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

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191–200 of 500 posts

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

#191
post #80

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.

I'm european and dont like thousands of satelites swirrling around in the sky as well but I'd rather have government-founded satelites for the public benefit than from some way-too-rich sociopath's private company. Of course - this project would probably not exist without Starlink, so credit where credit is due. Personally I find it quite sad that we're destroying the night sky in the sense that before these projects…

> some way-too-rich sociopath's private company.

I am certainly you've developed this view in November of 2022. Meanwhile any European stuck with DSL - which would be most of my family - would be ecstatic to get sensible bandwidth today.

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

#192
post #97

[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.

OP words are dramatic, but he does have a point – bigger players in Europe could (and should) do better.

You are on the other hand setting unrealistic expectations for Estonia / Finland.

Hardware is obviously a lot more costly than software, hence why you hear more about software tech from Estonia (Skype, Transferwise, Pipedrive, Veriff to name a few) than hardware (Milrem robotics, Co-Module, Woola...) as the latter are of much smaller scale (respective to the size of Estonia) than the former: software scales a lot better.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who again came up with the first mRNA Covid vaccine?

You are playing into my hand. Most of the groundlaying work on mRNA has been done by Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian scientist who moved to the US to continue her research in better conditions. The history of mRNA research is pretty tangled, but its majority took place at the American side of the pond. Unless you want to cherry-pick one particular moment and disregard all others, then no, mRNA technology is not a Europea…

Katalin Karikó moved to the US in 1985, from a Warsaw Pact country.

She did her research at UPenn and accepted a demotion and pay cut in 1995 because grant agencies decided this weird mRNA stuff wasn't worth funding.

In 2006 she founded startup company RNARx, funded with 100k USD of government grants, but didn't come to an agreement to license patents of her own work which UPenn held.

So in 2013 she joined German company Biontech, funded with 150m EUR of venture capital, which was finally able to productize the research.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

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

#194
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets think what came out of the US - social media, big data, adtech, EVs, cloud computing, XaaS, machine learning, military advances.

I'm honestly not sure if this is supposed to be pro or anti USA

Neither, but every one of those impacted all of us.

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

#195

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.

Larry Ellison's Java

It is now, and that matters.

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

#196

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…

>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.

Boeing was heavily criticized by HN in every thread I saw about it. You picked a wrong example.

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

#197
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too expensive What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks? Would you like to show us the reasoning here? > it should have invested proactively in next gen satellite direct to device tech If the current one works - why would they? For defence usage, reliable is better than next gen usually. (Something something next gen F35 still not usable) > I wonder where cost competitive launch…

> What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks? - falcon 9 - $2700/kg - falcon heavy - $1400/kg - ariane 5 - $9000/kg > If the current one works - why would they? This is just low quality flame bait. If any of the before-mentioned (US) companies succeed commercially long-term, they will transform world-wide internet access especially in less developed countries. For clarification: as…

Last time I checked launch costs, and tjose are incredibly hard to come by, SpaceX prices were the LEO-launch equivalent of Ryan Air's 20 Euro tickets. So hard to compare. Also, for a bunch of launches, Ariane-5 was already a couple of years ago competitive with SpaceX launches. And the only real customer so far for cheap, low orbit launches using re-usable rockets is SpaceX itself for Starlink.

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

#198
post #187
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the US originally and emigrated about 10 years ago; I think you're conflating different aspects of technology. The boom of US tech isn't superior infrastructure, it's that tech is a very lucrative investment vehicle so it gets a ton of attention. (Well, it was anyways, not sure what 2023 is going to do to this) While I understand what you're saying, I think what you're observing and commenting on is the huge…

>The big projects like Starlink are extremely subsidized by the US government No, it's not. (No, "SpaceX's US government launch contracts = US government subsidies" is not true.)

This question was, lest say, discussed between the EU and the US for litteraly decades regarding Airbus subsidies and Boeing subsidies. The former came directly the latter came through government contracts. Government contracts are one of the easiest ways to subsidize a company, and SpaceX got plenty of those.

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

#199
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The big projects like Starlink are extremely subsidized by the US government No, it's not. (No, "SpaceX's US government launch contracts = US government subsidies" is not true.)

This question was, lest say, discussed between the EU and the US for litteraly decades regarding Airbus subsidies and Boeing subsidies. The former came directly the latter came through government contracts. Government contracts are one of the easiest ways to subsidize a company, and SpaceX got plenty of those.

I am well aware that EU claimed for decades that Boeing's military contracts were some sort of hidden subsidy for its civilian business. That does not make said claims accurate, or why McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed would not have sought to benefit from such subsidies, as opposed to selling itself to Boeing and exiting the airliner business, respectively.

SpaceX gets plenty of government contracts because it has proven, reliable, and volume-capable launchers of government payloads. Many within NASA were fiercely opposed to SpaceX for years.

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

#200
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/

I mean... DeepMind has its fair share of AI exposure
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