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Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

newscientist.com

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Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#121

Post by inglor_cz »

noosphr wrote: post #107
cyberax wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They're even espionaging from themselves in the future! Dude, have you ever _been_ in China? They don't need espionage, they're now way ahead of the world in technology, except in a few areas like biotech research and semiconductor manufacturing. For the last decade, China has been having more engineers in _training_ than the total number of en…

I strongly suggest to anyone who thinks this isn't true to go to Shenzhen and then SF. One feels like the future. The other feels like you will get shot.

Rockets are notoriously complicated, though. Only a few nations even managed to get to the orbit, and not for a lack of trying.

SpaceX is a rare bird - a space startup that actually achieved not just spaceflight, but (so far only partial) reusability of launchers. Most space startups died long before that, including Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace. Given that they are gone, we don't think of them often, but the total graveyard of defunct space startups is quite sizeable.

Russia seems to be slowly losing their space capabilities. The EU still does not have a human-rated launcher. These aren't small entities either.

Getting to space is a dangerous business with extremely thin security margins, where previous experience matters a lot.

I think China will eventually have reusable rockets, but it will take some time.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#122

Post by cyberax »

inglor_cz wrote: post #121
noosphr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly suggest to anyone who thinks this isn't true to go to Shenzhen and then SF. One feels like the future. The other feels like you will get shot.

Rockets are notoriously complicated, though. Only a few nations even managed to get to the orbit, and not for a lack of trying. SpaceX is a rare bird - a space startup that actually achieved not just spaceflight, but (so far only partial) reusability of launchers. Most space startups died long before that, including Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace. Given that they are gone, we don't think of them often, but the total g…

China has at least two startups that launched rockets into space. Zhuque-3 launch even almost landed a booster.

It's the second-mover advantage. Once you know that something is possible, you can often avoid exploring all the dead ends.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#123

Post by pacificmint »

nine_k wrote: post #119
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they will be destroyed immediately

To shoot something down at 70,000 ft (21 km) all you need is a conventional military jet fighter, and a long-range rocket, or even a MiG-31 with a conventional cannon. At best you can make these birds cheaper than the rocket + flight time. Something that flies at the upper edge of the stratosphere, at 40-50 km (160,000 ft) would be hard to reach with currently available means. You can of course fire a THAAD at it, bu…

> you can fire a THAAD at a Starlink satellite as well.

You can fire a THAAD at one Starlink satellite, but probably not at 8000 of them.

For comparison we’re currently producing THAAD interceptors at a rate of 96 a year (though Lockheed is aiming to increase it to 400).

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#124

Post by kolinko »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #47
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

I'd broadly agree that EU is pretty behind the curve. But I think China is probably only ~5 years max behind the curve in terms of Starlink. But in terms of defense needs, I don't think you actually need the thousands and thousands for reasonable returns. DoD/NRO has bought maybe ~500 Starshields ( https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/03/26/spacex-starshield-... ) from SpaceX. I think China is well within reach of bei…

Spy satellites you can have way fewer, but for an internet connection you really need Starlink's scale. Otherwise you need full 360 deg view of a horizon (good luck with that on the battlefield), and a much higher power use.

Having said that, I double checked the numbers - it would take ~60 launches at the minimum to replicate Starlink 1.0. This is how many launches China does per year right now. So it is doable indeed for them, just absurdly expensive - $10-$30B, but they can afford that.

EU on the other hand - no way. We're doing 5 launches a year with Arianne, due to incompetent management over the last decade. Unless China or US allow us to use their infrastructure, we have no way of doing all this.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#125

Post by kolinko »

jopsen wrote: post #88
pie_flavor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first rocket may take off sooner than 2040. But Starlink is not just a rocket, it is a complete business process , with a launch regularity and price. A Starlink satellite's worth of space on a Falcon 9 costs 500k-750k. With about ten thousand satellites, which last about five years, this means maybe a billion and a half per year spent on the space arm of the business, not counting ground stations. If they had to…

> but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem. How many starlink clones are there really customers for? Many people have fiber, and in an urban area you'll probably prefer 5G, if you can't get fiber or wired internet. Starlink is great if you live in the middle of nowhere, but few people do. Even if you could do a competitive launch cost, the number of customers is limited.

All the airlines, all the trains, and other government-supported entities may have a strategic interest to use a local version of Starlink. But everyone else? I don't think anyone will buy a service that will be 10x more expensive, 10x slower and 10x more energy hungry than Starlink -- this first mover advantage may be hard to beat.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#126

Post by kolinko »

thisislife2 wrote: post #108
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

India's ISRO already competes with SpaceX for these launches ( ISRO puts 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-successfully-... ), despite not having any reusable launch vehicles (reason - it's in the top 5 in space technology and just cheaper - Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9xlgnnpzvo ). Once it masters reusable…

36 compared to 10000. This is 2-3 orders of magnitude. It's like a corner store trying to compete with Walmart.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#127

Post by kolinko »

RobotToaster wrote: post #106
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

I'm wondering if we will see a resurgence in direct to geostationary, It seems like it should be a lot easier to cover the planet when you only need a few satellites.

Bandwidth, input latency (250ms absolute minimum), energy use and antenna size (mattering for mobility and military). I don't think there is a way for geo to compete.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#128

Post by kolinko »

thisislife2 wrote: post #4
kolinko wrote: post #2

The thing is - without Falcon9 / Starship they really cannot - both China and EU are ~10-20 years (sic) behind SpaceX, and without thousands of satellites on LEO you just cannot have terminal similar to SpaceX's. (And don't get me started on how bad Iris2 is/will be. It's a program that EU has to shut down discussions on how terribly behind we are. The last time I checked, a year ago, EU's plans were to have first Fa…

Can you explain what makes Falcon9 / Starship special (or needed) to launch these satellites? China, India, EU, Japan etc. all have the capability to launch satellites. So why is a Falcon9 / Starship a particular requirement?

Reusability. Even if money were not an issue, other nations need to build a new rocket for every launch, and it's extremely hard/impossible to catch up.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#129

Post by kolinko »

iSnow wrote: post #102
palmotea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it would be very expensive to emulate that without super efficient launching capabilities. But does a military really need that many to get the necessary capability? Would a smaller constellation be sufficient, especially without competing civilian users?

>But does a military really need that many to get the necessary capability? No. The German army wants a constellation of initially 40, and later just over 100 satellites. They do not want or need to replicate the massive Starlink numbers.

The numbers just don't add up there. With just 40-100 satellites they need to be GEO, and this means crappy transfers, big lags (200-300 absolute minimum, more 500ms), and most importantly - big, power hungry antennas.

It's a PR project to calm people down, not a real solution.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#130

Post by kolinko »

bluGill wrote: post #39
tekla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those countries (well probably except China) have any significant launch capacity to deploy constellations

They can build it in a few years though. It takes money and can be done overnight but there is nothing about that that costs 10 years. 10 years got to the moon - from a much lower base. 10 years means you are starting with college graduates and building it from no previous experience - or you already have a lot but only are putting minimal budget into improving.

Apollo mission was a national mobilisation project that's size happened once/twice in a century. And it still took 10 years. There is no willpower to do that right now in EU.

Right now we, in EU, plan to have first reusable vehicles (Ariane Next) in around 10 years - around 2035. And that is for the first vehicles, not for scaling up the production.

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