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Comment by DataDive | Hacker News Reader

If I understand this correctly the Europeans hope that by banning the spectrum where Starlink operates, they will spur the development of home grown operators that provide the same service ... is that realistic?

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The europeans reserve strategic resources so that they can manage supply chain risk, since they consider the US one.

The US (dependably) proves them right, by threatening their supply lines.

Even if we don't spur the development of home grown operators (and IMO launch on the scale of Starlink is somewhat unrealistic any time soon), it will at least prevent us getting get another incidental dependency on US systems which we can be threatened with loss of access to at any point.

Of course, why wouldn't it? There's nothing unique about SpaceX's sattelites, or about putting them in orbit.

https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/these-are-the-six-european-altern...

The internal cost per tonne to low Earth orbit differs vastly between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Ariane’s best offer:

  Vehicle                       Cost / tonne
  Falcon 9 (booster recovery)   ~$2 million
  Ariane 64                     ~$5 million
  Starship (projected)          <$500,000

To meaningfully compete, European launch providers must try to match these costs, then spend a decade putting these vehicles into orbit. That’s no easy task.

No better time to start than now, right?

They should just outsource the launches to ISRO - one of the world's cheapest.

Source? Quick search did not reveal any internal cost per tonne to orbit numbers.

Either way, if they did outsource these launches, they would not be paying the cost, but the price (meaning cost + margin). And that is much more expensive then just buying it from SpX.

Remind me, which starship?

nothing unique about it but they come in last and own the market from companies in this field for decades. EU rulz!!11

> they will spur the development of home grown operators

It’s already funded and scheduled to start launching in 2029 [1]. (Bit nerfed given Europe hasn’t yet gotten serious about launch…)

[1] https://www.grosswald.org/european-commission-spacerise-iris...

It is, there are lots of European launch companies that will have their first launches in 2027 and all target cheap launch services which is the key to Starlink. Isar Aerospace has already put a payload in orbit, but they are only one of many.

Europe doesn't need the same service. A far higher percentage of homes in Europe have access true high speed internet over fiber or wires than the US does. Europe can get itself the same capability with far fewer satellites.

We need equivalent service to guide our drones to Moscow when Putin comes to the rest of Europe

You don't need many satellites for that. Starlink is designed for millions of homes, not hundreds of drones.

You need a production pipeline to replace the ones that get shot down.

1) Putin won't come for the rest of Europe.

2) Even if the does, why attack Moscow? Russian civilians have nothing to do with the war and we're not barbarians.

3) Even if we wanted to, Moscow as a target is so big that dead reckoning starting from Portugal is probably enough to hit it. There are also a lot of other means of guidance, including sun/stars, Gee and public FM radio stations.

4) And why dones instead of ballistic missiles?

It is a pipe dream like Von der Layen's tweets https://x.com/vonderleyen

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