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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

#121

Post by amm »

Too little, too expensive, too late?

Once again the EU is playing catch up with last gen tech. Starlink is almost 10 years old - conceptually even older. Iridium has been around for over 25 years.

If the EU was serious, it should have invested proactively in next gen satellite direct to device tech that is around the corner in the US.

AST SpaceMobile is close to starting commercial activity for satellite based 5G that is supposed to work with any smart phone. Starlink is working on something similar with T-Mobile. G-Sat already has minimal D2D capability working with the latest iPhone generation.

Also, I wonder where cost competitive launch capability is going to come from for launching hundreds of satellites. Russia? China?

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

#122

Post by arlort »

fweimer wrote: post #65

I think IRIS² is actually an extension of the EU's GOVSATCOM initiative: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space-policy/... This means it's for government use, and is not really comparable to commercial end user services.

Yeah, don't know why they posted Renew's page instead of the official press release but here they are:

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/adoption-europea...

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEM...

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

#123

Post by lispm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #101
_19qg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> But there were times when German companies actually were world leaders in the big things as well

We have the world leader in civil aerospace in France/Germany, Many high-speed trains in the world are coming from France or Germany. There are many large high-tech sectors.

It's nice that Estonia is successful, but it's not where the next big chip manufacturing sites will be build. Intel and TSMC are in talks to move to the former East Germany (Saxony has roughly 70000 employees already in the chip manufacturing industry). The big Internet exchange node is in Frankfurt.

The EU has a lot to catch up in many countries, but it's not that we have no high-tech.

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

#124

Post by WithinReason »

defrost wrote: post #108
WithinReason wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

They are not visible to people when the satellites are in the shadow of the Earth (at night)

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

#125

Post by inglor_cz »

sofixa wrote: post #113
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…

> 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? And that's fine because those companies are serving the French market first? I don't expect French people to know about Zelle or Konbini payments.

Depends on what you mean by "fine".

It is certainly not bad, but it makes no sense to pretend that they play in the same league as the global giants, or even just one level under them.

At this level of significance, countries like Thailand or Turkey can play, too. I would expect more from France, one of the heavyweights of the Western civilization and a cradle of Enlightement.

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

#126

Post by petterparker »

lispm wrote: post #56
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> downvotes without rebuttals you are trolling. Estonia has high-tech exports of 2.6 billion USD. Germany has high-tech exports of around 200 billion USD, which makes it world-wide number three, with the US being number four. Data from the World Bank. The city I live in has roughly four times the GDP of Estonia. We have for example one of the largest civil airplane manufacturing sites here. 40000 people are employed…

Also ignoring that estonia has a population of only about 1.3 million, let alone the geographic size. It's a tiny country, which makes it easier to build infrastructure. Estonia has received heavy subsidies from the EU which went towards infrastructure projects. Germany on the other hand is the largest financial contributor to the EU by far. [1]

The plan has worked, to share the success of the big economic powers within the EU with the lesser fortunate so that they could be competitive in the future and even the grounds. It's not a surprise that coming out like the original commenter isn't exactly well received.

[1] https://statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/38139/umfrage/ne...

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

#127

Post by inglor_cz »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #105
inglor_cz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a good argument.

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

#128

Post by arlort »

culturestate wrote: post #116
fweimer wrote: post #65

I think IRIS² is actually an extension of the EU's GOVSATCOM initiative: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space-policy/... This means it's for government use, and is not really comparable to commercial end user services.

The release specifically addresses commercial use: > 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, including over isolated regions where terrestrial and broadband connection remain scarce. As does the page you linked: > The system will also allow mass-market appl…

All official releases only mention government use, I think the idea might be to use a government contract to help the industry develop know-how for private use later on

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

#129

Post by nbevans »

Vespasian wrote: post #98
nbevans wrote: post #54

They still haven't finished Galileo yet; with the project seemingly going backwards ever since the British were forced out. How will they deliver yet another moonshot project like this? They don't even possess reusable rocket technology yet to make such a LEO project economically viable.

Galileo has been operational for a few years. Even customer mobile devices Support and use it. Further more the British had a referendum and decided to leave on their own. Quite hard to call that force out. In fact it's impossible to expell a member state.

Operational? Yes. Reliable? No. It has had numerous outages in the last 4 years.

How do you explain several non-EU states being members of the Galileo programme - namely Switzerland and Norway? Hell, even China invested into it in 2003. And yet, the UK which invested almost a quarter of its funding is booted out on the basis of an unrelated political issue? It doesn't make sense. The British even offered to continue funding and investing into it. So "forced out" is an accurate description.

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

#130

Post by phkahler »

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…

>> There is something dysfunctional in us business culture, that extracts value first,

You just said it. When we prioritize the money over the activity that makes the money... We deprioritize the activity - it's at least second place if not worse.

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