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?

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mooreds 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

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SlinkyOnStairs 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 simply doesn't make all that much sense if your country is capable of basic infrastructure construction. Fiber runs are expensive but not that expensive.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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-...

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SlinkyOnStairs 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Starlink was profitable in 2024

Those are revenue figures.

> This hits everyone. And it’s not a serious cost issue.

That it affects everyone just makes the problem worse. If China or the EU does commit to a starlink competitor, there's even more crowding in orbit. Even more collision avoidance required.

> Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to be due to obselescence

That's the point. These things are not staying up long, and they're staying up shorter and shorter.

The constellation is both expensive to build and to maintain. That makes it a lot of trouble compared to running a bunch of fiber once and having only occasional maintenance trouble when some idiot drags a backhoe through it.

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

The military interest is real, but it remains to be seen how much money they're willing to put up for it. Higher latency more conventional satellite internet will have significant cost savings in comparison.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Those are revenue figures

And also net income.

> just makes the problem worse

Did you skip the part where it’s not a serious cost issue? None of these birds are even close to being propellant restricted.

> These things are not staying up long, and they're staying up shorter and shorter

Because they’re being intentionally deorbited to make room for better birds. They don’t have to be deorbited as quickly as they are. But overwhelming demand makes it a profitable bet.

> it remains to be seen how much money they're willing to put up for it

$70mm per year for 22 birds [1].

[1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starshield-space-force-contract

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toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What would the cost be to deny these orbital altitudes?

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SlinkyOnStairs an hour ago | parent [-]

Incalculable.

The cost isn't in paying someone to not use the orbit, it's that the busier a part of space gets, the more expensive it becomes to do collision avoidance and station keeping.

What makes this impossible to calculate is that there's an unknown exponential involved. The more satellites, the more collisions that need avoiding. And the higher the chance that one avoidance will create new future collisions.

At some point the space is simply so busy that collisions can no longer be avoided.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 12 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> * What makes this impossible to calculate* It’s really not impossible to calculate, particularly if you’re trying to cause damage. The answer is it’s cheaper to shoot down individual satellites than try to create a localized cascade. Kessler cascades propagate too slowly, and degrade too quickly in low orbits, to be useful as a military tactic. In high orbit one could feasibly e.g. deny use of a geostationary band. But again, it’s cheaper to just shoot down each satellite.
	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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estearum 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

???

	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Later: “The document also shows the Starlink subsidiary registered a net income of only $72.7 million for 2024. The year prior, the subsidiary incurred a net loss of $30.7 million. However, the financial statement notes the subsidiary purchased nearly $2.3 billion in Starlink hardware and services from the SpaceX parent last year.” Those figures, to my understanding, include cost of services and launch in COGS.

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bluGill 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	fragmede 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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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victorbjorklund an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Because the Chinese govt doesn’t have money to burn…

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samrus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has to be the cost. A reusable launch vehicle is such a ridiculously better value proposition that it creates a discrete evolution. Some things just arent feasible to do without them

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tartuffe78 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it would be very expensive to emulate that without super efficient launching capabilities.

	▲	palmotea 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 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?

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tekla 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	bluGill 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.