SpaceX seems perturbed to actually finally have possibly some real competition…
Although I would think once Jeff Bezos gets his space act together, it will be much more significant…
Turbulent_Raccoon865 on
>The satellites stand out as the world’s largest communications array—or what’s essentially a 700-square-foot antenna panel. BlueBirds were tightly packed for rocket travel when they launched into Earth’s orbit. But now AST is unfurling them as they circle the Earth in low orbit.
Aren’t we already having issues with Starlink making things difficult for ground-based astronomy? Yay progress and yay competition but some well thought out regulation might be a nice addition.
John-Fefin-Zoidberg on
Those things are huge! 700sqft?!?! That’s pretty impressive. Is AST the same people as the alarm system company… that AST?
dethb0y on
Kind of interesting their going with gigantic satellites instead of lots of little ones. Always good to see competition.
Rummz on
ASTS is farther ahead because starlink doesn’t have regulatory approval for commercial use in there d2c business and even if they got it they don’t seem to have any sats that can currently provide a good d2c service for alot of reasons.
testedmodz on
How are they going to compete with Starlink when they have to pay SpaceX $70 million per launch, while it only costs SpaceX $17 million to launch their own satellites?
cpatel479 on
Great… more space junk. Eventually we won’t be able to leave this planet without hitting a commercial satellite…
7 Comments
SpaceX seems perturbed to actually finally have possibly some real competition…
Although I would think once Jeff Bezos gets his space act together, it will be much more significant…
>The satellites stand out as the world’s largest communications array—or what’s essentially a 700-square-foot antenna panel. BlueBirds were tightly packed for rocket travel when they launched into Earth’s orbit. But now AST is unfurling them as they circle the Earth in low orbit.
Aren’t we already having issues with Starlink making things difficult for ground-based astronomy? Yay progress and yay competition but some well thought out regulation might be a nice addition.
Those things are huge! 700sqft?!?! That’s pretty impressive. Is AST the same people as the alarm system company… that AST?
Kind of interesting their going with gigantic satellites instead of lots of little ones. Always good to see competition.
ASTS is farther ahead because starlink doesn’t have regulatory approval for commercial use in there d2c business and even if they got it they don’t seem to have any sats that can currently provide a good d2c service for alot of reasons.
How are they going to compete with Starlink when they have to pay SpaceX $70 million per launch, while it only costs SpaceX $17 million to launch their own satellites?
Great… more space junk. Eventually we won’t be able to leave this planet without hitting a commercial satellite…