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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

#101

Post by inglor_cz »

_19qg wrote: post #66
inglor_cz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAP is also 51 years old. There is no shortage of big, old companies in Germany. There is a visible shortage of successful young companies. In my comment edit, I mentioned the 20 year limit specifically, because the ossification in last decades is real. The US generates a lot more startups, even the London scene is livelier than the rest of Europe taken together.

There are roughly 1500 mid-sized companies in Germany which are among the world-leaders in their tech sector. You may never have heard it, but Elon Musk runs his factories with process automation from Germany (he bought a company) and robots from Kuka/Germany. Germany alone has roughly half of all so-called hidden-champions world-wide. Many of them are in High-tech. Europe lacks the large internet and software compan…

The Mittelstand is pretty much the only reason why Germany's prosperity is still a thing. Countries like Italy and Spain, which lack this backbone of mid-sized companies, are in deep trouble and unlikely to get out of it.

But there were times when German companies actually were world leaders in the big things as well, not just reliable suppliers to foreign big players. Don't you count this as a regression?

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

#102

Post by Ambolia »

inglor_cz wrote: post #91
Ambolia wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remains to be seen how the German economy evolves and if they are going to pay for it, because other EU countries probably won't.

[flagged]

Most europeans countries have worse demographics than Japan if you don't count migrants.

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

#103

Post by emilburzo »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #83
Deukhoofd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why does European airbus thrive, while us aircraft industry declined?

The documentary "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing"[1] goes into this topic, and I believe the wiki page[2] summary captures it nicely:

> "There were many decades when Boeing did extraordinary things by focusing on excellence and safety and ingenuity. Those three virtues were seen as the key to profit. It could work, and beautifully. And then they were taken over by a group that decided Wall Street was the end-all, be-all. [...]"

Of course, I have no idea if this is just cherry-picking information, but it does seem plausible why things "suddenly" changed.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11893274/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...

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

#104

Post by justeleblanc »

js4ever wrote: post #35
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/

Maybe because it's always in response to, and generally a failed copy costing billions to Europeans because of bureaucrats?

Any examples you'd care to elaborate about?

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

#105

Post by PartiallyTyped »

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.

> But no one else tried for more than 50 years.

Was there a good enough reason to go again?

In contrast, there is a good reason to have re-usable rockets and quick deployment now.

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

#106

Post by touisteur »

sschueller wrote: post #74
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

That is just not the case. Look at companies like AMSL which no one comes even close. It is likely that every device you own has a microchip made with a machine by AMSL. Is it sexy? Is there a narcissistic tweeting CEO? No, but there is inovasion at the highest level. The mRNA vaccine also came out of the "EU". What the EU has little off and what you are probably complaining about it throwing money at a hundred thing…

And even there, if you look at the sheer amount of R&D projects funded by the EU... Anyone serious can't say the EU doesn't invest massively in R&D. Interestingly enough, most of what I see funded and successfully becoming products are incremental development (increasing wireless bandwidth for specific apps or constraints, improving industrial productivity or getting to next gen for any tech) and few moonshots. I work with a lot of tech SMEs and most consider these projects key to their survival, as they get put in touch with (international) customers to work on hard but specific use cases and they get funded for R&D, improve their portfolio...

But as you said, it's not very sexy, there's a little bit (not that much really) of management/bureaucracy (and most actually understand that state of things as the european equilibrium between corruption and too-much-red-tape) and it's not that hard to get funded on small to medium projects.

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

#107

Post by arlort »

seszett wrote: post #97
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Entire huge countries such as France and Italy produce basically nothing of value when it comes to tech, while small nations like Estonia and Finland punch well above their weight. I'm still waiting for the Estonian space rockets and Finnish airplanes and high speed rail. Seriously your rant is a bit misplaced.

Tech is only tech if it runs on javascript

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

#108

Post by defrost »

WithinReason wrote: post #59
RedShift1 wrote: post #30

I don't like putting more junk into LEO than we absolutely have to because it disrupts our space telescopes (which the EU has also invested over 1 billion euro in). I much rather have the funding go to improving land based internet infrastructure.

The satellite orbits decay, they don't stay up indefinitely

There are 10s of thousands planned and other companies eager to put up their own constellations.

Those that fall are planned to fall and to be replaced .. the issue is that are now thousands (and will be more) sats in LEO orbits polluting the night sky with both visible light and transmission spectra energy.

Doesn't matter much to those that live in cities and can't see the stars in any case .. but it's a blight to those that formally had clear skys, and to both visible and radio spectrum astronomers.

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

#109

Post by inglor_cz »

justeleblanc wrote: post #94
inglor_cz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, t…

A company is a success only if its market is the whole world, or at the very least covers the USA where most of HN's users live? That's an interesting take.

And a pretty mainstream one. One of the niceties of software is that it scales quite easily and that if it really solves an important problem, it can grow explosively all over the world, where people do have the same problem that needs solving.

Specializing in a niche corner of the market can be called a success, but a cunning dwarf is still a dwarf. For one, it lacks the necessary capital to invest into something more risky but potentially more rewarding.

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

#110

Post by hkpack »

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…

> Europe is also so densely populated that full 4g coverage is totally doable.

The main goal here as I can see is to learn from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the main infrastructure (including electric grid) was targeted.

The issue is much broader than you may consider. Besides the obvious benefits for military communication, consider the following points (all from my experience living in Kyiv):

1. Modern society depends on the internet heavily - banks, shops, eCommerce. Your ATMs need internet to allow you to withdraw cash. Your enemy will target your power infrastructure to stop economic activity very early.

2. In case of long-term power outages, you can expect most of the land lines will stop working after 12 hours when batteries on the ISP sides start to be depleted.

3. Your 4G network will become less and less useful very quickly, the more people will start losing wired internet and switching over to 4G. The cellular will not be able to fulfil demand and eventually will halt under the load.

4. It is very difficult to power wired internet with mobile generation, as the infrastructure is huge and requires power generation in multiple places at once.

Satellite internet solve this miraculously:

1. you can get internet where you need it without reliance on any other infrastructure - i.e. bank, office, ATM, etc... Just plug the dish to the nearby router.

2. Mobile power generation becomes much more useful, as you can have it only where it needed (i.e. to power satcom).

3. It is VERY cheap considering the alternative.

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