"Few of Musk's international rivals have the same ambition as SpaceSail, which is controlled by the Shanghai municipal government. It has announced plans to deploy 648 LEO satellites this year and as many as 15,000 by 2030" https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-starlink-races-with-chinese-rivals-dominate-satellite-internet-2025-02-24/
Starlink now faces serious competition for LEO satellite dominance.
byu/Fritja inspace
18 Comments
Starlink faces serious competition from me since I plan to launch 10 million satellites next year
Race to fill LEO is essentially a competition of manufacturing capacity and efficiency of supply chain. I don’t see how China would lose that **in long term**. Musk himself stated multiple times that at SpaceX, designing is easy part, the hard part is manufacturing [at scale].
It has “announced plans” to deploy 10% of Starlink’s total satellites this year, and forecasts deploying fewer than half as many satellites as Starlink’s forecasts.
Elon just got into a beef with Carlos Slim, accusing him of ties to organized crime so Slim yanked 29 billion out of future Starlink and SpaceX spending.
I have an idea: as a new EU weapon, let’s make a sweet-ass laser turret. Then use starlink as practice targets. If US does more tomfoolery, threaten to do the same to their spy/observation satellites.
The debris would fall back to Earth quickly in Starlink orbits, too.
Then we provide Ukraine with a different constellation to get internet from, preferably our own
What’s that sound? Oh, it’s just millions of astronomers and astrophotographers crying into their eyepieces.
I give a hearty “f*ck you” to all these companies destroying the night skies. If these companies follow through then Earth-based observations for practically any type of astronomy won’t be possible.
We should just build a Dyson sphere around the earth. We wouldn’t need any pesky satellites, the wealthy can go live on that (or send us poors to go live/work up there, and the racists can say we “built a wall” to keep aliens out.
Elon isn’t helping his cause by proving that any nation that uses Starlink is at the mercy of his mood swings. I bet seeing the way he has threatened Ukraine with cutting off Starlink will be a big reason why governments go for a competitor
See all of them are doomed as I plan on putting a Dyson Sphere around the earth in 2026.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/meis7ck “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
|[FCC](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/mek33rh “Last usage”)|Federal Communications Commission|
| |(Iron/steel) [Face-Centered Cubic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_iron) crystalline structure|
|[GNSS](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/mek33rh “Last usage”)|Global Navigation Satellite System(s)|
|[Isp](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/mej7x4j “Last usage”)|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/meipjfu “Last usage”)|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/meixwbb “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1iwyjmg/stub/mek71co “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1iubxwg)^( has 33 acronyms.)
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There is actually no competition here in much of the world.
The US government and its allies isn’t going to allow its citizens to use a network completely controlled by the Chinese government, and China isn’t going to allow its citizens to use a free network that’s partially controlled by the US government (the Starlink/Starshield connection).
So much for global warming. We will be walking in the shade no matter where we go no this planet. /S
And how are they going to launch them? This is hogwash. The cost, nor difficulty is the satellites. The couple thousand required rocket launches… how will they be affordable? To launch so many rockets is in the billions.
And you’re going to have to repeat all the launches again in 10 years to replace outdated satellites.
A plan is not competition. SpaceX won’t be idle and are themselves working hard to get Starship operational to start launching their much more powerful V3 Starlink satellites.
Don’t let hatred of Musk blind you to reality.
Might be the first time i intentionally choose a Chinese company over a North American one. . .
NOW??? Or once they get the constellation launched and deal with the debris field over the poles created by their exploding upper stages they didn’t passivate?
Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath. The chances that anyone accomplishes anything close to Starlink are slim.