News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
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Some background info on the company:
Isar Aerospace was founded by former students of the Technical University of Munich, who already participated in the WARR group which also won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition several times.
They received fundings from (among others) Airbus, NATO and a former SpaceX executive Bulent Altan (who studied at TUM as well).
Very impressive achievement already and a real hope for European space programs and independence!
I am so excited. It feels like my country is finally moving and doing something. After being dormant for decades. Yay!
The sleeper (Europe as a whole) must awaken!
I think it finally has. For the first time ever, I feel like Europe is actually doing something. It’s awesome.
*For the first time in 80 years...
We know how to do stuff, it's just that we thought the world a friendlier place.
I think we are on the same page tho. Let’s not get pedantic about the wording. :) You’re right tho. It’s not like Europe hasn’t been doing anything EVER. But it certainly hasn’t during my lifetime. So that’s my reference.
True!
Every post mustn't always be a rebuttal :-)
I'm not quite that optimistic.
Yes, things are happening, but imo these are still mostly reactions to external pressures. There is no structural change or politicians that have the quality to properly lead.
As an example here in Germany we recently approved a huge amount of new debt for investments in infrastructure and weapons. But the leaked contract negotiations for the coalition of our next government includes tax gifts in the form of lower tax rates for eating out, ev subsidies for the car industry, and higher pension benefits for mothers payed out of the regular budget (while we already have a unsustainable pension system).
Also in the above mentioned decision to take on new debt we decided that defense spending above 1% of GDP doesn't count towards the regular budget, but can be financed through debt separately. Which on the one hand might be nice, since right now we might invest more. But imo setting the limit at 1% kind of shows how much we actually value it. We could have set it higher and committed to sustained change, but this way leaves more room open in the regular budget for the gifts mentioned above.
Commercial/private spaceflights are dumb and shouldn't exist. Just more trash that flies at bullet speed in our orbit.
I mean you do need satellites if you want to have satellite internet.
Critical infrastructure shouldn't be in private hands. As Musk perfectly demonstrates right now.
I want Star Trek but we're heading towards Alien instead.
This is an absolute basic necessity for a European Starlink, isn't it?
Well, to be able to independently launch it: yes. But once the satellites are up, who cares about the car dealers-in-chief?
& There's already Eutelsat; their satellites already seem to be providing internet much like Starlink: https://www.eutelsat.com/de/satelliten-dienste/satelliten-internet-breitbanddienst.html
Eutelsat has geosynchronous orbits, which allows them to provide service over a much larger area per satellite and doesn't require very many satellites to serve a consistent geographical area as the earth rotates and the satellites orbit the earth.
Problem is, though, geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 km altitude. Light travels at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s. So any signal takes 120ms to get to the satellite, and 120 ms to return. Any signal is going to have a 240ms latency at a minimum, and that's just physics.
Starlink satellites have an altitude closer to 600 km. Light only takes about 2ms to get to that altitude, and 2ms to return. So the satellites add only about 4ms, which makes for easier and more seamless communication.
In order to compete with starlink for most typical Internet applications, it'll require a bunch more satellites orbiting at much lower altitudes.
Eutelsat merged with OneWeb in 2022, which has satellites orbiting in LEO at 1,200 km.
So I suppose they also have access to that.
I don't know much about this but I think these low earth orbit satellites bump into ozone molecules occasionally so their orbits will deteriorate after 5 years or so. That is to say, you need to replenish regularly.
You are right that low orbit satellites aren't in a stable orbit and eventually fail in a matter of years. I think it very much depends on what the intended useage would be for a european constellation:
How much coverage do we want? Global or just the continent+ a bit more?
Would it just be for critical systems or are we also looking for economic independence?
What about bandwith and latency, how much do those matter?
All that would influence how many satellites are neccesarry and which orbits would be suitable. And also to what degree cost efficiency would play a role.
How much coverage do we want? Global or just the continent+ a bit more?
I admit I don't know much about orbital physics, but I don't see how you can have consistent coverage of Europe 24 hours per day and low pings comparable to Starlink without also covering the entire globe. Geosynchronous or sun synchronous orbits require a minimum ping of 240ms, round trip.
If you want to be effective, you need to drift south as much as you drift north to get adequate coverage - still a circular orbit, just tilted off the equator. This causes a real problem, because northern Europe is far enough north that you have to pretty much cover the whole world, anyway. Also, the more you move from the equator, the more bands of satellites you will need to have coverage at all times. The other part in the Starlink system is the requirement for some number of base stations to connect to the internet backbones. Further iterations are reducing this need, but it will never be 0.
What this means is, it would be cheaper for Brazil or the Middle East to have local satellite internet than it is for Europe, China, or Australia. In fact, if Europe had a low-orbit satellite internet offering, it would be more cost effective to sell it worldwide because they would be close to that just covering their own needs. Which is also the position Starlink has chosen to be in.
Ooh, that's a fascinating point, thank you
I suppose it could be done launching those satellites from French Guyana still
Weren't we already launching rockets from the French Guiana?
We do, but this is about continental Europe.
Okay but why do we need that? As I read it Europa had a spaceport, now we have a second one, now what? I mean there was a reason to launch from SA and not Europe, right?
Mhm I guess it would reduce transport cost of the equipment you want to launch as you don't have to ferry it down to French Guiana first.
Launching from Norway over the ocean means launching due north or slightly west (the spaceport website says 90 to 110° inclination). West is the "wrong" way for fuel efficiency (probably not so important at these high inclination). These polar orbit are more useful for low earth orbit (earth observation mainly), a satellite can change its inclination but that's more fuel and less useful payload mass. With inclination change, the site could be used to launch constellations.
Big communication satellite need to launch at lower inclination (closer to the equator and due east).
So it makes sense only for some use case, but it's great to see redundancies. And if it works well, maybe some day they could get a pas in french Guyana.
Yes, but the news is that they are now launching from the European continent, making everything much cheaper because you don't have to transport rockets and payloads around the world.
@tristipasta I thought it was more effective to launch the rockets from as close to the Equator as possible, as the gravitational field is less strong and so you need less fuel to take off.
That's why US also launches rockets from Florida and the USSR and later Russia used/uses the Baikonur facility in Kazahstan.
True, but the primary advantage comes from the Earth's rotational speed rather than a significantly weaker gravitational field. The Earth's rotation provides an additional velocity boost to rockets, which helps reduce the fuel needed to reach orbit.
However, your remark is valid and is also addressed in the article (in the part behind the paywall):
Rockets launching close to the equator get a boost. Thanks to the planet's spin, they start out travelling much faster relative to the centre of Earth than rockets launching near the poles.
Andøya Space Center is located at 69° north, so Earth's rotational speed is considerably weaker there than in French Guiana. But this isn't important for high-inclination orbits: those that make a bigger angle with the equator.
Isar Aerospace says it will be able to put 1500-kilogram payloads into orbit up to 30 times a year, in orbital inclinations from 90° to 110.6º. This would include sun-synchronous orbits - those that always pass over a given point at the same local time - which are ideal for spy and weather satellites. Isar already has a contract to put Arctic Ocean surveillance satellites into just such an orbit for the Norwegian Space Agency.
The launch site is also reasonably free of air and marine traffic, and it benefits from all the infrastructure needed for small launch vehicles. "It will be more limited in terms of what you can achieve, but it's still, I think, reasonable," says Amato.
@[email protected] wrote:
True, but the primary advantage comes from the Earth's rotational speed rather than a significantly weaker gravitational field. The Earth's rotation provides an additional velocity boost to rockets, which helps reduce the fuel needed to reach orbit.
Right, that was it!
So this means that they will only do launches during a specific time of the year?
You can launch to sun-synchronous orbits at all parts of the year. The satellite will orbit around once per 24 hours and so return to the same place at the same time everyday. So you just have to match when you launch with the time of day.
I got it now. Thanks!
Will there be a live feed of the attempted launch?
Unfortunately not.
While 2 man-babies are screeching into our devices 24/7 things are happening here in Europe.
Not only Isar but also the other, bigger company Ariane something.
Let's shoot our own internet satellites into space!