SpaceX's Rising Tide - Discussion of non-Starlink satellite internet companies

[bxr140]

While we all F5 through this slow news cycle waiting on Vlad to do something stupid while testing Joe's mettle....

This one's probably going to make it.

Plenty of jokes here on breath holding and budgetary non-adherence, but ultimately it makes sense for Europe to fund this kind of sovereign infrastructure, so I think its going to go through. Figure Airbus gets the prime award since they're effectively the B+LM of The Continent, and all the other players (Thales and OHB being the big ones) will get some piece of the pie too. And the constellation will increase launch demand, so Ariane will finagle some scrilla out of it too (as will everyone in the consortium that builds the thing). Hopefully, at least, the'll use the cash pump to develop a reusable vehicle... Relevance of the constellation at the commercial level will probably be all but OBE by the time its actually an operational constellation, but they'll probably lock in some anchor tenants to keep the lights on and of course the European militaries will spend plenty on securing bandwidth they'll rarely use. Cue the jokes about France surrendering via satellite.

But as a comparison (or, a keeping up with the Joneses, if you prefer): The US has plenty of military use comms infrastructure in space already, and eventually there's going to be a US military LEO constellation of some sort (like SDA's transport layer, though it will change names 8 times between now and when its operational) The UK military will leverage OneWeb (that was a huge part of why Mum helped them reorganize out of bankruptcy). Jai-nah will obviously use its inevitable constellation for state purposes. Russia? Well...not that they could afford it either way, but methinks they're probably smarter than actually having to fight themselves anyway. (As long as Vlad's cronies keep planting seeds on the intrawebs about things like election fraud and freedom-eating vaccines and such, idiots in the US will continue to burn it down from the inside. )

 

[bxr140]

Russia...methinks they're probably smarter than actually having to fight themselves anyway

That sure aged well. 😕

Unrelated but on topic (or maybe technically anti-topic?), Telesat's financial woes continue. Seems like they can't squeeze enough loons out of Hunky Justin, and bankers around the world are [I assume] concerned that there's almost literally nothing to show for a constellation that was first announced in 2016.

 

[bxr140]

As is always the case in conference season, lots of news going on these past few weeks. Notably:

We're going to show you a picture of a Kuka!!! Subtitle: Let's See How Much Of A Trigger Word "Wuhan" Can Be.
While obviously the reported CAST and CASIC aspirational production rates pale in comparison to the other mega constellations (let alone Starlink), one would be remiss to not consider a future where production scalability meets state ambition. Their real rate limiter is not going to be satellite production though--its the mass-to-orbit rate. China is going to have to lean on external launch capacity to realize a constellation anytime soon...but that's going to be a huge problem given that the US launchers are pretty much off limits and Ariane 6 is now basically all booked up with Kuiper.

Kuiper Tries to Flex on Dishy
Given that UTs are essentially consumer electronics, and given that there's really not a ton of cost difference between equivalent consumer electronics (it doesn't cost Samsung that much more or less to build a TV with equivalent specs to that Sony one), my guess here is that the Kuiper dish is going to have fewer elements and a corollary fewer amount of beamforming ASICs (or at least, less total beam forming processing power) than the Starlink terminal, and that's really going to be the major differentiator in cost. The result of this speculation would be a Kuiper dish that forms fewer and larger beams, though that's not necessarily a bad thing as the <ahem> "smaller" ~3300 sat Kuiper constellation won't require as tight a geometry as the umpteen-thousand Starlink constellation.

SPACs are Dead, Long Live SPACs...?
On the heels of a bonkers year for space SPACs, it seems like maybe the adults are trying to step in?
TLDR, the last line of that article most accurately contemplates SPACs as shovels...tools which can either be used to dig a hole or bludgeon someone to death. 😂

If we build it, will they come? Subtitle: Millennium made a room.
While the Boeing acquisition of Millennium was generally a good play and makes for a good story, time will tell just how much the capacity/agility will be leveraged. Same goes for Lockheed, who has a building in Colorado to be used for constellation production (And they also have a heavy stake in Tyvak)

Finally, what's the difference between good news and not-bad news?
A: If you're Telesat splashing some inevitable conclusion with Uncle Sam, nothing. In addition to their perpetual financial problems Thales has been calling foul on The Pandemic, and that's caused Telesat to back off on the idea of building/launching "less-than" sats into their polar shell and instead are going back to a single design in an effort to consolidate NRE and maximize volume pricing.

 

[bxr140]

I can't remember if we have a general non-spaceX thread here...

Anyway, a number of newer space companies have been added to the Russel 3000 index, which is generally good news. Notably kept off the island is Virgin Orbit and long-time industry player Maxar (who racks in bank from The Man through the Digital Globe business unit).

 

[bxr140]

Looks like The Wonky Teeth Man is stuffing Viasat's $7B buyout of Inmarsat. Front and center is some weird concern that its going to impact in-flight services (of which both Viasat and Inmarsat are current player). Its a bit of a bummer, as Dankberg (head of Viasat) is reasonably progressive, and Inmarsat--historically very conservative--has some pretty valuable spectrum, especially down in the MSS bands. Generally its a good merger for the space industry.

 

[bxr140]

Anyone interested in 11.75% on Charlie?

 

[Grendal]

Anyone interested in 11.75% on Charlie?

Wow. That is not good for Dish.

 

[bxr140]

Kuiper's dish. Not unsurprising that it looks like a Starlink dish given that it's the same technology.

Internal silicon, at the risk of stating the obvious, is imperative in this space. Interesting that they're still claiming many hundreds of $$$ for a UT.

 

[Grendal]

Here's an article about it:

Amazon unveils Project Kuiper terminals for services starting in 2024

Although still a couple of weeks out from launching its first pair of prototype satellites, Amazon unveiled user terminals March 14 for a planned 3,200-satellite broadband constellation it expects will start providing beta services from low Earth orbit next year.

spacenews.com