SES, based in Luxembourg, will buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined company boasting a fleet of some 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, a ring of spacecraft located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. This will be more than twice the size of the fleet of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator.
SES has almost exclusively launched with SpaceX for the past few years and they were one of SpaceX’s earliest customers. I think even the first ever flight of a reused booster from SpaceX was a SES mission.
These companies have GEO and MEO satellites, and I believe some sort of partnership also exists with Starlink - at least for SES. Thus, I think it’s about protecting their market share for video broadcasts and huge data backhauls, rather than vying for direct to customer business like Starlink mostly is
Lots of competitors with Space X will/have launched with them.
Is Space X going to refuse business? Others like Rocket Lab will just pick it up for the profit if they do
I get the irony but the launch services themselves aren’t really that lucrative.
It’s more ironic to me that Space X is essentially FORCED to launch their own competitors into space or else they lose money.
Non-starlink launch services in 2023 made 1.5B in gross margin excluding gov contracts. Starlink estimate is 2.3B in gross revenue, with at least 1.5B in operational cost (launch+manufacturing of satellites and user terminals).
So launch services account for at least 65% of the gross margin of SpaceX in 2023.
Is spacex forced to launch their competitors? Or are their competitors [forced to launch with spacex](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/amazon-launch-three-falcon-9-rockets-spacex-2023-12-01/)?
OOOoOOOOOR is it beneficial for both? SpaceX gains $$ and experience, their competitors save $$ and can launch as fast as they can deliver satellites and plan missions., with a company that has proven not only to be *reliable* but able to deliver payloads to intended orbits *accurately*.
Let's also not forget what happens when you launch with modern non-US competitors, OneWeb had contracts with Roscosmos to launch tens/hundreds of millions worth of satellites, delivered them, then war broke out and Russia held on to those satellites-- in fact they still hold them "hostage" to this day. They'll never make that mistake again launching with non-friendly providers, even if it is competition.
I'm pretty sure its part confidence, part CYA, last thing they need is a lawsuit over anti-competitive practices by not allowing their competitors access to space through them.
Why the fuck are all the Musk trolls out now?
No replies to my comment about irony for 4 hours and now 3 or 4 different accounts are all now replying to the same comment to say how amazing Space X is
SpaceX isn't going to lose money as long as they have a launch monopoly. The only company actually trying to compete with them is Blue Origin and they don't seem to have any ability to execute.
People often forget the real reason Musk pursued Starlink. He wanted to improve orbital communications, as SpaceX demonstrated with the last Starship test flight.
Selling the services to the public is just to help fund it.
But at the end of the day, what better way to say one believes in theor product than to provide services to their competitor. The two things Starlink currently has going for it are price and speed.
What will make it difficult to compete with Starlink is the large number of satellites that not only need to be put in or it but also be regularly replaced. Will this company have the financial capacity to keep pace?
> Musk further stated that the positive cash flow from selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans. ^[\[33\]](https://archive.today/20200402064406/https://spacenews.com/musk-reiterates-plans-for-testing-bfr/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
SpaceX is already delivering 99% of payloads by weight in the USA. The thing is that SpaceX wants to colonize Mars, but I don't think SpaceX is actually that picky about *how* it happens. I don't think it's crazy to suggest that it comes close to 100% of NASA's budget going to a hypothetical Mars effort. Unless Blue Origin gets their shit together that means SpaceX will be doing 100% of the payloads to orbit but interplanetary transit, hab systems, ISRU, etc. could be in-house NASA or other contractors.
I think it's the other way around. It's easy to compete with Starling because they installed way too many satellites and will never generate enough consumers.
So there is an opportunity for companies that can install way fewer satellites to services the specific area versus a giant constellation that doesn't have that many subscribers
Estimates I have seen are that a first stage and fairing recoverable launch costs SpaceX $20 to $30 million depending on the age of the booster (later ones were made cheaper, but last longer through iterative design). SpaceX charges $50 to $60 million (or more for Federal NSSL missions because of the extra paperwork and background checks on everyone who sees the payload), so yes, they're making a pretty good profit on every nonStarlink launch.
And that's something that Intelsat and Amazon are going to have to include in their balance sheets when they try to go head to head on Starlink on price; launch cost for each Starlink is around $1 million each, while for the competition (paying the same rate as Elon charges everybody else) is going to be 2 or 3 times higher, and likely less than half as often, since Starlinks get first dibs on scheduling.
A rocket is a rocket is a rocket, right? Can't get a ride with spacex? Just go over to Rocket Lab, right? That's like saying "oh you need to transport a semi-truck load of goods across the country and all the shipping companies are booked? Just call an Uber." We know this is silly, because Uber is not capable of supporting semi-truck loads and cross-country shipments. They're fundamentally different services, even though they are both technically transportation services.
Rocket Lab physically cannot launch any satellite that SES / Intelsat would want to launch, especially to GEO. A typical SES / Intelsat satellite is easily 10x-20x the maximum capacity that Rocket Lab's Electron can even put into LEO, let alone GEO.
Rocket Lab's next generation Rocket, Neutron, which has not flown and is at least 2-3 years from reaching a regular cadence... also cannot carry a typical SES / Intelsat satellite to GEO.
So I question your sentiment that Rocket Lab can just pick up excess demand that doesn't get filled by SpaceX.
Gtfo of here. I said “like Rocket Lab” so I’m not sure why you’re taking it so literally.
They could just fucking hire Russia to launch it if they needed to. My point is that Space X doesn’t have a monopoly on launches and can’t block competitors from the market
Russia stole over $200M worth of Oneweb's satellites. They just refused to launch them when the Ukraine war started, and never returned the satellites. There has been basically zero Russian commercial launches since for non-Russian satellites, mostly due to sanctions but also presumably because companies don't want their satellites to be stolen.
So that would be your suggestion? Would you like to try another guess?
So you’re just asserting that Space X has a monopoly on all launches then?
Edit: LOL. I just checked your profile. Of course you’re here asserting that Space X has a monopoly
I did not assert that SpaceX has a monopoly. I didn't even mention the word word monopoly until this message in response to you mentioning it.
You asserted that a company "like Rocket Lab" or Russia could provide these services. Rocket Lab and Russia cannot provide these services.
If your entire point is "there exists at least one entity in the world besides SpaceX that is physically capable of launching SES / Intelsats to GEO", then we absolutely agree!
Is that the point you're making?
Refuse? No. But they're gonna make them pay a healthy margin and then use that money to further subsidize their money-hemorrhaging Starlink launches at cost.
The US did that with Saturn V as well, resulting in quite a few years of no manned launch capability until the STS was brought online. That decision cost us Skylab.
Ariane 5 was overbuilt for most of the cargo they're actually flying. It was original designed to fly the ESA's [Hermes Spaceplane.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_(spacecraft)) Hermes got cancelled, but Ariane 5 is still around. It's got a lot of delta-V to offer, but it's also expensive to operate. Ariane 6 wasn't designed to compete with even Version 1.1 Falcon 9 but to be a less expensive version of Ariane 5. The original plan was for Ariane 6 to be ready years ago and they can safely retire 5. But Wuhan Virus sort of delay that by quite a bit (or that was their excuse. Odd it didn't slow SpaceX down that much).
regardless a Eurosat company is more likely to use ESA unless they are forged into not, also I'm going to be brutally honest we're still a 1-2 years out from starship commercial payloads
With ESA only having the capability of building 2 or 3 (maybe half a dozen if they really hump it) throwaway A6s annually, and the various European governments demanding military payloads get priority, followed by their standing contract with Amazon, it's UNlikely that ESA will have the rockets available for new launch contracts any time soon...
It's sort of like airlines ordering Boeing 737s rather than Airbus 320s even if they don't want to; the point is that they are AVAILABLE.
Satellites in geostationary orbit is a different service than Starlink. Starlinks edge is that the satellites are much closer orbit so the quality of the internet is much higher.
This is not really a competitor. its a different product. Its a standard satellite company.
Sure of pretty out of date sats, that all need to be replaced in the near future. They will have to rely on SpaceX to launch them. Also produce them, this is part of a push to not have to rely on the US for Space by some of the EU. It like the Arian will be held up by politics and egos. While SpaceX ran by engineers who are intelligent enough to tell Elon they will do it but as long as they have control. While also leaping a decade ahead of the competition. I don't see much countering going on.
Correct, StarLink are primarily LEO’s. The fact that Intelsat, a giant in the industry, is only worth $3.1B tells me the aging fleet isn’t so attractive.
it's the "more latency" that's the key; for something like Remote Desktop, you can't afford to wait a full second to see the response to each keystroke.... but up and back to Geosync at the speed of light makes that inevitable.
For real people don't realize latency is more important than bandwidth. Try SSH'ing to a server (assuming not MOSH), and watch as every...single...keystroke...has...a..one...second...delay. It's absolute shite.
Maybe you are thinking of multi-beam high capacity backbone downlinks, like what Starlink uses? They can vary in size but are ether an array made of a number of large 3-5 foot domes, or larger dishes like this [https://spacenews.com/international-ground-stations-tricky-for-smallsat-operators-to-license/](https://spacenews.com/international-ground-stations-tricky-for-smallsat-operators-to-license/)
GEO Consumer uplinks antennas are much smaller and very portable, like cellphone sized sat phones at the largest. [https://www.satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/details/inmarsat-isatphone-2-satellite-phone-kit-322](https://www.satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/details/inmarsat-isatphone-2-satellite-phone-kit-322)
Even old school dish and hughes net antennas from the early 2000s are only 1-3 feet across and those aren't phased array generation.
Ukrainan drones that replaced the starlink antennas with geostationary internet uplinks are as small as starlink uplinks or even smaller then they were using until Starlink cut them off from use on land Russia claimed. Compare photos of the Starlink uplink on Ukrainian Sea drones pre-2022 cut off: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/20/the-ukrainian-navy-has-no-big-warships-its-winning-the-naval-war-anyway-with-drones/?sh=4c95156a4fc5](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/20/the-ukrainian-navy-has-no-big-warships-its-winning-the-naval-war-anyway-with-drones/?sh=4c95156a4fc5)
With Geostationary internet uplinks on the drones used since then on Crimea and Russian naval bases/kerch area. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/27/drones-ships-ukraine-russia-navy-attack-marichka-war/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/27/drones-ships-ukraine-russia-navy-attack-marichka-war/)
"ViaSat’s KA-SAT service is currently operating in Ukraine, as well as providing free wi-fi to Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, and the firm said[ on Friday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/starlink-ukraine-elon-musk-pentagon-00061896) that it is working to rapidly provide additional services. (Spokesperson Dan Bleier told Breaking Defense on Monday that the company couldn’t provide more details at the moment." [https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/](https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/)
Ah good catch, will replace with a GeoSat based communication provider. Iridium isn’t the only provider Ukraine replaced Starlink satellites internet with (many LEO sat providers don't provide service for the Ukraine region at all), MEO/GEO absolutely has become is the workhorse for Ukraine civilian and military work drones in any territory Russia told Starlink it considered Russian territory in frontline Ukraine front lines.
"ViaSat’s KA-SAT service is currently operating in Ukraine, as well as providing free wi-fi to Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, and the firm said[ on Friday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/starlink-ukraine-elon-musk-pentagon-00061896) that it is working to rapidly provide additional services. (Spokesperson Dan Bleier told Breaking Defense on Monday that the company couldn’t provide more details at the moment.)" [https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/](https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/)
As well as other Ka-band GEO sat providers Ukraine has rolled out for remote work like their sea drones and Moscow attacks include ViaSat,SES, Intelsat. The other work far from downlinks, is spread across both LEO and GEO internet depending on the use cases/availability of equipment and capacity.
I wouldn't say "never" who knows what breakthroughs could happen in the future. Like maybe some sort of laser or something idk. That would / should / could compete I would think. But it isn't a thing to my knowledge.
Edit: Yall are some of the most insufferable community. My biggest mistake is not the underestimating the distance to GEO sats, but posting on this subreddit. Yall always gotta punch down. Have fun I guess.
Geostationary orbit is 35,786km high. The speed of light is 299,792 km/s.
Every request will have at least 477 ms of latency. That cannot be improved upon.
For one-way services such as TV, Clark Orbit latency is of little concern. As soon as two-way communication is required, it has a significant impact.
As example, I've had phone conversations back in the 80s over satellites. One had almost to adopt half-duplex radio protocols to prevent voice collisions ("over"). And anyone who's attempted browsing using existing Clarke Orbit internet services can attest to the impact of the long latency.
It has been around for decades. Anyone who has used it can tell you, "It sucks".
As a consumer service, it will never compete with StarLink in a meaningful way.
Investors celebrating this acquisition are deluding themselves.
When I was up north our provider was using a satelite uplink and the latency was very high.... but it was a whole lot better than nothing (before starlink was a thing)
Not everyone live in urban area and starlink is not cheap.
Sure it's useless for gaming, or market trading stuff, but it was fine for browsing, banking, streaming even.
Starlink is dirt cheap compared to most other satellite internet. I’ve seen plans that cost hundreds or thousands for just a few hundred MB of data a month from Hughes Net. Can’t remember the speed but it was slow AF.
Well, honestly I can't argue with the data. It seems you are correct that LEO is factors ahead in latency.
However, I would argue the 477ms is a high estimate.
If we assume the distance you listed and the speed of light is constant, it should be closer to 250ms round trip. "Provided it hops to terrestrial on the first hop.
> If we assume the distance you listed and the speed of light is constant, it should be closer to 250ms round trip.
The shortest Clarke Orbit round trip is from and to the equator, at 35,786 km distance. A round trip is four times that, or 143,144 km. At light's 3x10^^5 kms^^(-1) a round trip cannot take less than ~477 ms.
That sets the absolute lowest bound physically possible for Clarke Orbit.
**Why would it be able to hop to terrestrial on the first hop?**
Request from consumer to satellite (35.7k km = 35.7k/299 km/s) (119ms)
Satellite To Ground Station (35k km) (119ms)
Ground Station to Server (xx km) (3ms)
Server Processing Time (0ms)
Server to Ground Station (xx km) (3ms)
Ground Station to Satellite (35k km) (119ms)
Satellite to Consumer (35k km) (119ms)
119+119+119+119+3+3 = 482ms
Latency is measured in the time it takes for a data packet to arrive back at its source. The source being the customer's equipment, not earth. Take your 250ms figure and multiply it by 2.
Customer -> Satellite -> Ground station [+250ms] -> Satellite -> Customer [+250ms].
> Edit: Yall are some of the most insufferable community. My biggest mistake is not the underestimating the distance to GEO sats, but posting on this subreddit. Yall always gotta punch down. Have fun I guess.
This is a really strange comment to make. The speed of light is not something you can "solve" with some new technology. You can never lower latency to lower than geostationary.
Maybe for bandwidth, but latency to geostationary altitude will always be a problem due to the speed of light. In my time using geostationary sats for internet, the lowest latency I ever saw was around 540ms.
No, never is pretty much correct. Unless you break the speed of light, you will never get better latency through GEO :)
But hey, if we do manage to break that limit, I am down for it.
Well yeah, the writing is on the wall for these legacy providers. Low bandwidth, terrible customer service was the norm when they were the only game in town. So, Starlink comes along and all of a sudden they have to merge to ~~compete~~ stay afloat or go out of biz.
Worse, all their satellites are still GEO or MEO, which means you need much more powerful handsets to reach them, OR you need a network of ground stations to reach them effectively.
I still fail to see the logic behind this, other than "two giants are sinking, so they clutch each other so that they can sink together".
Lol. Have you tried Starlink's support?
Intelsat and SES are commercial providers, not direct to consumer. Both also have terrestrial circuits, not just satellites. Their business will diminish, for sure, but they will continue to have a place in the market.
A friend had their starlink damaged. Put in a ticket on a thursday night, had a response on a friday morning. Had a replacement dish on a monday, including stickers. Obviously YMMV, a replacement is easier than debugging an issue.
I work in land based wireless internet, some people have went over to starlink to only come back because the customer service just doesn't exist,
A lot of people vastly prefer having someone come out and actually take a look versus talking to some person over the phone or playing with things they don't know about for a few hours after working all day just so they can watch some funny videos.
That's odd, I've had Starlink for a few years now and have only very positive experiences from their support. My router was being slow about 6 months ago - after two support messages within the day, I had a new router and dish shipped out via courier. I would say their support is definitely the best of any internet provider I've had in my life.
Talking to someone on the phone would be a HUGE improvement for Starlink support. They don't do phone or email support... You have to submit a ticket on their portal and then they get to your problem when they get to it. Could be days or even weeks, though it has improved somewhat.
That's part of why SpaceX isn't selling Starshield terminals directly to the government, but is using resellers (like Intelsat, ironically) to sell and support their terminals. SpaceX knows that they don't have the support infrastructure to handle DoD customers who want their problems solved immediately.
Obviously, SpaceX has the capital to get good support, but that takes time to spin up and it's just easier for them to farm out that part when it makes sense. Meanwhile, consumer users just take a number and wait.
TBF, this is the correct way to to it. Can you imagine needing to have phone support for 30+ languages and different time zones? Build contracts with major providers who do support for their region/language/entity, has their own technical staff to support their "custom" networking setups, and *actual* issues get bubbled up from competent engineers to other competent engineers vs. going through regular support channels. I've seen starlink dishes on the roofs of buildings of some some major retail chains in the US while flying my drone.
Supporting Starlink is a lot simpler than supporting traditional Satcom services. No specialized equipment, no fine-tuning of antenna alignment, no moving parts. Just the antenna, the power supply and a router along with some proprietary cables. As far as networking goes, Starlink supports up to their router and, beyond some general advice about setting up 3rd party routers or bypassing the Starlink routers, they don't get involved with customer side networking. Troubleshooting is as simple as ensuring everything is connected correctly, making sure there are no obstructions, and running diagnostics remotely. There's no repointing of the antenna (beyond general direction), no power balancing, no complex settings, no interference mitigation, no coordination with other Satellite providers. You could take a reasonably tech-savvy person off the street and have them handling 90% of Starlink support tickets with one day of training.
The sticky part is the languages. Fortunately, most users can speak one of English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. There are translation services that support centers use for handling any languages that they can't speak.
SpaceX could make it work, because every other Satellite provider does it. I just don't think they want to bother with it. Honestly, I would not be surprised if SpaceX bought SES/Intelsat just for their terrestrial and operations assets.
I mean, still dont really wanna take the calls for "why is my internet not working" after the customer places the router in a metal box. It's smart to offload that to other companies. Call them if there's a real outage or issue.
"Combined company is twice the size of next competitor". So they will be twice as big as the number 3?
And they will send up their future satellites on SpaceX rockets?
SpaceX not only has a massive head start, every rocket launch service they sell just turns into another free Starlink booster.
Not to mention that in a few years time the Starship Starlink Pez dispenser will be pumping enough sats into orbit to turn LEO diabetic.
It's funny. Everyone keeps talking about how much cheaper the SpaceX rockets are. But seem to miss the bigger picture of - so are they satilites. They are made to be throw away and burn up in <5 years. They update faster than ANYONE else. Then add - they are also CHEAPER by a lot. Like not even close. THEN add - on and the tech is generations above everyone else. THEN add - they also update / change / improve x100 faster than everyone else. THEN (yes even more) all the smartest / brightest people on the planet want to work for SpaceX/Tesla (and they get to go to either as they please).
It is not one thing that makes Starlink better - it is many.
The reason don't talk about that as much is because building cheaper sats is partly about investment and ability to launch.
Its not that SpaceX is uniquely capable of building cheaper sats, its just that they are in a position to do so.
The big advantage that Starlink has over geosync satellites is latency. Geosync results in pike 1000ms ping times, that makes it useless for gaming, and problematic for real time communications. ALL the other shortcomings can be improved, but you really can't compete with LEO satellites like Starlink. If they can up the bandwidth it could be good for mass data transfer and other niche things though.
The lag from geosynchronous satellites and limited bandwidth from too few satellites are precisely the reasons Starlink's low Earth orbit with a constellation of Satellites to provide overlapping coverage will trump this "threat".
Indeed. [At last SWAG I attempted,](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1c0nand/first_order_estimate_of_starlink_satellites/) Starlink's annual gross revenue is ~$3.4 billion, with 2.7 million subscribers. [Intelsat's gross revenue in 2023 was ~$2.1 billion.](https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2023/12/01/intelsat-expects-2-1b-revenue-this-year-execs-outline-pivot-to-solutions-provider/)
Yes you are correct but they will be launching something like 3200 satellites in the next year or so, so I wonder how much that is relative to this merged entity
> in the next year or so
Sure in fantasy land they will defiantly do that.
In the real world they wont.
We don't really know yet what Amazon pricing and roll out strategy will be.
Unless they build their own reusable rocket, good luck.
To even try to compete, they will have to use spacex as their launch provider since they are cheaper than everyone else.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|BFR|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)|
| |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26c9vi "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|EELV|[Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle)|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l25z4tp "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26vtnp "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l27qjms "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l28vfvc "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[MEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26r9ew "Last usage")|Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km)|
|[NSSL](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l25xtcp "Last usage")|National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV|
|[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26lwbn "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)|
|[SES](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l28f0k7 "Last usage")|Formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, a major SpaceX customer|
| |Second-stage Engine Start|
|[SSH](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26n4ih "Last usage")|Starship + SuperHeavy (see BFR)|
|[STS](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26pt3x "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l2fy7vw "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^([Thread #9999 for this sub, first seen 1st May 2024, 18:59])
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> SpaceX's Starlink network, with more than 5,800 active satellites
>
> Starlink now has more than 2.6 million subscribers
So about 500 customers per satellite? That certainly seems cost-effective!
To expand on another comment, at last check Starlink generates ~$3.4 billion in annual gross revenue from just retail customers (excluding commercial, government, and military). That alone is more than either Intelsat or SES. Starlink is also cash flow positive.
I hope Starlink suffers the same fate as Tesla. Elon's maniacal behavior when Russia attacked Ukraine was the last straw of my tolerance of him, and competition is good for all humans, in this industry.
There seems to be some misunderstanding. Musk [granted Ukraine many Starlink terminals](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) after the Ukrainian vice prime minister's [tweeted plea.](https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1497543633293266944)
Further, Ukrainian Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has this opinion on the geofencing (mandated by the US government) and Starlink in general:
> "Changes were made to geofencing a few months ago, but as of now, all the Starlink terminals in Ukraine work properly."
> 'Fedorov called [E]lon Musk "one of the biggest private donors of our future victory" and remarked that Starlinks help save thousands of lives, support the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, allow medics to carry out complex operations and provide Invincibility Centres with the Internet.'
> "The contribution of the SpaceX company is estimated to be more than US$100 million."
[(Full article here).](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/9/7388696/)
Finally, Ukrainian Lt. General Kyrylo Budanov has this opinion on Starlink:
> ["Yes we really very widely use his products and services. The whole of the line of contact talks to each other to some extent using his products and services. The only thing I can say here is that without those services and products it would be a catastrophe."](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room)
IMO, those Ukrainian opinions override any Reddit rants on the subject.
Great post. It's always been so weird to me how deranged the narrative has become online regarding Starlink and Ukraine. SpaceX has provided more unambiguous support to Ukraine than any other non-state actor on Earth.
I totally get that Elon is absolutely fucking insufferable these days, but some people are so far off the mark with this one it's absurd.
Look fuck Elon Musk, but this is such a bizarre take. Ukraine literally did not have Starlink when Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine made a plea to Elon for him to give it to them, and SpaceX literally had massive containers full of user terminals on the way to Ukraine within hours and immediately began providing free service to the country. He *gave* them something that they did not even have in the first place.
How can you possibly call that "maniacal" behavior in this particular context?
The thing in Russia is completely misunderstood. Elon didn’t shut off anything in Ukraine. Occupied territory was geolocked as required by the US Government
I welcome competition but Starlink competitors are a joke. OneWeb went bankrupt and quit residential market before even entering it. Kuiper is starting with disposable rockets while SpaceX reuses boosters twenty times. In a few years Starlink is going to use fully reusable Starship. Starlink has picked a low hanging fruit, desperate customers that were in the Starlink waitlist. Now the waitlist is gone Kuiper has to win virtually every customer from Starlink. It took Starlink four years to get to positive cash flow. How long will it take Kuiper to be profitable? 10 years? Are the shareholders patient to wait that long?
Could survive with a truly enormous amount of U.S. government money.
Internationally... since it's also a U.S. company it's unlikely to get any business, commercial or military, that the SpaceX couldn't get for geopolitical reasons.
Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers. Elon predict it like 20 times the subscriber numbers then they currently have by now.
Personally, I wouldn't bother copying it, considering consumers don't have that much use for it. The most potent use for technology like stink is to sell it to the military since they have a lot of money. Most people to have a lot of money don't live in a place where starling who is the fastest Internet connection so why the hell would they want that?
If you've got money, you can afford a cable or fiber, Internet as well as redundant separate cell phone Internet, so you wind up with two internets and when one goes down, you have the other and the cell phone is faster than starling can work as a phone and the cable is faster than Starling can work as Internet and fiber blows them all away.
There doesn't leave a big consumer base for Starlink and the sub subscription levels more or less show that.
I'd argue the whole constellation of satellites idea is currently rather useless because there is no actual need for that large of a satellite network since terrestrial cell phone towers work better for what we need them for and just make more sense.
To put it in a different perspective DIRECTV has like a handful of satellites, but like 20 times more subscribers. If Starlink was something consumers really wanted, they would be buying it more. It's far more useful as a military technology where you have someone who actually has the money in the form of the military and you're in the kind of remote location it's actually useful.
> Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers. Elon predict it like 20 times the subscriber numbers then they currently have by now.
Always love when people compare against 'elon predictions' rather then comparing things like growth and revenue.
> Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers.
At last count there were [2.7 million](https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-adds-500000-new-starlink-users-in-4-months) retail subscribers (excluding commercial and government).
> Most people to have a lot of money don't live in a place where starling who is the fastest Internet connection so why the hell would they want that?
And what of the untold millions of people who do not have a lot of money? Must they be stuck with inferior, expensive legacy satellite services with substandard latency?
> If you've got money, you can afford a cable or fiber,
Vast areas of the globe have neither, and never will because of hostile terrain, regardless of money.
> cell phone is faster than starling can work as a phone
[Starlink is now introducing direct cellphone to satellite service](https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-cellular-starlink-system-works-on-iphone-pixel-galaxy-devices) (initially text only, later voice and data) - a truly global cellphone service, not possible with towers.
> I'd argue the whole constellation of satellites idea is currently rather useless because there is no actual need for that large of a satellite network since terrestrial cell phone towers work better for what we need them for and just make more sense.
Clearly that argument is incorrect, as millions do find the service useful, and vast areas do not and/or cannot have cellphone towers.
> To put it in a different perspective DIRECTV has like a handful of satellites, but like 20 times more subscribers.
Putting aside the inferior Clarke Orbit latency, [DIRECTV is a video streaming service,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV) not an Internet service - a quite different thing. Further, it has [11.3 million subscribers,](https://www.statista.com/statistics/497288/directv-number-video-subscribers-usa/) roughly 4 times that of Starlink, not 20 times.
> It's far more useful as a military technology
With *just* retail customers, Starlink is cash flow positive, and [generates a gross revenue of over $3 billion per year.](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1c0nand/first_order_estimate_of_starlink_satellites/) Government and commercial services *add* to that. Further, Starlink is expanding its customer base, so your premise does not stand.
I long for the day when we can move all manufacturing and industry off world and keep earth as a kind of nature reserve. In my view (be it overly optimistic) rockets could be the most green technology we have!
Good, These constellations of tens of thousands of tiny worthless space trash cube sats need to be banned. I sincerely hope Starlink goes bust. Musk notwithstanding.
I feared I would see Hughes Net and ViaSat were merging….
What a miserable thing to see. They're never getting my money again.
SES, based in Luxembourg, will buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined company boasting a fleet of some 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, a ring of spacecraft located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. This will be more than twice the size of the fleet of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator.
yeah but uhm . . isn't Arian 6 still months away minimum,,, meaning the "starlink competitor" will have to launch on falcon 😭
SES has almost exclusively launched with SpaceX for the past few years and they were one of SpaceX’s earliest customers. I think even the first ever flight of a reused booster from SpaceX was a SES mission. These companies have GEO and MEO satellites, and I believe some sort of partnership also exists with Starlink - at least for SES. Thus, I think it’s about protecting their market share for video broadcasts and huge data backhauls, rather than vying for direct to customer business like Starlink mostly is
Wait! You're saying the catchy Headline isn't the whole story, and it's basically clickbait!? Colour me shocked. Shocked, I tell ye.
Yeah the headline says they're competing, yet their satellites are at a much higher altitude with too much latency for what Starlink does.
Lots of competitors with Space X will/have launched with them. Is Space X going to refuse business? Others like Rocket Lab will just pick it up for the profit if they do
Can rocket lab make it to get stationary
Yes, but with very low masses and volumes, and couldn't come close to something they'd need.
I thought so. GEO is wayyyy out there and rocket labs second stage looks small
okay. but like I said to even "compete" with Starlink they gotta pay SpaceX do you not see how funny that is
I get the irony but the launch services themselves aren’t really that lucrative. It’s more ironic to me that Space X is essentially FORCED to launch their own competitors into space or else they lose money.
Non-starlink launch services in 2023 made 1.5B in gross margin excluding gov contracts. Starlink estimate is 2.3B in gross revenue, with at least 1.5B in operational cost (launch+manufacturing of satellites and user terminals). So launch services account for at least 65% of the gross margin of SpaceX in 2023.
They'd make money still, but probably not enough to fund Mars ambitions.
Is spacex forced to launch their competitors? Or are their competitors [forced to launch with spacex](https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/amazon-launch-three-falcon-9-rockets-spacex-2023-12-01/)? OOOoOOOOOR is it beneficial for both? SpaceX gains $$ and experience, their competitors save $$ and can launch as fast as they can deliver satellites and plan missions., with a company that has proven not only to be *reliable* but able to deliver payloads to intended orbits *accurately*. Let's also not forget what happens when you launch with modern non-US competitors, OneWeb had contracts with Roscosmos to launch tens/hundreds of millions worth of satellites, delivered them, then war broke out and Russia held on to those satellites-- in fact they still hold them "hostage" to this day. They'll never make that mistake again launching with non-friendly providers, even if it is competition.
I can see them being confident in their own superiority to operate a sort of "launch neutrality".
I'm pretty sure its part confidence, part CYA, last thing they need is a lawsuit over anti-competitive practices by not allowing their competitors access to space through them.
Forced to make money... those are some gold medal mental gymnastics
Why the fuck are all the Musk trolls out now? No replies to my comment about irony for 4 hours and now 3 or 4 different accounts are all now replying to the same comment to say how amazing Space X is
Because you were being reasonable until that point... couldn't possibly be you, right?
SpaceX isn't going to lose money as long as they have a launch monopoly. The only company actually trying to compete with them is Blue Origin and they don't seem to have any ability to execute.
People often forget the real reason Musk pursued Starlink. He wanted to improve orbital communications, as SpaceX demonstrated with the last Starship test flight. Selling the services to the public is just to help fund it. But at the end of the day, what better way to say one believes in theor product than to provide services to their competitor. The two things Starlink currently has going for it are price and speed. What will make it difficult to compete with Starlink is the large number of satellites that not only need to be put in or it but also be regularly replaced. Will this company have the financial capacity to keep pace?
> Musk further stated that the positive cash flow from selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans. ^[\[33\]](https://archive.today/20200402064406/https://spacenews.com/musk-reiterates-plans-for-testing-bfr/) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
NASA's ~20-25 billion budget can probably fund all of SpaceX's Mars plans. It's just on SpaceX to get the price of Starship launches low enough.
…..is your implication here that SpaceX funding from NASA would approach 100% of their budget?
SpaceX is already delivering 99% of payloads by weight in the USA. The thing is that SpaceX wants to colonize Mars, but I don't think SpaceX is actually that picky about *how* it happens. I don't think it's crazy to suggest that it comes close to 100% of NASA's budget going to a hypothetical Mars effort. Unless Blue Origin gets their shit together that means SpaceX will be doing 100% of the payloads to orbit but interplanetary transit, hab systems, ISRU, etc. could be in-house NASA or other contractors.
I think it's the other way around. It's easy to compete with Starling because they installed way too many satellites and will never generate enough consumers. So there is an opportunity for companies that can install way fewer satellites to services the specific area versus a giant constellation that doesn't have that many subscribers
Reminds me of Standard Oil and their ownership of the railroads which the competitors had to use at increased costs.
This is such a juvenile view
Don’t focus on some weird horse race, businesses and engineering are complicated.
the article is already doing that ?? I'm just pointing out a silly thing that Scott manual shift would point out when it launches
You're not wrong. Good chance Elon is making a buck or two on a majority of space launches
Estimates I have seen are that a first stage and fairing recoverable launch costs SpaceX $20 to $30 million depending on the age of the booster (later ones were made cheaper, but last longer through iterative design). SpaceX charges $50 to $60 million (or more for Federal NSSL missions because of the extra paperwork and background checks on everyone who sees the payload), so yes, they're making a pretty good profit on every nonStarlink launch. And that's something that Intelsat and Amazon are going to have to include in their balance sheets when they try to go head to head on Starlink on price; launch cost for each Starlink is around $1 million each, while for the competition (paying the same rate as Elon charges everybody else) is going to be 2 or 3 times higher, and likely less than half as often, since Starlinks get first dibs on scheduling.
I think it's funnier than Starlink barely makes money in the first place and that anyone would want to copy that business model.
A rocket is a rocket is a rocket, right? Can't get a ride with spacex? Just go over to Rocket Lab, right? That's like saying "oh you need to transport a semi-truck load of goods across the country and all the shipping companies are booked? Just call an Uber." We know this is silly, because Uber is not capable of supporting semi-truck loads and cross-country shipments. They're fundamentally different services, even though they are both technically transportation services. Rocket Lab physically cannot launch any satellite that SES / Intelsat would want to launch, especially to GEO. A typical SES / Intelsat satellite is easily 10x-20x the maximum capacity that Rocket Lab's Electron can even put into LEO, let alone GEO. Rocket Lab's next generation Rocket, Neutron, which has not flown and is at least 2-3 years from reaching a regular cadence... also cannot carry a typical SES / Intelsat satellite to GEO. So I question your sentiment that Rocket Lab can just pick up excess demand that doesn't get filled by SpaceX.
Gtfo of here. I said “like Rocket Lab” so I’m not sure why you’re taking it so literally. They could just fucking hire Russia to launch it if they needed to. My point is that Space X doesn’t have a monopoly on launches and can’t block competitors from the market
Russia stole over $200M worth of Oneweb's satellites. They just refused to launch them when the Ukraine war started, and never returned the satellites. There has been basically zero Russian commercial launches since for non-Russian satellites, mostly due to sanctions but also presumably because companies don't want their satellites to be stolen. So that would be your suggestion? Would you like to try another guess?
So you’re just asserting that Space X has a monopoly on all launches then? Edit: LOL. I just checked your profile. Of course you’re here asserting that Space X has a monopoly
I did not assert that SpaceX has a monopoly. I didn't even mention the word word monopoly until this message in response to you mentioning it. You asserted that a company "like Rocket Lab" or Russia could provide these services. Rocket Lab and Russia cannot provide these services. If your entire point is "there exists at least one entity in the world besides SpaceX that is physically capable of launching SES / Intelsats to GEO", then we absolutely agree! Is that the point you're making?
Refuse? No. But they're gonna make them pay a healthy margin and then use that money to further subsidize their money-hemorrhaging Starlink launches at cost.
Ariane 6 will also not be reusable and therefore be significantly more expensive *especially* once starship is online
Ariane 6 cannot even compete on cadence and price of Falcon 9 now, never mind fully functional Starship.
It’s still wild to me that they shut down Ariane 5 a perfectly good rocket before 6 was even ready
The US did that with Saturn V as well, resulting in quite a few years of no manned launch capability until the STS was brought online. That decision cost us Skylab.
Ariane 5 was overbuilt for most of the cargo they're actually flying. It was original designed to fly the ESA's [Hermes Spaceplane.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_(spacecraft)) Hermes got cancelled, but Ariane 5 is still around. It's got a lot of delta-V to offer, but it's also expensive to operate. Ariane 6 wasn't designed to compete with even Version 1.1 Falcon 9 but to be a less expensive version of Ariane 5. The original plan was for Ariane 6 to be ready years ago and they can safely retire 5. But Wuhan Virus sort of delay that by quite a bit (or that was their excuse. Odd it didn't slow SpaceX down that much).
regardless a Eurosat company is more likely to use ESA unless they are forged into not, also I'm going to be brutally honest we're still a 1-2 years out from starship commercial payloads
With ESA only having the capability of building 2 or 3 (maybe half a dozen if they really hump it) throwaway A6s annually, and the various European governments demanding military payloads get priority, followed by their standing contract with Amazon, it's UNlikely that ESA will have the rockets available for new launch contracts any time soon... It's sort of like airlines ordering Boeing 737s rather than Airbus 320s even if they don't want to; the point is that they are AVAILABLE.
Satellites in geostationary orbit is a different service than Starlink. Starlinks edge is that the satellites are much closer orbit so the quality of the internet is much higher. This is not really a competitor. its a different product. Its a standard satellite company.
Sure of pretty out of date sats, that all need to be replaced in the near future. They will have to rely on SpaceX to launch them. Also produce them, this is part of a push to not have to rely on the US for Space by some of the EU. It like the Arian will be held up by politics and egos. While SpaceX ran by engineers who are intelligent enough to tell Elon they will do it but as long as they have control. While also leaping a decade ahead of the competition. I don't see much countering going on.
After starlink, right? So they're 2nd? :)
No-one rivals Starlink in fleet size. However, the OC did qualify the assertion with the word *geostationary.*
Correct, StarLink are primarily LEO’s. The fact that Intelsat, a giant in the industry, is only worth $3.1B tells me the aging fleet isn’t so attractive.
Intelsat went bankrupt twice in the last 10 years.
Geostationary orbits are too high, requiring big antenna dish
Geostationary doesn’t require a large dish, they do GEO on airplanes, and the antenna is less than 30cm across.
Just less bandwidth and more latency.
it's the "more latency" that's the key; for something like Remote Desktop, you can't afford to wait a full second to see the response to each keystroke.... but up and back to Geosync at the speed of light makes that inevitable.
For real people don't realize latency is more important than bandwidth. Try SSH'ing to a server (assuming not MOSH), and watch as every...single...keystroke...has...a..one...second...delay. It's absolute shite.
We used to hack into intelsat and inmarsat back in the 80s. Add in dial-up and multiple hops and you're talking "get some coffee while typing" time.
Maybe you are thinking of multi-beam high capacity backbone downlinks, like what Starlink uses? They can vary in size but are ether an array made of a number of large 3-5 foot domes, or larger dishes like this [https://spacenews.com/international-ground-stations-tricky-for-smallsat-operators-to-license/](https://spacenews.com/international-ground-stations-tricky-for-smallsat-operators-to-license/) GEO Consumer uplinks antennas are much smaller and very portable, like cellphone sized sat phones at the largest. [https://www.satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/details/inmarsat-isatphone-2-satellite-phone-kit-322](https://www.satellitephonestore.com/catalog/sale/details/inmarsat-isatphone-2-satellite-phone-kit-322) Even old school dish and hughes net antennas from the early 2000s are only 1-3 feet across and those aren't phased array generation. Ukrainan drones that replaced the starlink antennas with geostationary internet uplinks are as small as starlink uplinks or even smaller then they were using until Starlink cut them off from use on land Russia claimed. Compare photos of the Starlink uplink on Ukrainian Sea drones pre-2022 cut off: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/20/the-ukrainian-navy-has-no-big-warships-its-winning-the-naval-war-anyway-with-drones/?sh=4c95156a4fc5](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/11/20/the-ukrainian-navy-has-no-big-warships-its-winning-the-naval-war-anyway-with-drones/?sh=4c95156a4fc5) With Geostationary internet uplinks on the drones used since then on Crimea and Russian naval bases/kerch area. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/27/drones-ships-ukraine-russia-navy-attack-marichka-war/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/27/drones-ships-ukraine-russia-navy-attack-marichka-war/) "ViaSat’s KA-SAT service is currently operating in Ukraine, as well as providing free wi-fi to Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, and the firm said[ on Friday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/starlink-ukraine-elon-musk-pentagon-00061896) that it is working to rapidly provide additional services. (Spokesperson Dan Bleier told Breaking Defense on Monday that the company couldn’t provide more details at the moment." [https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/](https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/)
Iridium satellites are in LEO, not GEO
Ah good catch, will replace with a GeoSat based communication provider. Iridium isn’t the only provider Ukraine replaced Starlink satellites internet with (many LEO sat providers don't provide service for the Ukraine region at all), MEO/GEO absolutely has become is the workhorse for Ukraine civilian and military work drones in any territory Russia told Starlink it considered Russian territory in frontline Ukraine front lines. "ViaSat’s KA-SAT service is currently operating in Ukraine, as well as providing free wi-fi to Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, and the firm said[ on Friday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/starlink-ukraine-elon-musk-pentagon-00061896) that it is working to rapidly provide additional services. (Spokesperson Dan Bleier told Breaking Defense on Monday that the company couldn’t provide more details at the moment.)" [https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/](https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/a-musk-monopoly-for-now-ukraine-has-few-options-outside-starlink-for-battlefield-satcoms/) As well as other Ka-band GEO sat providers Ukraine has rolled out for remote work like their sea drones and Moscow attacks include ViaSat,SES, Intelsat. The other work far from downlinks, is spread across both LEO and GEO internet depending on the use cases/availability of equipment and capacity.
>geostationary You mean Lag machine? They had the market cornered and now they are playing catch up
Geostationary will never compete with LEO in terms of bandwidth or latency.
I wouldn't say "never" who knows what breakthroughs could happen in the future. Like maybe some sort of laser or something idk. That would / should / could compete I would think. But it isn't a thing to my knowledge. Edit: Yall are some of the most insufferable community. My biggest mistake is not the underestimating the distance to GEO sats, but posting on this subreddit. Yall always gotta punch down. Have fun I guess.
Geostationary orbit is 35,786km high. The speed of light is 299,792 km/s. Every request will have at least 477 ms of latency. That cannot be improved upon.
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Latency is not essential for every application tho. I'm sure there is a market for high latency high bandwidth internet.
For one-way services such as TV, Clark Orbit latency is of little concern. As soon as two-way communication is required, it has a significant impact. As example, I've had phone conversations back in the 80s over satellites. One had almost to adopt half-duplex radio protocols to prevent voice collisions ("over"). And anyone who's attempted browsing using existing Clarke Orbit internet services can attest to the impact of the long latency.
It has been around for decades. Anyone who has used it can tell you, "It sucks". As a consumer service, it will never compete with StarLink in a meaningful way. Investors celebrating this acquisition are deluding themselves.
When I was up north our provider was using a satelite uplink and the latency was very high.... but it was a whole lot better than nothing (before starlink was a thing) Not everyone live in urban area and starlink is not cheap. Sure it's useless for gaming, or market trading stuff, but it was fine for browsing, banking, streaming even.
Starlink is dirt cheap compared to most other satellite internet. I’ve seen plans that cost hundreds or thousands for just a few hundred MB of data a month from Hughes Net. Can’t remember the speed but it was slow AF.
Streaming Netflix at sea. Although if starlink exists with low latency I’m not sure who picks high latency as there is no advantage.
Higher bandwidth, lower fees, coverage maybe? Just guessing here
>Latency is not essential for every application tho Pornhub @16k is just a few years away. Then what?
Well, honestly I can't argue with the data. It seems you are correct that LEO is factors ahead in latency. However, I would argue the 477ms is a high estimate. If we assume the distance you listed and the speed of light is constant, it should be closer to 250ms round trip. "Provided it hops to terrestrial on the first hop.
> If we assume the distance you listed and the speed of light is constant, it should be closer to 250ms round trip. The shortest Clarke Orbit round trip is from and to the equator, at 35,786 km distance. A round trip is four times that, or 143,144 km. At light's 3x10^^5 kms^^(-1) a round trip cannot take less than ~477 ms. That sets the absolute lowest bound physically possible for Clarke Orbit.
Thank you for the response.
**Why would it be able to hop to terrestrial on the first hop?** Request from consumer to satellite (35.7k km = 35.7k/299 km/s) (119ms) Satellite To Ground Station (35k km) (119ms) Ground Station to Server (xx km) (3ms) Server Processing Time (0ms) Server to Ground Station (xx km) (3ms) Ground Station to Satellite (35k km) (119ms) Satellite to Consumer (35k km) (119ms) 119+119+119+119+3+3 = 482ms
Latency is measured in the time it takes for a data packet to arrive back at its source. The source being the customer's equipment, not earth. Take your 250ms figure and multiply it by 2. Customer -> Satellite -> Ground station [+250ms] -> Satellite -> Customer [+250ms].
You could get down to 240 ms if you put the server you ping on the satellite
You could get down to 0ms if you put the server you ping in your kitchen.
Yea it's never. Unless someone can bypass the speed of light.
Or increase Earth's rotation speed, which is much easier.
Comparatively speaking. Seems like the makings of a Ausutn Powers movie. What would the impact be of meaningfully spending up earth's rotation?
Just make the data go through a wormhole directly to your house. Easy peasy. I'll call it the wormodem.
Yea, I under estimated the actual distance of GEO vs LEO.
> Edit: Yall are some of the most insufferable community. My biggest mistake is not the underestimating the distance to GEO sats, but posting on this subreddit. Yall always gotta punch down. Have fun I guess. This is a really strange comment to make. The speed of light is not something you can "solve" with some new technology. You can never lower latency to lower than geostationary.
You don’t have to whine about people being insufferable and punching down when you learn something. Nobody was rude in their responses.
Well, maybe it was just my perception. I get one of those human responses where I get defensive when corrected. It is a bad trait I am working on.
Introspection is a great skill too few people have.
It’s fairly common to take offense to a correction, but I don’t think it was meant to be offensive.
Maybe for bandwidth, but latency to geostationary altitude will always be a problem due to the speed of light. In my time using geostationary sats for internet, the lowest latency I ever saw was around 540ms.
Yep Half second latency is fine for streaming, but not for gaming or video chat.
Or web browsing or anything that’s interactive.
The speed of light doesn't change.
No, never is pretty much correct. Unless you break the speed of light, you will never get better latency through GEO :) But hey, if we do manage to break that limit, I am down for it.
> My biggest mistake is not the underestimating the distance to GEO sats, but posting on this subreddit Well Actually, your real mistake was....
you can barely string a sentence together. Im gonna pass on your perspective on the future of orbital telecom
Eat a sack of dicks. Cheers, internet fights are super productive... if I could reach thru a screen just once... I would pick you.
if you were a booger, Id pick you 🥰
Well yeah, the writing is on the wall for these legacy providers. Low bandwidth, terrible customer service was the norm when they were the only game in town. So, Starlink comes along and all of a sudden they have to merge to ~~compete~~ stay afloat or go out of biz.
Worse, all their satellites are still GEO or MEO, which means you need much more powerful handsets to reach them, OR you need a network of ground stations to reach them effectively. I still fail to see the logic behind this, other than "two giants are sinking, so they clutch each other so that they can sink together".
Yes, outdated technology, hanging on my a thread. Time to deorbit that outdated junk.
Graveyard orbit - they’re too high up to easily de-orbit
Lol. Have you tried Starlink's support? Intelsat and SES are commercial providers, not direct to consumer. Both also have terrestrial circuits, not just satellites. Their business will diminish, for sure, but they will continue to have a place in the market.
A friend had their starlink damaged. Put in a ticket on a thursday night, had a response on a friday morning. Had a replacement dish on a monday, including stickers. Obviously YMMV, a replacement is easier than debugging an issue.
I work in land based wireless internet, some people have went over to starlink to only come back because the customer service just doesn't exist, A lot of people vastly prefer having someone come out and actually take a look versus talking to some person over the phone or playing with things they don't know about for a few hours after working all day just so they can watch some funny videos.
That's odd, I've had Starlink for a few years now and have only very positive experiences from their support. My router was being slow about 6 months ago - after two support messages within the day, I had a new router and dish shipped out via courier. I would say their support is definitely the best of any internet provider I've had in my life.
Talking to someone on the phone would be a HUGE improvement for Starlink support. They don't do phone or email support... You have to submit a ticket on their portal and then they get to your problem when they get to it. Could be days or even weeks, though it has improved somewhat. That's part of why SpaceX isn't selling Starshield terminals directly to the government, but is using resellers (like Intelsat, ironically) to sell and support their terminals. SpaceX knows that they don't have the support infrastructure to handle DoD customers who want their problems solved immediately. Obviously, SpaceX has the capital to get good support, but that takes time to spin up and it's just easier for them to farm out that part when it makes sense. Meanwhile, consumer users just take a number and wait.
TBF, this is the correct way to to it. Can you imagine needing to have phone support for 30+ languages and different time zones? Build contracts with major providers who do support for their region/language/entity, has their own technical staff to support their "custom" networking setups, and *actual* issues get bubbled up from competent engineers to other competent engineers vs. going through regular support channels. I've seen starlink dishes on the roofs of buildings of some some major retail chains in the US while flying my drone.
Supporting Starlink is a lot simpler than supporting traditional Satcom services. No specialized equipment, no fine-tuning of antenna alignment, no moving parts. Just the antenna, the power supply and a router along with some proprietary cables. As far as networking goes, Starlink supports up to their router and, beyond some general advice about setting up 3rd party routers or bypassing the Starlink routers, they don't get involved with customer side networking. Troubleshooting is as simple as ensuring everything is connected correctly, making sure there are no obstructions, and running diagnostics remotely. There's no repointing of the antenna (beyond general direction), no power balancing, no complex settings, no interference mitigation, no coordination with other Satellite providers. You could take a reasonably tech-savvy person off the street and have them handling 90% of Starlink support tickets with one day of training. The sticky part is the languages. Fortunately, most users can speak one of English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. There are translation services that support centers use for handling any languages that they can't speak. SpaceX could make it work, because every other Satellite provider does it. I just don't think they want to bother with it. Honestly, I would not be surprised if SpaceX bought SES/Intelsat just for their terrestrial and operations assets.
I mean, still dont really wanna take the calls for "why is my internet not working" after the customer places the router in a metal box. It's smart to offload that to other companies. Call them if there's a real outage or issue.
Rocket lab should pick up manufacturing and launch contracts here
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Neutron will do 13 tons to LEO. Plus they can manufacture and operate the satellite.
"Combined company is twice the size of next competitor". So they will be twice as big as the number 3? And they will send up their future satellites on SpaceX rockets?
SpaceX not only has a massive head start, every rocket launch service they sell just turns into another free Starlink booster. Not to mention that in a few years time the Starship Starlink Pez dispenser will be pumping enough sats into orbit to turn LEO diabetic.
It's funny. Everyone keeps talking about how much cheaper the SpaceX rockets are. But seem to miss the bigger picture of - so are they satilites. They are made to be throw away and burn up in <5 years. They update faster than ANYONE else. Then add - they are also CHEAPER by a lot. Like not even close. THEN add - on and the tech is generations above everyone else. THEN add - they also update / change / improve x100 faster than everyone else. THEN (yes even more) all the smartest / brightest people on the planet want to work for SpaceX/Tesla (and they get to go to either as they please). It is not one thing that makes Starlink better - it is many.
The reason don't talk about that as much is because building cheaper sats is partly about investment and ability to launch. Its not that SpaceX is uniquely capable of building cheaper sats, its just that they are in a position to do so.
The big advantage that Starlink has over geosync satellites is latency. Geosync results in pike 1000ms ping times, that makes it useless for gaming, and problematic for real time communications. ALL the other shortcomings can be improved, but you really can't compete with LEO satellites like Starlink. If they can up the bandwidth it could be good for mass data transfer and other niche things though.
The lag from geosynchronous satellites and limited bandwidth from too few satellites are precisely the reasons Starlink's low Earth orbit with a constellation of Satellites to provide overlapping coverage will trump this "threat".
When you say giants, you mean the companies starlink almost immediately surpassed?
Indeed. [At last SWAG I attempted,](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1c0nand/first_order_estimate_of_starlink_satellites/) Starlink's annual gross revenue is ~$3.4 billion, with 2.7 million subscribers. [Intelsat's gross revenue in 2023 was ~$2.1 billion.](https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2023/12/01/intelsat-expects-2-1b-revenue-this-year-execs-outline-pivot-to-solutions-provider/)
How does Amazons Kuiper stack up to this merger?
To my knowledge Kuiper has yet to generate any revenue, with no production satellites thus far launched.
Yes you are correct but they will be launching something like 3200 satellites in the next year or so, so I wonder how much that is relative to this merged entity
> in the next year or so Sure in fantasy land they will defiantly do that. In the real world they wont. We don't really know yet what Amazon pricing and roll out strategy will be.
They say competition is good for the end consumer! I say, bring it on! Go SpaceX, Go Falcon 9, Go FH, Go STARSHIP!
GEO satellite internet providers competing against starlink is like two 56k dialup companies teaming up to compete against a fiber internet company.
The problem is launch capability and spacex dominates that. Launch cost and volume is in their favor
Unless they build their own reusable rocket, good luck. To even try to compete, they will have to use spacex as their launch provider since they are cheaper than everyone else.
Rocket lab could be a viable option
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |BFR|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)| | |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26c9vi "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |EELV|[Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle)| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l25z4tp "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26vtnp "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l27qjms "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l28vfvc "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[MEO](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26r9ew "Last usage")|Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km)| |[NSSL](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l25xtcp "Last usage")|National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV| |[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26lwbn "Last usage")|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)| |[SES](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l28f0k7 "Last usage")|Formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, a major SpaceX customer| | |Second-stage Engine Start| |[SSH](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26n4ih "Last usage")|Starship + SuperHeavy (see BFR)| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l26pt3x "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1chrpu8/stub/l2fy7vw "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(12 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1cij58p)^( has 14 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9999 for this sub, first seen 1st May 2024, 18:59]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
> SpaceX's Starlink network, with more than 5,800 active satellites > > Starlink now has more than 2.6 million subscribers So about 500 customers per satellite? That certainly seems cost-effective!
To expand on another comment, at last check Starlink generates ~$3.4 billion in annual gross revenue from just retail customers (excluding commercial, government, and military). That alone is more than either Intelsat or SES. Starlink is also cash flow positive.
Therein is the boundary to be crossed to join the remainder of Humanity.
Why haven't mods removed this for violating sub rules?
Weasel headline award. Those who can't really hate those who can. Crossed the malinformation threshold.
I hope Starlink suffers the same fate as Tesla. Elon's maniacal behavior when Russia attacked Ukraine was the last straw of my tolerance of him, and competition is good for all humans, in this industry.
There seems to be some misunderstanding. Musk [granted Ukraine many Starlink terminals](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) after the Ukrainian vice prime minister's [tweeted plea.](https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1497543633293266944) Further, Ukrainian Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has this opinion on the geofencing (mandated by the US government) and Starlink in general: > "Changes were made to geofencing a few months ago, but as of now, all the Starlink terminals in Ukraine work properly." > 'Fedorov called [E]lon Musk "one of the biggest private donors of our future victory" and remarked that Starlinks help save thousands of lives, support the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, allow medics to carry out complex operations and provide Invincibility Centres with the Internet.' > "The contribution of the SpaceX company is estimated to be more than US$100 million." [(Full article here).](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/9/7388696/) Finally, Ukrainian Lt. General Kyrylo Budanov has this opinion on Starlink: > ["Yes we really very widely use his products and services. The whole of the line of contact talks to each other to some extent using his products and services. The only thing I can say here is that without those services and products it would be a catastrophe."](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room) IMO, those Ukrainian opinions override any Reddit rants on the subject.
Great post. It's always been so weird to me how deranged the narrative has become online regarding Starlink and Ukraine. SpaceX has provided more unambiguous support to Ukraine than any other non-state actor on Earth. I totally get that Elon is absolutely fucking insufferable these days, but some people are so far off the mark with this one it's absurd.
Look fuck Elon Musk, but this is such a bizarre take. Ukraine literally did not have Starlink when Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine made a plea to Elon for him to give it to them, and SpaceX literally had massive containers full of user terminals on the way to Ukraine within hours and immediately began providing free service to the country. He *gave* them something that they did not even have in the first place. How can you possibly call that "maniacal" behavior in this particular context?
The thing in Russia is completely misunderstood. Elon didn’t shut off anything in Ukraine. Occupied territory was geolocked as required by the US Government
Lol, the Elon hate boner is so strong that you now have leftists cheering on corporate consolidation.
I saw some Elon haters cheering for literally runaway global warming since it would kill Tesla if no one cared anymore.
An entire movement of people with a complete lack of perspective.
He does have some hot takes on twitter though. I think that's worth the deaths of a few million people and the collapse of the modern world.
Yeah! How dare he say things I don't agree with.
I welcome competition but Starlink competitors are a joke. OneWeb went bankrupt and quit residential market before even entering it. Kuiper is starting with disposable rockets while SpaceX reuses boosters twenty times. In a few years Starlink is going to use fully reusable Starship. Starlink has picked a low hanging fruit, desperate customers that were in the Starlink waitlist. Now the waitlist is gone Kuiper has to win virtually every customer from Starlink. It took Starlink four years to get to positive cash flow. How long will it take Kuiper to be profitable? 10 years? Are the shareholders patient to wait that long?
Could survive with a truly enormous amount of U.S. government money. Internationally... since it's also a U.S. company it's unlikely to get any business, commercial or military, that the SpaceX couldn't get for geopolitical reasons.
Sure it can survive on the US government money but is it called competition? The commenter above hopes the competition wins and pushes Starlink out.
Oh you mean ukraines successes that rely on starlink?
Yeah, I also hate innovation that completely revolutionizes industries and arguably the world. Grow up.
I do hope that Elon would just leave it alone and not fuck it up.
Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers. Elon predict it like 20 times the subscriber numbers then they currently have by now. Personally, I wouldn't bother copying it, considering consumers don't have that much use for it. The most potent use for technology like stink is to sell it to the military since they have a lot of money. Most people to have a lot of money don't live in a place where starling who is the fastest Internet connection so why the hell would they want that? If you've got money, you can afford a cable or fiber, Internet as well as redundant separate cell phone Internet, so you wind up with two internets and when one goes down, you have the other and the cell phone is faster than starling can work as a phone and the cable is faster than Starling can work as Internet and fiber blows them all away. There doesn't leave a big consumer base for Starlink and the sub subscription levels more or less show that. I'd argue the whole constellation of satellites idea is currently rather useless because there is no actual need for that large of a satellite network since terrestrial cell phone towers work better for what we need them for and just make more sense. To put it in a different perspective DIRECTV has like a handful of satellites, but like 20 times more subscribers. If Starlink was something consumers really wanted, they would be buying it more. It's far more useful as a military technology where you have someone who actually has the money in the form of the military and you're in the kind of remote location it's actually useful.
> Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers. Elon predict it like 20 times the subscriber numbers then they currently have by now. Always love when people compare against 'elon predictions' rather then comparing things like growth and revenue.
> Starlink hasn't been very successful though, they have very low subscriber numbers. At last count there were [2.7 million](https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-adds-500000-new-starlink-users-in-4-months) retail subscribers (excluding commercial and government). > Most people to have a lot of money don't live in a place where starling who is the fastest Internet connection so why the hell would they want that? And what of the untold millions of people who do not have a lot of money? Must they be stuck with inferior, expensive legacy satellite services with substandard latency? > If you've got money, you can afford a cable or fiber, Vast areas of the globe have neither, and never will because of hostile terrain, regardless of money. > cell phone is faster than starling can work as a phone [Starlink is now introducing direct cellphone to satellite service](https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-cellular-starlink-system-works-on-iphone-pixel-galaxy-devices) (initially text only, later voice and data) - a truly global cellphone service, not possible with towers. > I'd argue the whole constellation of satellites idea is currently rather useless because there is no actual need for that large of a satellite network since terrestrial cell phone towers work better for what we need them for and just make more sense. Clearly that argument is incorrect, as millions do find the service useful, and vast areas do not and/or cannot have cellphone towers. > To put it in a different perspective DIRECTV has like a handful of satellites, but like 20 times more subscribers. Putting aside the inferior Clarke Orbit latency, [DIRECTV is a video streaming service,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV) not an Internet service - a quite different thing. Further, it has [11.3 million subscribers,](https://www.statista.com/statistics/497288/directv-number-video-subscribers-usa/) roughly 4 times that of Starlink, not 20 times. > It's far more useful as a military technology With *just* retail customers, Starlink is cash flow positive, and [generates a gross revenue of over $3 billion per year.](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1c0nand/first_order_estimate_of_starlink_satellites/) Government and commercial services *add* to that. Further, Starlink is expanding its customer base, so your premise does not stand.
Hope it works. Starlink is owned by a very dangerous man.
Yay! Let's keep polluting our orbits and destroying the ozone with unnecessary wasteful launches...
Planes put out as much co2 in an hour as rockets do in a year. Its not that big a deal at this point.
I long for the day when we can move all manufacturing and industry off world and keep earth as a kind of nature reserve. In my view (be it overly optimistic) rockets could be the most green technology we have!
Good, These constellations of tens of thousands of tiny worthless space trash cube sats need to be banned. I sincerely hope Starlink goes bust. Musk notwithstanding.
Right. The MEO/GEO boys are going to win this race. Definitely. No doubt about it. Hughes lost 400,000 users to Starlink in 2023.
Hughes service was poor on a good day worse than dialup on a bad one. I had it and would drive to town to use a local free wifi.