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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

#361

Post by panick21_ »

Vespasian wrote: post #189
nbevans wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Switzerland and Norway negotiated special treaties to join Galileo. The UK were in because of their EU membership. No one could have taken that from them besides they themselves. And once you are out you get treated like any 3rd party state. If you want a special deal you better bring some time and be prepared to start fresh. The desire "to get Brexit done" in a very tight timeframe, pushed by populist politicians, d…

I hate these takes. If the goal of the EU is to make European cooperation. Why then was the attitude 'Britain wants to leave, fine fuck them'. Like just because they didn't want to be in the EU anymore, now the EU is no longer about cooperation? All of sudden the EU acted more like a geopolitical opponent of Britain.

The idea that there was not enough time to negotiate is nonsense. This was the EU punishing Britain for leaving, its as simple as that. If the EU was really about European cooperation, then they should have wanted Britain to stay in the project.

ESA existed before the EU and cooperation on space goes back way before the EU. It was short sighted politics with the goal to inflict punishment on Britain and make sure nobody else leaves.

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

#362

Post by drewg123 »

scotty79 wrote: post #355

Why this infatuation with low Earth orbit? Why not put just few satelites further out, like every other satellite internet provide does except starlink? EDIT: To people bringing up latency. Far away satellite has them far enough that they cover large area so the signal goes to satellite and back and that's it. Distance introduces latency. But in case of constallation packet must bounce through multiple satellites and…

According to https://frankrayal.com/2021/07/07/latency-in-leo-satellites-..., GEO has about 20x the latency of LEO.

I think this is why starlink is so much more usable than traditional satellite internet.

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

#363

Post by scotty79 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #293
dminik wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few comments in this thread from self proclaimed Europeans, but this one is the weirdest. The internet infrastructure here is great. I haven't seen a sub 10mbps offering in years (with 100mbps being fairly common). The only spotty places are small villages (which is a rather common theme everywhere). Europeans aren't stuck with DSL.

Where is "here"? There are plenty of places in Europe with mediocre Internet infrastructure. It is not universally "great" by any measure.

So pressure your governments so that they invest in infrastructure either directly of by incentivising private companies while keeping them in competition with each other. Even some poor European countries have amazing internet connectivity right now.

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

#364

Post by Oxidation »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #280
alright_scowl wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, do they? I don't participate in threads about the US and its policies, so I wouldn't be able to tell.

Well, as someone who has lived in various parts of the U.S (mainly Utah, Oregon and Northern California), as well as Germany, Denmark, and is married to an Italian: Germans, Danes, and Italians often have a lot of cursorily formed opinions of the U.S, while in the U.S if people have strong opinions about the EU (and not actual familiarity) they are often not just wrong or stupid but also just as often completely unhi…

> completely unhinged from reality

Like apparently the UK bring a knife-ridden crime epicentre, when the knife-crime rate is, while unacceptably high, actually rather lower than the US, and that's before you consider guns which are about 10 times more on top of that.

(And let's please at least pretend that the UK is still in the EU for argument's sake :)

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

#365

Post by panick21_ »

usrusr wrote: post #170
ilyt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is demand for good satellite internet. There is no demand for something more expensive than starlink, aside from government stuff and you need consumers to support it and not be money pit

Exactly: any constellation built with pre-falcon9 rockets might be non-Musk, but it won't even be remotely starlink-like. They'd inevitably aim for orbits higher than "throwaway-LEO" and the much sparser constellations those orbits enable (lines of sight less constrained by horizon) will cause considerably more latency (far from geostationary-bad, but a meaningful quality difference) even if the inherent SNR drawback…

Amazon basically bought every available heavy lift rocket for the next decade in an attempt to compete with Starlink.

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

#366

Post by scotty79 »

frankreyes wrote: post #182
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a point to bring electricity into a village, then there is a point to bring there also a fiber.

Infrastructure has to be self financed otherwise it's a waste of resources. That's why rural areas do not have internet. It fails every time

Barely any infrastructure is self financed, anywhere.

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

#367

Post by panick21_ »

kwere wrote: post #294
Ambolia wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian economy wasn't so bad until they joined the euro. The northern part still has decent industry even now.

This is unfortunately a populist trope (here in italy) hijacked by no-euro, no-europe, no-nato that need some data/debunking: Italy is economically coasting since the 1980s, basically since the termination of QE of Bank Of Italy toward Italy Treasure in 1981, and since then politicians struggled to finance their banana republic policies resulting also in less subsidies that boosted businesses, lowering growth. Tangen…

Italy success was largely being a proto-China (or proto-Vietnam) before those existed. Basically no respecting copy right and producing knock of stuff.

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

#368

Post by panick21_ »

scotty79 wrote: post #356
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.

I don't like putting out huge amount of objects on any orbit because if they collide bits of them might spread to any orbit depending on the size of chunks and exact collision geometry.

This is vastly overestimated problem. Changing orbits takes a lot of energy and most of these crashes don't have enough to put significant materials in a significant different orbit.

If something is already on an orbit that decades within a decade or so, it still will.

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

#369

Post by scotty79 »

adolph wrote: post #329

With the war, Ukraine needed satellite telecommunications, but the EU didn’t have something to offer. Ukraine should not have to rely on the whims of Elon Musk to defend their people. What a weird reason to undertake such a project. Ukraine isn’t an EU member.

But providing support to Ukraine is EU business. And who knows what will be the member and buisnesses of EU in 4 years. Better to be ready.

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

#370

Post by panick21_ »

wcoenen wrote: post #118
jevgeni wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land based internet infrastructure doesn't solve the problem described in the article. Specifically: > It will secure the Union’s sovereignty and autonomy by guaranteeing fewer dependencies on third-country infrastructure, and the provision of secured telecommunications services for EU governments in critical scenarios where terrestrial networks are absent or disrupted, as observed, for instance, in the unfolding war…

In a large enough war, space infrastructure would actually be very vulnerable. Imagine a cloud of a few tons of shrapnel, spread around in an orbit that intersects all the 550km orbits of the Starlink constellation. This shrapnel cloud could be deployed with a single launch.

Actually deploying that stuff in a single launch isn't that easy. And we have to remember how large orbits are. And how sats can change them.

Putting sufficient material into all necessary orbits to seriously damage Starlink would be incredibly difficult.

And if its just shrapnel a single hit threw the solar panel might not destroy the sat either.

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