, but at least it’s being done on behalf of people.
Companies launch them to make a profit for the fat wallets of their stakeholders and CEOs.
They are not the same. Pretending they are is, as you so nicely put it, weird.
Competition is the core of capitalism and the driving force behind >development.
But when, tho?
here’s why
What could it be?
I always wish I was quick enough to take advantage of things like this but I always miss the boat
Does make me think about the story of Thales of Miletus; ancient Greek philosopher, got asked what use was philosophy if it doesn’t make you any money. Predicted good weather, and monopolised all the olive presses, made a fortune.
For a modern example; shares in Rheinmetall (German firm who make, amongst other things, the turrets for tanks) have gone through the roof after the recent US debacle. I could have told you a year ago that Trump getting in would have meant the US abandoning Ukraine; obvious in hindsight that that would mean a boon for European arms manufacturers.
I don’t think you need to be quick to take advantage. I think you need insight. If there’s a topic that you’re knowledgeable about and you can see which way the wind is blowing, then you can make your own boat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus#Olive_presses
SpaceX and Starlink have no competitors. They’re so far ahead that it’s not even funny. I really wish Elon had just kept his mouth shut and kept working on it without sullying its image. I bet he wishes that too sometimes.
Idk. Musk seems to have gone completely mental. Dunno what the cause is, but the man is not healthy. Not sure how much self-reflection he’s capable of.
It is his character, the type of person he is.
He’s on ketamin. Explains some of it.
He almost certainly abuses ketamine. He got his dealer a job in DOGE, after all.
SpaceX and Starlink have no competitors
This is a very soviet mode of thinking.
It’s not a mode of thinking it’s a fact. As of this moment there’s no one who is even close to being a competitor to them. I’m not saying there can’t be one, but there isn’t one right now.
I am not denying Starlink and SpaceX have a dominant market position.
When I said “this is a very soviet mode of thinking,” I meant that it’s unreasonable to think that they are unbeatable.
This is just one thing, but if you use Starlink or SpaceX you have to deal with Americans and Americans cannot be trusted.
Being a reliable partner is a competitive advantage and has an impact on the cost function of a given relationship. Americans (government or companies) are not reliable.
Clearly not what he wishes. Shows no regrets whatsoever. He wishes for everyone to lick his boots and obey whatever he thinks is right. He’s acting like he’s a king or god or so… He gets what he deserves, disrespect and contracts failing. They might lead technologically but that’s no reason to take all this BS. It’s extra reason not to.
I don’t know, the man is hard to read. I’m extremely cynical and I don’t believe he’s genuine ever, but he gave an interview recently and he did choke up when asked how he was managing to run his companies. I don’t think he’s as good an actor to fake that.
The best conclusion I have arrived is that the man may well be completely self deluded and he might really believe himself the savior of mankind so he needs to get us to mars by any means necessary. Maybe because of the heavy drug use and obvious sleep deprivation, his sense of reality is probably warped. Or maybe the pressure from the Twitter purchase got to him and he broke because that’s when he absolutely went bonkers. He had to overleverage himself in order to do that and he even took money from the saudis.
All in all I don’t expect things to end well for him.
At this rate it’s in best case a fast track to jail in 10y or so. Other options including Mussolini, Ghaddafi or Hitler themed endings.
I was just talking about this with a friend today. Musk was basically on track to become a real-life Tony Stark, exactly as he’d envisioned, but he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut and ended up ruining it for himself. Money buys many things, but it doesn’t buy respect - and once you’ve lost that, it’s nearly impossible to regain. The number of young and ambitious people he let down is simply staggering. I was really rooting for him and hoping he’d turn this around but after the nazi salute I no longer do. That was the last straw for me.
It is good he revealed his true colours early.
