The European Union wants its own satellite network to counter Starlink. It will be build by SpaceRISE, a consortium that include Airbus, Thales, Deutsche Telekom...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2

https://www.spacerise.eu/

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-s...

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perlgeek 8 months ago | parent | next [-]

Any consortium that includes Deutsche Telekom is doomed to failure.

We've seen that when Germany introduced the Autobahn toll, it was a complete disaster.

If I had to guess who's going to have a Starlink competitor up next, I'd point to China.

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rdm_blackhole 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not going to happen.

Remember when the EU wanted to build it's own internet browser? Or it's own search engine? Or it's own sovereign cloud?

None of these initiatives panned out. This is just political posturing when they have literally zero plans on how to achieve that.

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palotasb 8 months ago | parent | next [-]

But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) panned out and that's a closer analogue.

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rdm_blackhole 8 months ago | parent [-]

It took roughly 20 years for the EU to deploy 30 satellites.

How long do you think it's going to take to deploy 300 or so of them when the Ariane 6 had only one launch (with a partial failure) in the last 14 years?

If you want to build a constellation, you need the means to send payloads in space at a relatively low cost. The EU can't do that so it will be an expensive and slow endeavor and by the time those 300 satellites are up there, Space X will have deployed 10s of thousands of them.

You can say, that the EU does not want to compete with Space X or that their goals are not the same but either way, it's just too little too late IMHO.

	▲	rplnt 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with your overall point, but that's a super deceptive metric to use. First Ariane 6 was scheduled for 2020 and only the first one ever launched.

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verzali 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use? Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others? Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson? The world's largest passenger aircraft? The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine? The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?

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Salmonfisher11 8 months ago | parent | next [-]

> Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use?

It actually is. But yes - that project was a shitshow for a long time.

Galileo HAS now offers 30cm accuracy with less than 100s convergence time not needing additional correction servers/stations.

Also spoofing resistant thanks to cryptographic signing (Galileo Open Service Navigation Message Authentication).

Both free for use. Forever. Classic GPS doesn't offer this.

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spacemanspiff01 8 months ago | parent [-]

My impression is that the US system does, but the higher accuracy is still reserved for military use?

	▲	Salmonfisher11 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		The magic of the military GPS codes are AFAIR the extremely broad signals and use quasi non-repetitive codes. It's very difficult to jam and spoof. Galileo HAS service is free for anyone to use.

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rdm_blackhole 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use?

It took 20 years to deploy 30 satellites. You can call that a success I guess.

> The world's largest passenger aircraft

That is an Airbus project which is not an EU project. Airbus is the result of a merger between multiple companies and was not initiated by the EU.

> The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?

This drug is manufactured in Denmark by a Danish company. It has nothing to do with the EU.

> The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine?

You mean the Pfizer vaccine? That's a German company, not an initiative from the EU.

> Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson?

They did build the CERN ... in 1954. Which we can agree was a long time ago. Since then the ability of the EU to deliver big projects such as for example Ariane 6 has gone down rather quickly. Also you ll notice that when the CERN was created, the EU as we know it today did not exist.

> Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others?

Ok and so what? Does that invalidate my arguments? A few successes amongst a ton of failures. That does not inspire any confidence.

That is why I am skeptical but I am prepared to eat my own words if the EU has a complete up and running constellation of 300 satellites in orbit by 2035.

The EU has some great companies for sure but these companies did not get there because the EU helped them or because the EU decreed that such companies have to exists.

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inemesitaffia 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Expect it to be worse than OneWeb for more money

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UltraSane 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So between the US, the EU, and China's version of starlink how many satellites will that require? I see Starlink will use 42,000 when fully completed so that is 3 * 42,000?

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mschuster91 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests.

SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.

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panick21_ 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink.

It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market.

And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious.

But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.

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bpodgursky 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan.

I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch).

The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.

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varjag 8 months ago | parent [-]

A6 maiden launch wasn't completely successful but that hardly matters in a debate involving SpaceX.

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philipwhiuk 8 months ago | parent [-]

What matters more is that it won't launch again until 2025 and will never be cheap to launch due to the expensive SRBs.

And ESA knows this - hence the spluttering of paltry funds towards cheaper vehicles.

	▲	varjag 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		Naturally, as every other carrier elsewhere in the world save for Falcon.

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flanked-evergl 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.