May be don’t depend on the infrastructure build, owned and operated by a ketamin addicted fachist billionaire?
Build. Your. Own.
It is a known science, he is not reinventing the wheel. He just put them in leo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS² TLDR: EU, Norway and Iceland want to have a domestic alternative to Starshield up and running by 2030
what is why decentralization is important!
No one company owns all the fiber, no one company should own all the space infrastructure.
Transfer ownership to an international NGO. There’s no reason to have a hundred companies all maintaining independent 1,000+ satellite constellations.
Holy shit what a solution! You surely solved it all with that suggestion.
Great vomment bro, you sure told him.
occasionally i log out to see what someone i blocked had to say. maybe 1 time in 10 i see something that makes me say, ‘hm, maybe i misjudged you.’
this is not one of those times.
Then we should launch ours yesterday.
Is there even room? Between musk and bezos, the sky is full of them.
Yes. Space is big. Very big. People vastly underestimate how much room there is even in LEO. We haven’t even scratched the surface of how much we can put up there; and in LEO, Kessler syndrome is not really an issue. It will be decades, if not centuries, before the number of satellites becomes a real issue.
Let’s try to put a little perspective on this. Currently, there are ~20,000 satellites in orbit. Seems like a big scary number. But let’s actually think about this. Imagine if there were only 20,000 cars on the road across the entire US, or the EU if that’s easier to think about. 20,000. Across ALL the roads. It would probably feel pretty empty right?
Well, most satellites are smaller than cars and the amount of available space in orbit is exponentially greater than the amount of space on all roads. Literally not a problem.
Thank you for explaining, that’s actually pretty comforting to learn.
Sure, Iris2 is coming.
Like US or any other bigger country would agree. But yes, how is a foreign country launching satellites in low orbit all over other countries is beyond me. Why EU keeps silent…
That was the best time. Second best is now.
We don’t have reusable rockets which makes launching the fleet prohibitively expensive.
The EU pays for the weapons in Ukraine while the US makes the profits.
It’s a trap. There is no easy way out. The EU can’t buy their way to prosperity and if it could, it wouldn’t have the politicians to do so.
We can fill one hole but then we don’t have the resources to fill the others.
Any ideas what could be done?
Maybe actually informing oneself before posting stuff like that? Ariane 6 is perfectly capable of launching a strategic satellite communication network. Will the launching itself cost a bit more? Likely but the extra launch costs are wildly exaggerated. Which is exactly why the EU is creating such a satellite network as we speak. The network should become operational in 2029/2030. In the meanwhile there is a gap solution of GOVSATCOM which started this year. We can of course debate till eternity how that is too late but decision makers have woken up at least in the aftermath of the 2nd Ukraine invasion in 2022.
Now if we had listened to those that were talking day and night how Europe should throw away its Ariane 6 launcher because it is not reusable, we would be really fucked. Luckily those were ignored, as were the voices that were calling Galileo a waste of money.
PS: Falcon 9 list price in 2026 is apparently 74 Mio USD. Reports of Ariane launch prices are thin but one can find numbers from 72 to 115 Mio EUR.
Price per launch is only part of the equation. Price per kg, and available launches are two others. Ariane 6 has a payload capacity of about 10 tonnes to LEO. Falcon 9 has a payload capacity to LEO of about 25 tonnes. Obviously SpaceX is charging what the market will bear, and making bank in the process with their higher cadence. Also, none of this has any bearing on the benefit to national security that the EU enjoys by having their own launch vehicle.
Ariane 6 64 has about 22t LEO payload at reported launch costs of 115 Mio EUR. The price disadvantage is blown way out of proportion. Contrary to your claims launching is not extremely profitable for SpaceX. It is profitable but there is no indication they are charging way over because they can.
Edit: Apparently the SpaceX launch business was even operated at a loss in Q3 2026, it was a small loss, so they are basically managing to cover their costs.
Internally launches could be as cheap as $20 million for SpaceX. https://innotechinsider.com/spacex/spacex-launch-business-margins-q3-2026-analysis/
https://orbitalradar.com/how-many-starlink-satellites
10,000 satellites are needed to have the same coverage.
With 100 satellites per launch that’s 100 times $50 million more expenses. It’s doable, but the money cannot be spent on drones, ai or medical research.
We can fill some holes but not all.
Yeah, sure. I also heard the fairy tale number 15 Mio USD before. What one department is charging another department of the same company for a service does not necessarily have anything to do with cost reality, assuming that number is actually real to begin with. Fact is, the list price is around 74 Mio EUR, if you order smaller jobs it gets even substantially more expensive per kg LEO and yet the launch business failed to make a profit in Q3 2026.
You claimed that not having SpaceX style rockets makes launch costs “prohibitively expensive.” which is just BS. Even more so, even Amazon found the service interesting enough to use it for some of their satellites.
Sure, it would be cool to have more cost effective rockets but what we have works well, at a much more moderate price premium than internet pundits like to claim. Europe does not need a 10000 satellite network for its strategic needs not even nearly as many. The main aim is not power projection to the other side of the world but defense and services in Europe.
yet the launch business failed to make a profit in Q3 2026.
Which tells us that the costs are a bit higher than $20 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
There were about 120 launches and 2/3 for Starlink.
If the launches sell for $76 million, almost $80m, then 40 of these launches and 80 times $20 million paid for everything to almost break even.
40 times $80m plus 80 times $20 are $3.2b plus $1.6b = 4.8b. That’s $40m per launch.
So you are right, the costs for Ariane 6 launches are not prohibitively more expensive to create a military project. But it can’t become commercially successful, so Europe will bleed money.
Europe does not need a 10000 satellite network
How many are needed? And what happens if Russia starts to shoot them down? Do we have the capacity to replace them?
The main aim is not power projection to the other side of the world
Yet that’s where the satellites should also fly if they circle the world.
but defense and services in Europe.
If Europe fights Russia, why would there be trench warfare like in Ukraine? Wouldn’t Europe have air superiority while Russia has the space technology to fill the sky over the front with shrapnel?
Came here to say this. SpaceX isn’t getting paid to launch Starlink satellites, but you can’t find launch access in the Falcon 9 mission capacity cheaper anywhere else. It would be foolish to assume they wouldn’t charge what they can and not what they need to to fund their own launches.
I was saying this back in the Motorola Iridium days
Impossible! No one could have predicted it was a bad idea to put all of our trust in techbro US billionaires!
Bribes…
Trump and Elon are Putin puppets. Don’t depend on them.
It is certainly a good idea to tell them that…
