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Comment by timpera | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty cool to see competition from SpaceX ramping up. I didn't know that OneWeb already has 652 satellites in operation.

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I'm just worried the British will start orbiting satellites in the opposite direction as the rest of the world, for the same reason they drive on the left side of the road. ;)

Somewhat related to that, but Israel is launching satellites in the opposite direction than the rest of the world when they launch from their shores, this is so the launch is done over the Mediterranean sea and not their neighbors.

Even more tangential - one of the “disaster” scenarios is a satellite collision - either East/West vs West/East or East/West vs North/South. The debris then would act as shrapnel taking out more and more satellites.

There is an assumption that such a loss would be a prelude to a major attack - but cock up is always more likely.

There's already a broad range of inclinations spanning from equatorial to polar (and slightly beyond polar (slightly "backwards"), for sun-synchronous orbits)—they already have enormous relative velocities, at up to 90-degree relative angles. Satellites going completely "backwards" wouldn't meaningfully make things worse.

Calling them "competitor" is eufemism. Cheapest plan (Anchor) is $625/month for 40 GB, with 10/2 Mbps speeds.

Greenland decision was political not technical to pay x5 more for x10 slower service.

And terminal costs will be through the roof in comparison.

Who else out there is making full-on beamforming capable satellite terminals under $1k? Kymeta's over $20k+ for a single dish.

People may hate the company and the man behind it but there's something special about being able to grab specialized satcoms hardware for like $300 at Best Buy.

10 years ago a BGAN terminal ran me $5000+ and a 384k connection several thousand bucks a month. Now you can get ~512k for $5 a month in Standby Mode on a $300 dish.

There's no terminal costs. Eutelsat uses bog-standard 5G.

The company and the man behind it cost $300 more per terminal.

No it doesn't, not for me and millions of others.

How do you know Greenland are paying consumer prices?

You're right, they're most likely paying more!

> Greenland decision was political not technical to pay x5 more for x10 slower service.

I dunno, is "bus factor" a political or technical thing to consider? How about "did the country of this business threaten us before?" a technical or political consideration?

Personally, I'd try to stay away from entities I can't rely on, on a technical basis. Based on the article, it seems like Greenland traded stability and resilience for performance and price, doesn't seem political.

no fucking way you pay 600+ usd for 40gb data

For us who experienced satellite internet and phone networks before Starlink appeared and tried to push down the prices, that doesn't sound so outlandish for internet that goes through space and is accessible literally everywhere on the planet. If anything it sounds cheap.

How did they launch their satellites?

Seems like they partnered with SpaceX.

https://www.ipinternational.net/oneweb-and-spacex-a-surprisi...

Not false, but they also partnered with every other launch provider under the sun.

Good to know, any source for that? I only did a quick websearch and that was in the first results.

EDIT: Nvm, just now saw the sibling comment with the wiki article.

From a quick skim of their Wikipedia page[0]: basically anything they could get their hands on. Arianes 1 through 5, Atlas II and III, Delta IV, Proton, Zenit, Long March 3, Falcon 9.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutelsat

I've long been of the opinion that launchers are more or less commodities, the interesting stuff is what you shoot up.

Not all launches are the same. ULA is still more competitive in geo.

You're looking at the list of all Eutelsat satellites, but the satellites the article talks about are not on that list. Eutelsat is an old company that operates mostly geostationary TV/radio/etc satellites. In 2023 they acquired OneWeb, which operates Starlink-like satellites in low orbit, and that's what the article is about. For that the list of launches is much shorter, on fewer rockets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutelsat_OneWeb#Launches

ISRO have done a couple of launches.

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