Eutelsat has about 9% the number of satellites and Starlink is expanding fast. This significantly limits the potential backhaul, which is why Eutelsat doesn’t really focus on consumers, but rather governments and enterprise. They don’t have the backhaul to offer wide consumer products. Their cost of launch is 10x higher than Starlink, at least, so they’ll never be able to compete in backhaul or the consumer space. Of course they could contract SpaceX to launch their satellites, but then they’re basically paying the competition to operate, and this power imbalance would be immediately leveraged to their detriment.
The bottom line here is that competitors need reusable rockets, and no one else is even close. However Musk put together the company and strategy pushed space transport forward by decades in a very short space of time, and it’s unlikely another Musk figure emerges in Europe. I do not subscribe to the common notion that if we throw enough money at the problem we can solve it. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin confirms this. It appears to require an appetite for extreme risk; the will to blow up hundreds of expensive rockets; and likely a penchant for the disregard of existing safety laws. The EU would never permit this.
Correct. The EU and its cadres of Brussels technocrats cornered the law in multiple angles so a risky (yet massively profitable and useful) venture like SpaceX would never find the right conditions to exist
Its a tricky balance, on one hand the US system has createst the most profitable and capable companies on earth, on the other hand its also created the most powerful and regulation capturing companies on earth.
Eutelsat has about 9% the number of satellites and Starlink is expanding fast. This significantly limits the potential backhaul, which is why Eutelsat doesn’t really focus on consumers, but rather governments and enterprise. They don’t have the backhaul to offer wide consumer products. Their cost of launch is 10x higher than Starlink, at least, so they’ll never be able to compete in backhaul or the consumer space. Of course they could contract SpaceX to launch their satellites, but then they’re basically paying the competition to operate, and this power imbalance would be immediately leveraged to their detriment.
The bottom line here is that competitors need reusable rockets, and no one else is even close. However Musk put together the company and strategy pushed space transport forward by decades in a very short space of time, and it’s unlikely another Musk figure emerges in Europe. I do not subscribe to the common notion that if we throw enough money at the problem we can solve it. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin confirms this. It appears to require an appetite for extreme risk; the will to blow up hundreds of expensive rockets; and likely a penchant for the disregard of existing safety laws. The EU would never permit this.
Correct. The EU and its cadres of Brussels technocrats cornered the law in multiple angles so a risky (yet massively profitable and useful) venture like SpaceX would never find the right conditions to exist
Its a tricky balance, on one hand the US system has createst the most profitable and capable companies on earth, on the other hand its also created the most powerful and regulation capturing companies on earth.