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

I worked for the EU gov. and I believe that Europeans are more naive about the foundations of EU than Americans are about the US.

And far more sensitive about it.

All Americans are cynical about their own country and government.

The EU is a wierd entity, and few Europeanns have a true understanding of the mechanisms of power, the horrible democracy deficit; a result of a kind of 'blind faith' in institutions, and a naivte with respect to the power and motivation of their leaders.

I guess it's a bit like the 'faith' we have in something like the UN, it's all well meaning, but when you look at operational elements it's bizarre. There's a kind of utterly detached academic view that permeates UN culture, it reminds me of Brussels.

The French population roundly rejected the trety of Lisbon, the French government went ahead with it anyhow, and future referendums in Europe were annulled because the elite had no will to allow the plebes to have a voice. In their view, the plebes woudl be too dumb to make the calculation.

The European Court of Justice is one of the most insane things in Judicial history of the world - it was never granted the powers it has (!), rather, it 'took them'. ECJ 'Judicial Supremacy' is the longest political sleight of hand in history. It's a bit mind-melting and the smoke that the institutions throw up to try to imply legal foundations are established. In Germany, they still contest the legitimacy of ECJ Supremacy, as they should, but it's not allowed to be talked about outside Germany. If they bring it up in the UK or Poland it's considered 'alt right' inanity.

Nobody ever voted for Ursula Von Der Leyen and nobody even knew who she was (outside of Germany) before the election - and yet - she speaks for everyone now! Because Democracy! All of the arguments in support of this system of choosing leadership fall flat, like Russians justifying their invasion of Ukraine. European elite could 'fix' that specific representation problem instantly, they very actively don't want to.

Those are tiny examples, there are so many more.

Commenters here and other places are super pro-EU in a way that if it were some other country we'd recognize it as being very nationalist, but for some reason, maybe because the EU is not quite a country, we judge the defensiveness by a different standard. Americans might say things that are effectively pro-America, but rarely in a directly nationalist manner. No Americans is going to run on about some government program, rather more like a story about something that is 'great', but which happens to be in America.

Also, for some strange reason the Swiss are the other hyper-sensitive nationalist group here in that if you say anything they will come out like an Army. I'm not necessarily complaining, just nothing that oddity. Also maybe Canadians, except nobody ever talks about them (or rather 'us' as I am Canadian).

As for satelites, we have every right to be skeptical - the EU is 20 years behind in this regard and talk is cheap.

They are 'reacting' to this war, which is a function of careless strategic orientation of the past.

Maybe this 'wake up call' will reveberate into other sectors.

.... it was amazing to see Germany drop it's dependance on Russian Oil very quickly, I'm sure we are all as impressed by that as Ukrainian resilience in the face of invasion. So let's hope for more than Satelites.

I'm from Switzerland and we help finance that stuff. Specially the Vega rocket, a total piece of crap that shouldn't exist.

They are gaslighting a prominent man because he is from a different political tribe to theirs and they believe that by denigrating him they are defending their own tribe from “the other”

I mean those problems are well understood. There are not that many parties to vote for and people vote for the party they dislike least. Some of those parties wanted to join the EU. In general it was elites that wanted to join the EU, not the party base. People might have voted social domestic because they wanted domestic labor laws but instead their country was integrated in essentially a super-national state.

The reality is most people vote primary for domestic polices, and the extent what the EU would do was not understood by voters at the time. There is a difference in initially joining and then having very little choice in the continue growth of that institutions power.

And in fact, in many places where aspects of the EU were put to a popular vote it actually fails.

There is also the reality that things like the EU/Euro were political projects and that Germany after the Cold War had to agree to some of these things in order for France and Britain to accept its unification.

People certainty were not asked if Eastern nations should be allowed to join the EU. Again, shouldn't a popular vote be in order when an institution like the EU considers adding a new member that can massively impact its economy and will receive untold billions in subsidies?

I'm Swiss so for me, a decision of such huge importance should actually be based on a popular vote. Not 'well in the 70s leftist parties were broadly more popular'. And once you are in, its incredibly hard to get out, and that is by design.

A real European Union based on fundamentally pro European pro Democracy principles would have been established over many steps and many votes. This would give some granularity to the choices. Maybe the population like one aspect of the many EU polices, but not the other.

In Switzerland we rejected the EG, but we joined Schengen, both based on popular vote. We join institutions such as ESA and many others. That seems to me to be a much better process of incrementally growing together.

> the state of most of europe during the 1950's i wouldn't judge them so harshly for it.

Lets not pretend the EU was formed in the 1950s.

The van Allen radiation belt [1] starts at 650 km (and ends at 58,000 km). The satellites would probably have a shorter lifetime if they were higher.

Since the speed of light is 300,000 km/s, adding 300 km adds one millisecond of delay, or 2 milliseconds to a roundtrip. Doesn't seem a lot for satellite internet?

Geostationary orbit is at 36,000 km, then for lag that is indeed problematic as it's then 240 ms for a round trip. Still bearable.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt