> too expensive

What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks? Would you like to show us the reasoning here?

> it should have invested proactively in next gen satellite direct to device tech

If the current one works - why would they? For defence usage, reliable is better than next gen usually. (Something something next gen F35 still not usable)

> I wonder where cost competitive launch capability is going to come from

French Guiana and other places like most previous launches? https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Pr...

> What's your source for good cost of launching satellite communication networks?

- falcon 9 - $2700/kg

- falcon heavy - $1400/kg

- ariane 5 - $9000/kg

> If the current one works - why would they?

This is just low quality flame bait. If any of the before-mentioned (US) companies succeed commercially long-term, they will transform world-wide internet access especially in less developed countries.

For clarification: as a European citizen, I want the EU to stay competitive in the space tech sector.

...and that's probably with a considerable profit margin for SpaceX and at least some amount of "we're happy for any launch that keeps the wheels spinning" subsidy for ESA.

Last time I checked launch costs, and tjose are incredibly hard to come by, SpaceX prices were the LEO-launch equivalent of Ryan Air's 20 Euro tickets. So hard to compare. Also, for a bunch of launches, Ariane-5 was already a couple of years ago competitive with SpaceX launches. And the only real customer so far for cheap, low orbit launches using re-usable rockets is SpaceX itself for Starlink.

You should check your sources.

> for a bunch of launches, Ariane-5 was already a couple of years ago competitive with SpaceX launches.

Ariane 5 is in no way competitive against SpaceX in anything, and hasn't ever been. The only customers launching on it at all are the ones that have some good reason to avoid SpaceX, and the ones that bought launches early as a hedge. It has very real issues attracting any competitive commercial launches. This satellite constellation plan is, among other things, a way of bailing out Arianespace because they will fail unless they get more launches.

> And the only real customer so far for cheap, low orbit launches using re-usable rockets is SpaceX itself for Starlink.

SpaceX launched 60 reusable F9s last year, of which 37 were internal Starlink launches (of which some had additional customer payloads). In comparison, Ariane 5 launched 3 times.

At the very, very lowest prices that Ariane 5 ever offered, they were close to SpaceX in only one specific very hard to find setup. They needed 2 Geo sats that wanted to launch at the same time and likely only the cheaper of those two actually had a price comparable to SpaceX.

Ariane was lucky that space launches were contracted so many years in advanced in the past. They had many years of contracts already lined when SpaceX was only just scaling and had huge backlogs.

Even by 2014 it was totally clearly to literally everybody in space, that Ariane 5 had to go. It had no future, even with all possible help, ESA and national launches and insentient launches from EU firms it cost would wildly spiral out of control.

That said, Ariane 6 is only a slight incremental improvement (in reality its mostly upgrades that were already planned for Ariane 5 anyway). It was designed to compete with SpaceX as it was in 2014.

Hence why European space people are already planning and pushing for more money to build a next generation rocket. Despite Ariane 6 being a new rocket then Falcon 9, its already outdated.

However Europe (and everybody else) was incredibly lucky that Amazon decided to compete with Starlink and to do so they had to basically buy every single available heavy lift rocket launch for the next half decade. Lucky for them nobody everybody outside of SpaceX sucks, so nobody sucks. Ariane 6 can compete with ULA even when they can't compete with SpaceX.

> And the only real customer so far for cheap, low orbit launches using re-usable rockets is SpaceX itself for Starlink.

Its kind of funny when people claim things that are so easy to verify to be false:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

SpaceX has already flown 2 commercial flights to low orbit this just year and its February. And their re-usability is not just for low orbit, they reuse the rockets if the go to GEO as well.

Ariane 5 flight rate was never more then 7 a year, SpaceX is planning more then 10 purely commercial LEO, MEO and SSO missions just in the next few months.

- Transporter-6

- OneWeb Flight #16

- OneWeb #17

- O3b mPOWER

- WorldView Legion 1 & 2

- O3b mPOWER 5 & 6

- Transporter-7

- SARah 2 & 3

- Ax-2

I'm sick of doing this, you get my point. Ax-2 is planned for May. You can continue down the list for the rest of the year.

So your statement is almost hilariously wrong, and totally wrong.

The problem is just that SpaceX is launching so often and so many Starlinks that people get confused by it in comparison to what was normal the last 20 years.

Its seems you have formed your opinion based on a bunch of Arianespace propaganda. The have been focused on spreading a a bunch of false narrative the last 5-10 years.

This is one of the most confused takes on EU launch that I've ever seen.

Your Falcon 9 success numbers are completely incorrect. The success rate is 100% on current models and overall having only 1 launch failure (or 2 if you count a pre-launch failure).

Falcon 9 launches primarily to LEO because that is where the market is. There are just very few satellites that want to go to GTO, but those that do generally launch on Falcon 9. It's launch costs are substantially less than Ariane 5, to the point that Arianespace is now thinking of rushing Ariane 6 to end of life sooner than planned to focus on a future reusable vehicle.

Falcon Heavy was primarily designed for the US DoD as it's primary customer.

Wow this post is peak delusional nonsense.

Falcon family: 208/210 --> 99% (if you want to include AMOS its 98.57%)

> Falcon Heavy's cost is still theoretical

Its cost is unknown (so is that of Ariane 5), but its price is pretty well known. And costumers care about price and not cost.

> Ariane 5 works, extremely well.

Ariane 5 is end of live. It was incredibly expensive to the point where even Arianespace itself flew more missions with Russian rockets. It had a peak launch rate of 7 per year. Anybody with a brain has known Ariane 5 needs to be replaced since at least 10-12 years.

Outside of the Arianespace launched mostly Russian rockets, they just had a string of recent failures. Not to mention that they had issues with Ariane 5 that grounded the rocket for a very long time and the Swiss government had to provide emergency funding so they could make the launches leading up to Webb happen.

Arianespace will also consume more then 5 billion for the Ariane 6, a rocket that is mostly a slight upgrade over the Ariane 5 built with part that have been in development for a long time. This is more then the complete cost of the Falcon 1/Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy and reusability program have cost SpaceX.

The first step in improvement of European space is to not delude ourself of where we actually stand.

That Falcon 9 success rate is for the first stage boosters landing. The current gen of Falcon 9 is 149/149 for launch success which would be comparable to the Ariane stat.

Looking at both recently they basically have a 100% success rate.

What are you counting here? Booster landing success rates? Then Ariane has a Zero here.

According to Wikipedia Falcon 9 Block 5 has a success rate of 100% (149/149) for launches.

Also I don’t understand your comment when the parent talked about commercial success and that American space companies are/will be cheaper than Ariane.

> Once again the EU is playing catch up with last gen tech. Starlink is almost 10 years old.. If the EU was serious, it should have invested proactively in next gen

Thats not their job.

Their job is to build infrastructure for Europe, Tonnels, GPS, bridges, etc, like the massive tunnels they are building through the alps.

https://youtu.be/30foJiPUrBA

Now they decided thay just like modern military and government needs a GPS, they need satellite based internet. I am sure war in Ukraine has helped sharpen minds there.

Their remit is not to invest in speculative projects ala hyperloop.

How is 5G mobiles connecting to sattelites relevant to EU?

Thats 100% commercial operation, if it is relevant, it's the job of European mobile operators to fund it, not for tax payers.

6 years ago the ESA and Arianespace were ridiculing reusable rockets, even as SpaceX was getting closer and closer to the non-RUD landing. Ariane 6 yet to launch, now trying to retrofit some level of reusability. Too slow, too stuck with their views... From my perspective, the 40ms I get from Starlink is worlds better then the 900ms I got from my 128kb/s Iridium Pilot (now in the skip).

This direct to device tech is going to suck based on everything I’ve read so far. The radios in phones are so weak and undirected that getting 128kbps is going to be a challenge, let alone anything near what’s required to watch video.

Look at the gymnastics you have to do to use SOS on iPhone now.

Let's see. ASTS claims to have solved this problem. Apparently their satellites have 30mbit+/s throughput with regular 5G smartphones at <100ms latency. If this stuff works (big if), it's going to disrupt the cell tower industry over night and bring broadband to remote places where towers are too hard and too expensive to operate.

Also, I imagine 5G satellites will be of interest to the DoD.

Anyway, the main point I was trying to make is: EU competition is so far behind (even conceptually) that they are playing catch up with 10 year old tech instead of looking where the puck might be going.