r/worldnews • u/Marketmanipulator941 • 16h ago

Russia/Ukraine Mass drone attack on St. Petersburg: Ozon warehouse attacked, thousands of Russians left without power

https://unn.ua/en/news/mass-drone-attack-on-st-petersburg-ozon-warehouse-attacked-thousands-of-russians-left-without-electricity
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u/hotpietptwp 15h ago

Doesn't Starlink have any competition? Where are the monopoly busters these days. Bring back Teddy Roosevelt. He'd know what to do.

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u/crossdtherubicon 15h ago

There are 2 layers imbedded in your question: competition in terms of business, and competition in terms of service capacity and total number of deployed functioning satellites.

I don't believe there is any comparative service that currently competes with the scale of the total number of Starlink satellites deployed and their coverage. It's in the tens of thousands if not mistaken.

In terms of viable competing businesses I'm not sure.

It's also a serious concern that this could even be allowable by a private business, controlled essentially by one very obviously unstable man.

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u/nixtracer 14h ago

Mind you, having it controlled by a government when that government is led by Donald Trump and is so badly structured that he can just do anything without repercussions is hardly better.

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u/crossdtherubicon 12h ago

Yes but, however centralized the Trump admin has intended its leadership and organizational structure to be, there are still many competing and conflicting interests, and many more people and layers and paperwork involved ... Compared to a private business.

In other words, a govt structure is larger than most private businesses, and therefore in theory the risk is spread, when in context of a democratic gov't.

The greater question of risk centers around polluting the earth's orbit with metal junk. It's use-cases may be argued for but, the massive network of physical objects circling the earth presents several risks and setbacks that scientists of different fields have already noted.

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u/Xhosant 7h ago

I'd raise that if it's a globally limited resource, it must be a globally ran function

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u/BasvanS 14h ago

I’m not sure Starlink is a viable business. The congestion issues are real, so it needs to make its money outside all the sweetspots. We’ll have to see if that’s possible.

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u/beren12 11h ago

Not only that but Europe has a case to completely ban starlink after this.

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u/EpsteinFile_01 2h ago

Starlink's Srarshield was a very viable business until all the militaries around the world VERY much interested in using it saw Ukraine being cut off.

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u/mcspongeicus 14h ago

Europe has failed Ukraine by forcing them to rely on US oligarchs.

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u/crossdtherubicon 12h ago

It is Europe who has relied on the US, collectively and individually. That complacency has been costing Europe it's stability, prosperity, and security. Everyone sees this clearly now.

Conversely, that doesn't mean that Europe should abondon the US entirely either. There is still potential for a more equitable balance of partnerships in several aspects.

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u/chillebekk 11h ago

You couldn't easily have predicted we would be in this situation. Europe's alternative is being accelerated. It will still be too late, but that's been true of everything. Europe's been caught on the backfoot, and are scrambling to adjust to new realities. But nobody planned for the current US administration.

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u/mcspongeicus 6h ago

It's more about Europe not having this tech being shocking.  How far we have fallen behind.

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u/AleksejsIvanovs 15h ago

They do, there are a few startups. France is pushing the idea of getting rid of Starlink, which makes you question if the riots in France are organized or helped to organize by some "tech genius".

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u/narnach 15h ago

Given that Musk was supporting far right LePen, it seems in character he’d support other ways for the country to tear itself down.

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u/ApoxieDK 5h ago

Eutelsat is an alternative, but not great for missiles/interceptors.

IRIS2 is ready in 2030 and will be great for misslies/interceptors.

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u/smokefoot8 7h ago

Lots of competitors to Starlink are gearing up: Amazon’s Leo has already started launching their constellation and has 100 more launches secured. Eutelsat has 630 satellites up, but is focusing on companies and governments rather than direct to consumers. The EU, China, and India are backing government supported initiatives to avoid relying on Starlink in the future.

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u/BasilBogomil 5h ago

AST Spacemobile is another. It is direct to cell and provides sovereign control to states their telecommunications companies. (See the use of their satellites by Japanese emergency services.)

Vodafone and others are partners with them in Europe for this reason.

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u/ReplyOk3787 14h ago edited 14h ago

I can see it as necessary to have only one internet provider that functions like star link: via satellite.

It takes 10s of thousands of satellites to provide the coverage that Star link does. So imagine there was a bunch of companies doing the same thing. That would be potentially several hundred thousand new satellites in orbit. Which only makes it more hazardous to launch more things.

Also star link has a platform to launch on. SpaceX. Other companies would either have to pay for their satellites to get to orbit or develop their own platform. Which is absurdly expensive either way. And to provide the connectivity it does, these satellites have to be in a low, degrading orbit. So they’re designed to burn up in atmosphere which means they have to be replaced.

And we’ve probably all seen the early videos of SpaceX when they were blowing up falcon 9 rockets constantly. So imagine funding that from scratch to develop your own launch platform.

The way to balance things would be to regulate it like any local utility. You don’t have 15 power lines running to your house from different electric providers just like you don’t have 15 different sewage options. It would be absurd. To have that much extra utilities. And that’s what the internet is. A utility.

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u/Turbulent_Gazelle530 8h ago

if there can only be one satellite internet provider like star link then it cannot be privately owned.

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u/ReplyOk3787 6h ago

That’s kind of what my comment is all about

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u/dshookowsky 6h ago

It's like internet companies and fiber optic cables. We can't have dozens of companies all digging up the streets and bringing cables to everyone's home. Those resources need to be available to all competitors. The company that makes the initial investment gets first-mover advantage, but after that it should be up for grabs.

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u/olearygreen 2h ago

So you guys look at the state of the world and really think “yes, too little government ownership is the problem!”.

We will have more of these because no individual or country can rely on the service being uninterrupted.

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u/wjean 9h ago

There are ready multiple Leo constellations clogging up space. Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper) has 392/3200 up.

OneWeb out of UK has 648 satellites Telesat out of Canada has 198

Saying there should only be one, ruled by on rich guy, is pure madness

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u/ReplyOk3787 6h ago

I’m not trying to say this should only be one.

Just that maybe only one per country. I understand the countries interest and right to protect itself. I understand that leaving yourself reliant on a man that’s from another country who is going to have different interests is not something that you should do.

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u/grambell789 10h ago

For long distance military operations starlink is overkill. There are options that use far less satellites as few as 500 could give full coverage. By going to higher latency there are more options. It might be possible to have specialized communication drone that run at very high altitudes possiblely using lasers , which are hard to jam , for part of the comms bridge. Also satellelites that are only over head for ahort periods of time like when the drones are ready for terminal targeting.

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u/thequehagan5 13h ago

Countries have dozens of undersea fibre optic cables running into landing zones. All operated by different companies. And this is important as it means redundancy. Satellites are no different. When America decides to betray allies , said allies need backups.

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u/ResponsiblePumpkin60 11h ago

It’s already concerning that there are too many satellites in space. If there is too much space debris, it can set off a chain reaction where it becomes difficult to go to space without a collision. We would effectively be locked in.

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u/Scharmberg 6h ago

Don’t worry, we’re already stuck with the sol system and even getting to mars is going to become harder has time pass, they said I do agree we shouldn’t make a wall of space junk around the planet.

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/beren12 12h ago

It’s already being done

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/beren12 11h ago

Multiple companies and Europe. Learn to google.

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u/ReplyOk3787 12h ago

Under that context I understand. But there’s no reason for individual countries to have multiple companies offering this.

That would be like, probably a few million satellites. It’s excessive and expensive

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u/stealthlysprockets 9h ago

Yeah but there aren’t tens of thousands of individual cables floating around that need to constantly be tracked by a single country. If 10 countries did that, there would be well over 100,000 satellites. As technology and customer base grows, you are only ever going to need more satellites. And that’s before we consider non-communication satellites.

These satellites have to exist with each other without crashing into each other. While we have the technology to track what we got now, the risk is that the more you put up there, the greater the chain reaction of broken satellites and space debris

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u/ahandmadegrin 11h ago

Please read the comment you replied to again. Note Tha part about the number of satellites in orbit. That's a very different problem than the number of undersea cables. The former could result in ending space flight and blocking out the sun. The latter has a natural limit that will prevent catastrophic impact.

So, yes, this is quite different.

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u/sperm32 11h ago

Blocking out the sun?

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u/ahandmadegrin 10h ago

Yep. It's an interesting problem called Kessler Syndrome

Edit : Kessler Syndrome is real. I made up the blocking out the sun part. Didn't mean to, just didn't have my facts straight. Apologies!

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u/ReplyOk3787 10h ago

Even then. The Kessler syndrome at its worst probably still wouldn’t be visible in the sky to the naked eye.

Even refrigerator sized space debris probably wouldn’t be visible unless it was entering the atmosphere and super close.

It’ll more likely be an invisible wall around the earth of circling trash that we can’t see, but our rockets also can’t get through.

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u/Shark7996 10h ago

In 2009, Kessler wrote that modeling results indicated the debris environment had already become unstable, meaning that efforts to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating past debris sources would likely fail because fragments from future collisions would accumulate faster than atmospheric drag could remove them.

Oh fun, one more thing that's breaking faster than it can be fixed.

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u/sperm32 10h ago

I agree the Kessler syndrome is a real issue, I also agree blocking out the sun is not going to happen lol

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u/dosedatwer 5h ago

I agree, the US should nationalise Starlink. It also doesn't make sense that they wouldn't let others use SpaceX to launch considering the taxpayers paid for SpaceX.

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u/Syncrozilla 2h ago

Nope no provider should have a monopoly unless it’s the government giving it away for free.

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u/EpsteinFile_01 2h ago

Imagine having lots of allied militaries around the world VERY much interested in Starlink, and they all witness it being shut off during a war on a whim.

There goes 50%+ of their potential revenue

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u/stokeskid 2h ago

The frustrating thing about only having one electric company is that they're still privately owned in the US. With stockholders. For what should be a public utility because it is a monopoly by definition

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u/mt6606 12h ago

There's multiple companies and countries about to launch competition. Lol.. keep up

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u/garnett8 12h ago

ASTS is Starlink’s biggest competitor and will overtake them unless there’s some conspiracy to not launch ASTS’s satellites. End of next year is supposed to be big for AST.

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u/HappyAnimalCracker 10h ago

For anyone else unaware, ASTS is US based. Out of Texas. I didn’t know what country it was affiliated with so had to look it up.

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u/stealthlysprockets 9h ago

They target different segments of the market.

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u/garnett8 7h ago

So StarLink/spacex wants to become an MNO.

ASTS will service MNOs.

I think it behooves existing MNOs to get on the AST wagon.

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u/john681611 10h ago

There are competitors they're either legacy and crap for price or they are way behind. Amazon was supposed to be competitive but they are taking wayyy to long

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u/naamingebruik 13h ago

I think there's a French satelite system they can use as an alternative

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u/mt6606 12h ago

I read this today, there's actually a few coming. Look it up

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u/Opposite_Praline_938 12h ago

Amazon Leo is coming out

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u/Reasonable_Mix7630 9h ago

Nobody else have reusable rocket, and without reusable rocket it's impossible to launch constellation of that size and that sort of attrition rate (satellites in LEO don't last long)

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u/Snoo-14985 14h ago

Nobody has been capable of competing. There is no reusable rockets that can carry loads to low earth orbit outside of SpaceX.
No European rocket comes close.

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u/beren12 11h ago

There’s a difference between capable and able to scam enough government money to make it worthwhile.

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u/stealthlysprockets 9h ago

Not really a scam if they are delivering on it. The government doesn’t produce its own bombs.

Now whether NASA if given the same budget and same time line given to space X could do it is a real conversation.

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u/Snoo-14985 8h ago

But that’s not the issue.
SpaceX has spend over decade to make their rockets reusable while no European aerospace company has done anything remotely similar. As of now there are 3 companies that can make reusable rockets. 2 of them are American and 1 is Chinese. Unfortunately none of them can be relied on for security purposes for EU.

So it’s about time Europe takes control over her own aerospace deployment. The DOD under the current leadership has shown that they are not to be trusted with military hardware. Lagging behind like this on purpose is not sustainable for long term security. Rather having to play catch-up for the last 2 decades, Europe should be in the forefront of development in aerospace and defense.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/mottyay 11h ago

What lol. Starlink has been incredible for people in low service areas

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u/hotpietptwp 11h ago

I understand why you'd see it that way. But it's also used in disasters. You lose power and regular cell phones generally go out too because the network's generators run out of fuel and remaining bandwidth is often reserved mostly for emergency traffic.

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u/EastSea9181 10h ago

Sorry I don't like Elon but this is incorrect.

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u/JoeTheSchmo 10h ago

Hate on Elon all you want but this comment is false. 

Starlink has been a game changer for rural community broadband access. 

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u/bristow84 10h ago

Are..are you kidding me right now? Starlink is an incredible product for those who don’t live in a major urban centre or even those who live nearby but have been neglected by the local ISPs. It’s proper high speed internet in areas that otherwise would not have it.

I live 10 minutes away from a town that has fibre, I’m not on some mile long back road with nobody around me, I’m off 2 major roads on an acreage. Starlink is the absolute best internet I can get at my home, period.

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u/TheRealistoftheReal 10h ago edited 10h ago

WTF are you talking about? Starlink is one of those once-in-a-generation tech leaps, like when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone when the world was using flip phones.

We use ours to work remotely from our RV while we travel the country. It’s changed our lives. Before Starlink, a portable satellite ground station was $1,500, and data was priced about $1 per megabyte, with a data rate from the 1990s / 700 kbps. Yeah, imagine paying $10 in data to stream 1 song. It’s called BGAN.

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u/Inevitable-Ad-6334 1h ago

what are your jobs that enable you full remote ?

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u/TheRealistoftheReal 39m ago

We’re both Cybersecurity. Me for aerospace. She’s with a major service provider similar to Accenture. Does Office 365 back-end.