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IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

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Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#81

Post by peterfirefly »

inglor_cz wrote: post #42
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's similar to the sub-5 minute mile in the sense that once something is shown as possible, others will achieve it as well.

It is also possible to land on the Moon, we know that. But no one else tried for more than 50 years. The barriers to becoming an agile space company are formidable. When looking at SpaceX, we forget how many space startups from that period are now defunct and forgotten. John Carmack founded one, too; it is gone.

Carmack's was very much a part-time venture. It was interesting to read their blog and watch their videos. It was clear that they were very good at certain things (code + welding) and not very good at others (electronics, fire-proofing, planning, testing, finite element analysis, any kind of simulation that Carmack didn't write).

An interesting fact is that they did very well as long as they could conduct cheap tests very often. As their rockets got bigger, they could no longer do that and then they floundered.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#82

Post by sofixa »

inglor_cz wrote: post #7
kybernetyk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is due to massive, shaping French influence on the EU. There are many relatively market-friendly nations in the EU, especially in the eastern half, but the EU is mostly an extension of the French model and without the British, it really started leaning heavily into the protectionist bureaucratic model. The UK acted as a brake of sorts on those tendencies and its influence is sorely missed, at least by people lik…

If you have to compare the UK and France on free market vs "protectionist and bureacratic" (i disagree, there are but notes of protectionism sometimes - e.g. Alsthom power was sold to GE without the most important bits, but it was sold nonetheless), which is better for the everyday humans? A couple of examples spring to mind, all of which are extremely disfavourable towards the UK, so please help me have a more nuanced argument:

* The privatisation of UK railways has been an unmitigated disaster

* The privatisation and selling off of various UK heavy industries (like steel, automobiles, trains, aeroplanes, shipbuilding) has been somewhat of a disaster with the majority of it closing, and the rest being foreign owned. Where the UK were a leader in many areas, they no longer are, with a drastic impact on the people who used to work there. As a counterpoint, France has managed to maintain shipbuilding, airplane, train construction at a pretty good level.

* Where the UK is "better" is financial services - IMO in part due to the English language, in part due to money laundering with the help of the various crown tax havens; and the startup scene - again the English language surely helped, but so did less rigorous labour laws (and that has been slightly relaxed in France).

Anything else come to mind?

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#83

Post by PicassoCTs »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #62
kensai wrote: post #28

There is always bashing if there is something about the EU and its national projects, not always deserved. However sometimes I wished HN showed more of local projects. For example: has there been a post about the European AI? https://www.aleph-alpha.com/

It's honestly got to the point where I barely open comments related to EU projects any more. While most of the time there's somewhat nuanced discussions in comments, once the EU gets mentioned for some reason most of the comments basically boil down to "EU bad, US better", and "Big government bad", completely ignoring the actual contents of what the post it about.

A crowd that is ideological resistant to reality in quite a entertaining fashion. Just remember the Boing 737 Max, which was never explored under this focus. Why does European airbus thrive, while us aircraft industry declined? Both are heavily state subsidized, so it is not that. There is something dysfunctional in us business culture, that extracts value first, and then runs without creating something for the value extracted.

It sometimes is almost reminiscent of the eastern European oligarchs that emerged at the end of the coldwar.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#84

Post by Ambolia »

concordDance wrote: post #44

Does it annoy anyone else that the title says "Musk's Starlink"? Yes, it was his idea and he is the main driving force and owns half of the company, but any project like this is a collaborative effort between tens of thousands of people.

Those thousands won't get blamed personally if it fails. But Musk will be.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#85

Post by k__ »

inglor_cz wrote: post #21
k__ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it gets a bit better now that Germany got rid of it's conservative government.

The SPD is every as bit as psychologically conservative as the CDU/CSU, a party of the 65+ electorate and 65+ membership. The FDP and the Greens are the more modern ones, but there is an anti-tech undercurrent in the Green party that distrusts anything industrial. The space industry has a nontrivial carbon trace; its development in Germany would be, at the very least, pretty controversial.

Baby steps.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#86

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
gizmo wrote: post #4

> This future satellite constellation infrastructure will allow for synergies with private sector to develop commercial services and provide with high-speed internet and communication in all EU territory. Satellite internet isn’t great for speed. Europe is also so densely populated that full 4g coverage is totally doable. I think satellite internet is cool, but it doesn’t serve a real need and I expect this project t…

> satellite internet is cool, but it doesn’t serve a real need Starlink’s 100 Mbps [1] is faster than many European countries fixed averages and most’s mobile medians [2]. Also, the second sentence of this article cites the need: “critical scenarios where terrestrial networks are absent or disrupted, as observed, for instance, in the unfolding war in Ukraine.” [1] https://bigtechquestion.com/2022/01/10/broadband/how-…

> Starlink’s 100 Mbps [1] is faster than many European countries fixed averages and most’s mobile medians [2].

But Starlink also doesn’t deliver those 100 Mbps reliably. Starlink is an awesome choice if you are in an underserved region but in most EU countries most people have better alternatives.

The capacity of Starlink is very low for many countries in the EU. If people were to actually use it at scale it wouldn’t work.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#87

Post by voytec »

peterfirefly wrote: post #64
inglor_cz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is somewhat of an indictment of the "single market" idea, or, more precisely, of its implementation. We still have shocking differences not just in tech, but in food quality across the EU. Whatever sells in Czechia, Croatia or Bulgaria tends to be a) more expensive than in Germany and b) less good. I can't imagine the same happening in the US; Mississippians wouldn't tolerate being fed with worse cheese than New…

> Whatever sells in Czechia, Croatia or Bulgaria tends to be a) more expensive than in Germany and b) less good. I'm shocked that that is still the case. I remember recurrent news stories years ago on German TV about that exact thing, except with Poland. Poles who lived close to the border shopped food in Germany for that very reason. I don't understand why food would be more expensive in countries with lower wages.…

There's a similar situation between Czechia and Poland currently. Folks from .cz travel to .pl to buy food, cigarettes, medicine and even coal. I have no comparison of goods quality, but Poland is cheaper for Czechs.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#88

Post by inglor_cz »

sofixa wrote: post #45
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Meh, the EU (where I live) is an ossified behemoth whose VIPs (Germany and France) don't really understand or appreciate tech and cannot innovate their way out of a paper bag. It's telling that you're lumping France and Germany together that you don't know what you're talking about. France has come an extremely long way in the past few years, with pretty good mobile and fibre coverage (there are villages with hundr…

"Insulting to companies such as Doctolib (revolutionised health appointments, a single platform to book one, send your documents if needed, have ones online, etc.), Back Market, fintechs such as Qonto and Swile, Ornikar, etc. etc."

Do you realize that even here on HN, the percentage of people who know at least one of those names is likely to be in low single digits?

Compared to Google or Meta or Apple or Microsoft, these are not successes. And yet, France with its relatively big population and relatively good schools, should theoretically produce at least one or two comparable companies.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#89

Post by sofixa »

luckylion wrote: post #79
peterfirefly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's problem is German, not European. Germany also used to have waiting lists of many months for getting an extra line (+ they were expensive). Apparently, that was a Good Thing because it was because the state monopoly was protected against competition from Evil Capitalism (usually Foreign as well). Allow competition and good things will happen.

> Germany's problem is German, not European. I'm not sure if you've noticed who's calling the shots in the EU. Germany's problem is the EU's problem. I often feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding in German politics which then spreads to EU politics. They make the same basic mistake the Soviets made: believing that people are perfectly rational, don't react to incentives, and will do what's best for everyon…

> I'm not sure if you've noticed who's calling the shots in the EU.

Yeah, the EU.

> Germany's problem is the EU's problem.

Certainly not with regards to infrastructure. All countries around Germany are strictly better for mobile and broadband infrastructure.

Re: IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

#90

Post by ilyt »

0xDEF wrote: post #17
sys42590 wrote: post #5

Sounds fantastic, but if we look at the history of the EU's Galileo GNSS [0], massive delays can be expected. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)

There was little demand for non-GPS satnav. There is plenty of demand for non-Musk satcom.

There is demand for good satellite internet.

There is no demand for something more expensive than starlink, aside from government stuff and you need consumers to support it and not be money pit

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