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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

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #25
mooreds wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost, maybe? It is one thing to ship up a valuable satellite (which they all can do). But to ship up 1000s of satellites (and keep doing it in perpetuity, because IIRC they don't have a long lifetime[0]) gets expensive. 0: Looks like 5 years. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

Another major detail is that SpaceX is simply burning enormous amounts of money on this. Starlink's revenue is comparable to the ESA's entire 5 billion euro budget, and it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service. (And kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits) The chief problem "stopping" other countries from developing a starlink competitor is that starlink sim…

> it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service

Starlink was profitable in 2024 [1] and should be materially profitable once V3 goes up.

> kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits

This hits everyone. And it’s not a serious cost issue. Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to be due to obselescence. And the propellant depots SpaceX is building for NASA tie in neatly if the chips stablise enough to permit longer-lasting birds.

> doesn't make all that much sense if your country is capable of basic infrastructure construction

Infrastructure gets blown up and shut off. Hence the military interest.

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-much-does-starlink-make-this-...

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#32

Post by pie_flavor »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #12
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…

Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready to go". suborbital Yuanxingzhe-1 landed may 2025, and orbital Zhuque-3 was really close to landing in December. Long March 12A also tried in December although it wasn't as close to success. So if China is 10 years behind, they've caught up. We won't know if they're 10 years or further behind…

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 spend, say, ten times this, Starlink wouldn't be profitable today. And that's pretty much reality: the Ariane rocket costs ~$100m to Falcon's ~$15m (nobody knows what Zhuque-3 costs); I think cost per kg is 5000 vs 900. You could get it down to ~1.5B a year by narrowing it to just the latitudes overhead the EU, but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#33

Post by fragmede »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #17
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least they were while anti-trust still had some teeth. Trump's DOJ is highly unlikely to go after Starlink for refusing to launch for a competitor, let alone another nation's military.

To be future proof for more administrations you don't want a monopoly at any step. you really want at least three competitors at minimum. Large companies in tech have realized this by now since the 90s. Recently TeraWave was launched by SpaceX due to the inherent risk (and this is a direct competitor to SpaceX. See https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/bezos-blue-origin-satellite-...

What's confusing about that is Jeff Bezos is funding TeraWave to also compete with Amazon who is also launching their own Starlink competitor for satellite Internet?

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#34

Post by bluGill »

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #25
mooreds wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost, maybe? It is one thing to ship up a valuable satellite (which they all can do). But to ship up 1000s of satellites (and keep doing it in perpetuity, because IIRC they don't have a long lifetime[0]) gets expensive. 0: Looks like 5 years. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

Another major detail is that SpaceX is simply burning enormous amounts of money on this. Starlink's revenue is comparable to the ESA's entire 5 billion euro budget, and it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service. (And kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits) The chief problem "stopping" other countries from developing a starlink competitor is that starlink sim…

starlink has some travel niches where it makes sense. However not many cross the ocean. military where you can't trust the nearby infrastructure is the other big one. Disaster recovery where the local system is not working isn't big enough to fund anything though it will use whatever they can get.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#35

Post by estearum »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another major detail is that SpaceX is simply burning enormous amounts of money on this. Starlink's revenue is comparable to the ESA's entire 5 billion euro budget, and it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service. (And kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits) The chief problem "stopping" other countries from developing a starlink competitor is that starlink sim…

> it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service Starlink was profitable in 2024 [1] and should be materially profitable once V3 goes up. > kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits This hits everyone. And it’s not a serious cost issue. Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to be due to obselescence. And the propellant depots SpaceX is building for NA…

From the PCMag article:

> For example, although the Starlink subsidiary reported $2.7 billion in revenue for 2024, the same financial statement doesn’t account for the costs of launching and maintaining a fleet of nearly 8,000 Starlink satellites.

???

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#36

Post by sigmoid10 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #12
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…

Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready to go". suborbital Yuanxingzhe-1 landed may 2025, and orbital Zhuque-3 was really close to landing in December. Long March 12A also tried in December although it wasn't as close to success. So if China is 10 years behind, they've caught up. We won't know if they're 10 years or further behind…

China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of state sponsored hackers? No chance.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#38

Post by bryanlarsen »

jordanb wrote: post #22

I think the next big war will involve a kessler syndrome, not because people start firing off anti-satellite weapons (since there's a strong component of MAD in doing that) but because the belligerents will have their own multi-thousand satellite constellations in orbit and they will quit coordinating with one another on collision avoidance.

Starlink is redeploying to 300 miles. Many consider Kessler to be impossible at 300 miles. Any unpowered satellite at a 300 mile orbit will deorbit within a couple of months. But a collision means fragments which deorbit faster because they have a higher surface/weight ratio, and because orbit disturbances lower that time considerably. Any single disturbance that raises aphelion lowers perihelion.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#39

Post by bluGill »

tekla wrote: post #9
thisislife2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink

#40

Post by fragmede »

bluGill wrote: post #34
SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another major detail is that SpaceX is simply burning enormous amounts of money on this. Starlink's revenue is comparable to the ESA's entire 5 billion euro budget, and it still looks like starlink is not net-profitable as a service. (And kessler syndrome avoidance is already pushing up costs with the lower orbits) The chief problem "stopping" other countries from developing a starlink competitor is that starlink sim…

starlink has some travel niches where it makes sense. However not many cross the ocean. military where you can't trust the nearby infrastructure is the other big one. Disaster recovery where the local system is not working isn't big enough to fund anything though it will use whatever they can get.

The cruise ship industry is $78B of revenue. He airline industry is $840B of revenue. Between the two, I think Starlink has enough customers crossing the ocean to be profitable, given how hard they drive down costs.
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