All of Europe’s stupidity is summed up in the mockery, in the past, by Arianespace engineers of the SpaceX project: today, the American billionaire’s launcher is preparing to take off 400 times between 2025 and 2029, with Starship, the flagship that will carry much more equipment than its predecessors and will make the Luxembourg, SES and the state forget the Falcon 9, while in Europe we are still hoping that Ariane 6 will be able to take off once every three months...

The whole European problem can be summed up in another fact: where the Americans decide to support one or two major projects and go all out, fast and hard--SpaceX was largely financed by public funds via Nasa--Europeans have to argue for months to find a compromise and give all member states a piece of the business or the presence of an institution, while ensuring the same return on investment.

V3, a factor of change for Starlink

And the problem is set to get worse, despite the European Space Agency’s new launcher policy. According to a study by Enders, published last week, Starlink, the SpaceX subsidiary that wants to connect the planet from the sky, has announced the upgrade of its basic satellite, the V2, to a V3 “which multiplies by ten the connectivity capacity” of the V2.

And of the 400 launches announced over four years, 25 in 2025 will be based on Starship, which will be able to launch 60 new-generation satellites at the same time, a boost of six terabytes per second or five and a half times more than its low-orbit rival OneWeb and its 600 satellites. The comparison with the eight O3Bmpower satellites is more complicated because Boeing’s technology is based as much on capacity as on the possibility, with 5,000 ‘receivers’ per satellite, of constantly reconfiguring their positioning to meet customer needs.

SES is not even on the radar of analysts. “We have generally approached the satellite communications sector from the perspective of UK telecoms operators, where, in general, the new generation of low Earth orbit (LEO) players, such as Starlink and OneWeb, have proved more relevant,” comments study author Hamish Low, when questioned by Paperjam. “LEO constellations offer a much more attractive latency for a consumer Internet connectivity product than older geostationary operators such as SES and Intelsat. SES and its geostationary and medium Earth orbit (MEO) peers are now in a more static position, with the majority of market growth being captured by Starlink and this new generation of LEO megaconstellations. In terms of ‘major’ players, SES/Intelsat's forecast revenues for 2024 of around €3.8bn have almost certainly been exceeded by Starlink's estimated revenues of between $6bn and $7bn. That’s not to mention that a substantial part of SES’ revenues come from video broadcasting, a sector largely distinct from connectivity.”

A question of capex, among other things

These arguments are regularly and politely brushed aside by SES in its strategy. On the one hand, multi-orbit positioning offers a whole range of possibilities, and there is room on the market for all offers. On the other hand--and the Enders study also underlines this--there is the question of capex. According to the authors of the study, the V2 was worth around $800,000 dollars, while the V3 should cost between $4m and $5m. To offer gigabit speeds to its internet service users--well beyond current speeds which vary between 100 and 200 Mbps depending on the market and the time, Starlink will be obliged to invest billions of dollars in capex. And for satellites whose cybersecurity and lifespan we know nothing about.

According to the V3 dossier submitted to the US communications regulator, Starlink also needs to use frequencies other than the Ku and Ka bands currently in use, in this case V and E, which are much higher and allow much more data to be broadcast using greater bandwidth, with much less interference than the Ku and Ka bands, which are already very congested. This should not pose any particular problems: the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is Brendan Carr. Appointed by then-president-elect Donald Trump in November 2024, the longest-serving Republican on the FCC had previously served as the agency’s general counsel.

Musk should get satisfaction on two other central points, the study says: that his satellites be put into orbit closer to Earth, which would reduce latency for users; and that the angle of inclination at which satellite dishes connect to satellites be changed, with the aim of guaranteeing smoother transitions and increased use, as the dishes will be able to follow the satellites further up in the sky.

2025 will be a special year for Starlink. For Space X’s launches. For Europeans, who are seeking to assert their sovereignty in the skies via the American launcher, while at the same time having to break with the man who goes from Nazi salutes to attending a campaign rally of the German far right. For SES too, whose partnership with India’s Jio, worth $100m, goes much further than transferring 70 people to India…

Luxembourg’s defence ministry also has a contract with SpaceX to put the LuxEOSys Earth observation system satellite into orbit in the first half of 2025. No choice. If we had chosen the other launcher, replied the minister, “there would have been high additional costs and a lot of uncertainty about insurance and the launch.”

This article was originally published in .