The bid includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, and SES:
A consortium of nearly every major European satellite company announced Tuesday that it plans to bid for a proposed satellite constellation to provide global communications. Essentially, such a constellation would provide the European Union with connectivity from low-Earth orbit similar to what SpaceX's Starlink offers.
The bid, which includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space, comes in response to a request by the European Union for help in constructing a sovereign constellation to provide secure communications for government services, including military applications.
[...] At present, Europe estimates the cost of this constellation at about 6 billion euro and desires it to be ready to provide global coverage by the year 2027. Both the budget and the timeline for this project are likely very ambitious, given the amount of coordination needed and the unlikelihood that Europe's Ariane 6 rocket will have the spare launch capacity to get hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit starting in the mid-2020s. The Ariane 6 rocket will not debut until 2024 at the earliest.
However, European officials felt as though they had to make this move. Fundamentally, the continent faced a difficult choice. Europe seeks to remain a major player in spaceflight activities, which increasingly includes satellite-based communications. However, European officials did not want to be beholden to Elon Musk and his Starlink constellation, which already provides secure global communications like those to be delivered by IRIS². European government leaders are already wary of relying on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the launch of some if its satellites. Officials were similarly disposed toward Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.
China is also developing its own megaconstellation, but Europe clearly did not want to hand over its secure communications to a global rival with questionable intent. That left OneWeb. But this network is partially owned by the United Kingdom—which very publicly exited the European Union a few years ago—and may not have the capacity to meet all of Europe's needs.
[...] The real challenge is coordinating all of this. There are serious questions about how all of these big partners can work together and whether the bureaucracy of the European government can get this project moving forward expeditiously toward the 2027 target date.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Saturday May 06, @02:08AM (2 children)
Or, i dunno, get together and put up a bunch of satellites that ALL can use (ooooh, so long as they belong to NATO, anyways, nudge nudge), instead of EVERY FECKING GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATION putting up thousands upon thousands, replicating uselessly what could be done with less.
Damn i wish we were a smarter species.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday May 06, @02:38AM
For much of my life I've struggled with the concept of competition versus cooperation. I guess we have variations of both. Like I just read where google was sharing much development / engineering of its AI (chat Bard?). But now that others are getting lots of press and ramping up capability, google has closed things up. I mean there are good reasons against monopoly, but only because of aggressively greedy people. Maybe we can put them all on a very cold ice-covered island somewhere. I hear there's ice on the moon?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 07, @04:18AM
If a constellation's bandwidth ends up being utilized 100%, it's not uselessly replicated. Now I'm going to go watch some videos in 8K, see ya.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by MIRV888 on Saturday May 06, @06:29AM (2 children)
Looks like stargazing is going to be a story to tell the youngins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dwilson on Saturday May 06, @01:59PM (1 child)
Situationally, maybe.
If you're an astronomer, amateur or otherwise, then long-exposure operations via telescope are definitely going to suffer, proportional to the amount of crap that ends up in orbit. The 'satellite left a streak of light and ruined my shot' problem.
But stargazing? Eyeball mk1, clear sky, middle of the night? Your local light pollution levels are going to matter far more than anything in orbit.
I grew up in what most city-dwellers would call the middle of nowhere. I currently live and work in the middle of nowhere (Amusingly, it's 2500km+ from the other nowhere. Nowhere's a big place). I don't notice any more satellites in the sky (as judged by: hey, that 'star' is moving!) than I did when I was a kid, thirty years ago. And neighbour, it's dark enough in these parts I can see just about everything the ancients did. Maybe being so far north helps, and the situation is different south of 49. But I haven't seen a change while stargazing.
This reminds me, I've been meaning to buy a telescope...
- D
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, @03:39PM
To kids, the satellites might be as interesting to see as stars: https://youtu.be/ERPsbkay0Hs [youtu.be]
It's all new to them anyway.
As for more satellites there should be more nowadays, otherwise Starlink wouldn't be able to provide coverage: https://youtu.be/G6-1rDLxZHM [youtu.be]
(Score: 5, Touché) by mhajicek on Saturday May 06, @08:13AM (5 children)
Large satellite constellations come after reusable rockets in the tech tree.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by gnuman on Saturday May 06, @11:03AM (3 children)
It's not out of order -- it's concurrent.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/07/05/move-over-spacex-arianegroup-to-make-europes-first-reusable-and-eco-friendly-rockets [euronews.com]
https://www.ariane.group/en/news/susie-the-reusable-space-transporter-european-style/ [www.ariane.group]
Also, keep in mind, there is nothing preventing ESA from using SpaceX to launch their constellation. Maybe ego, but probably not on ESA side. ESA has in the past used Soyuz for some of their projects.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday May 06, @03:14PM (1 child)
The Susie project sounds interesting but I must confess a bit of an aversion to a lifting body 7-crew transport re-entry capable space tug. That's a lot of cats to shove in one bag and when the US did it we got the Shuttle. That sexy-beast black-hole-money-pit crew-killer set our space program back by more than a decade. I hope they focus on being good at one thing instead of ok at many things.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gnuman on Sunday May 07, @01:00PM
Like many things at ESA, it received some meager funding for a prototype. It will take time to see what they can deliver. Susie is not so much a space shuttle and more of a ESA version of Orion.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday May 07, @04:21AM
Increasing the launch rate for the Ariane 6 would probably make it more competitive. It could be the real goal here.
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(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06, @11:08AM
More so if you're planning human bases on Mars (or the Moon).
[1] Get some centrifuge in orbit or some other artificial gravity system and put various animals and later humans in them for months and see what happens for the various target gravity.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday May 06, @03:07PM (4 children)
As a die-hard SpaceX fan, I sincerely hope that another competitor emerges in the low cost LEO launch space. Until they do, I'm delighted to hear about this new opportunity for Starship cargo launches.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday May 06, @05:19PM (1 child)
There's decent competition for Falcon 9 and Heavy. For example, India's LVM3 [wikipedia.org]. Starship is another story, but it's at least 2 years to becoming relevant.
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(Score: 2, Redundant) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday May 07, @01:34PM
I don't think they can compete on price or reliability with F9.
Those rockets cost $62 million USD each, an entire f9 launch is $68M. The primary competitive advantage they appear to have is "We're not SpaceX."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Sunday May 07, @05:12PM (1 child)
I winder why you appear to think that every bit of the surface of this planet has to have access to the WWW? As far s I can see right now all the intewrwebby has given us is a group of wacko billionaires who want to control the planet. Now don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with a decent profit from one's labors and wit, but the gaming of that profit into monopolistic and rent seeking powerhouses, is to me that worst of human enterprises.
Now if the idea is to get information to the most distant places on the planet, it seems to a better use of funds and labor to use proven methods to enlighten the masses. For instance, do you have any idea how many books can be printed and distributed for even a fraction of the billions it costs to blast a rocket into space? Or how many miles of cable or fiber can be laid for those billions? Also for fast exchange of information, how many microwave transmission towers can be installed, for just some of those billions?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday May 07, @09:32PM
I'm unclear what point you're trying to make.
Are you saying the internet shouldn't be available to every person on the planet? Are you volunteering? Who should choose who gets access and who doesn't?
Are you saying the internet invented rent-seeking monopolistic powerhouses? Did I hallucinate Dole, Standard Oil, or the despotism of Feudal Lords over subjects trapped literally from cradle to grave?
Are you saying physical books are more impactful than access to the entire internet?
Are you saying you prefer on-the ground infrastructure over off-world infrastructure? If so, why? Before you assert "It's cheaper!", consider that T-Mobile is spending $60 Billion on their 5g network build-out vs. Starlink's $30 Billion. Just comparing the sticker price makes Starlink look good; If you dig deeper and compare on a per-person or per-square-mile basis there's no competition whatsoever.
The only strong argument I can make against LEO satellite constellation internet service is the danger of Kessler Syndrome. That's a nontrivial risk, but all indications are that problem is being taken seriously by all parties involved.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Coligny on Sunday May 07, @07:32AM (1 child)
Yes… the Yuropean Hydra led by unelected corrupt in chief Van Der Leyen who should at least be preventively in jail for all her wrongdoings while german minister of defense then all the shady deals with pfizer during the kouff big scare…
Seems than living dumpster fire might be next chief of Nato too…
Really the kind of entity you want to trust for a fleet of communication sats able to pinpoint your position better than a targeting pod on a bomber….
What brilliant times we are living in…
(Score: 1) by Coligny on Tuesday May 09, @04:41AM
And even get m0r0ns to moderate this as troll…
Enjoying the EU abuse really that much !?