SpaceX and OneWeb internet satellite comparison

[Zed_Noir]

Although there may be some crossover between the two markets of broadband stationary and data mobile the two systems will have few other competitors for their customers. A secondary provider using commX could be a competitor for OneWeb by providing cellular service using commX as the network's backbone. Using solar panels and commX backbone remote towers could be placed anywhere and be nearly self sufficient. Again someone would have to put them up and OneWeb would already be operational. So for areas with enough customers and congestion using OneWeb this would be a business evolving direction (small town or groups of small towns close together). But for areas with very few customers it would not be a viable competitor to OneWeb.

Well there all those Tesla Supercharger stations that you could put the CommX ground station at.

With the projected additions of between 200k to 500k Tesla cars annually in a couple of years. Musk will need  more bandwidth to communicate with the Tesla car fleet.

[R7]

Based on http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/, it looks like European Soyuz is 60 million euro, but Baikonur Soyuz could be a lot cheaper.

Right, and 60m Euro converts to about 60m-90m USD, depending on when in the last few years you pick the exchange rate. At the time, it was about 80m USD or so (that was from a 7 Soyuz group contract). Still could save money on a Falcon 9, not least because of the higher performance of a Falcon 9 (and the big price discount on F9R).

While talking about exchange rates it is good to remember that Russian ruble has taken a severe nosedive during last year. A dollar buys a lot more in Russia today.

USD/RUB;


Haven't seen anywhere officially confirmed or denied that OneWeb Soyuzes would be 'European' version. The quoted spacenews piece starts with Arianaspace's intentions to start selling non-European 'economy' version;

KOUROU, French Guiana — Europe’s launch service provider, Arianespace, is having discussions with the Russian space agency on a block buy of Soyuz rockets to be operated from Russia’s Baikonur spaceport and sold commercially for much less than the Europeanized Soyuz, Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel said. - See more at: http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/#sthash.9lqzLho2.dpuf

F9 higher performance is not that much of use here. Both vehicles can put the 40 sats into one inclination. F9 can't fill two in one go, plane change costs ~2.4km/s.

[TrevorMonty]

These large internet satellites constellations could change the launch industry in a few unexpected ways. The TV/Movie on demand market over internet is just starting to boom, this a bonus for the internet providers whether they are cable or satellite. The downside is reduced demand for paid TV, this makes up the bulk of commercial GEO satellite revenues ($90B in 2012). If these internet satellite constellations can deliver the data rates that a needed for internet TV, especially HDTV they stand a good chance of killing off a lot of the GEO satellite business.

Vulcan, Ariane 5, 6, Proton and F9 are all relying on this GEO satellite business for a big chunk of their revenue. The future Vulcan and Ariane 6 LVs especially as they are optimised for GTO payloads. NB Proton is to be replaced by lower cost Angara family which is flexible enough to cover LEO to GTO. If reusability works out, F9R should find its niche in deploying these LEO constellations, helps that SpaceX will own one of these constellations.

[dkovacic]

Indeed,  high bandwidth/low latency LEO/MEO constellations are strategic threat to GEO communication satellites. So far they were protected by large capital costs. But two factors work against them. Shift from broadband to on demand communications and advent of metamaterial/phased array antennas. So I think we will see smaller number of GTO launches after 2020. Funny, if spacex constellation is sucessful,  they would kill commercial demand for Falcon Heavy:)

[Robotbeat]

Based on http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/, it looks like European Soyuz is 60 million euro, but Baikonur Soyuz could be a lot cheaper.

Right, and 60m Euro converts to about 60m-90m USD, depending on when in the last few years you pick the exchange rate. At the time, it was about 80m USD or so (that was from a 7 Soyuz group contract). Still could save money on a Falcon 9, not least because of the higher performance of a Falcon 9 (and the big price discount on F9R).

While talking about exchange rates it is good to remember that Russian ruble has taken a severe nosedive during last year. A dollar buys a lot more in Russia today.

USD/RUB;


Haven't seen anywhere officially confirmed or denied that OneWeb Soyuzes would be 'European' version. The quoted spacenews piece starts with Arianaspace's intentions to start selling non-European 'economy' version;

KOUROU, French Guiana — Europe’s launch service provider, Arianespace, is having discussions with the Russian space agency on a block buy of Soyuz rockets to be operated from Russia’s Baikonur spaceport and sold commercially for much less than the Europeanized Soyuz, Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel said. - See more at: http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/#sthash.9lqzLho2.dpuf

F9 higher performance is not that much of use here. Both vehicles can put the 40 sats into one inclination. F9 can't fill two in one go, plane change costs ~2.4km/s.

The higher performance can be, alternatively, used for reuse, significantly reducing costs. We'll see in about 20-30 minutes if they've mostly solved this or not, but it seems quite unlikely that the problem will remain unsolved by the time OneWeb launches (I'd put the odds of worsening relations with Russia as higher than failing at reuse for the next 4 years).

[Robotbeat]

Based on http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/, it looks like European Soyuz is 60 million euro, but Baikonur Soyuz could be a lot cheaper.

Right, and 60m Euro converts to about 60m-90m USD, depending on when in the last few years you pick the exchange rate. At the time, it was about 80m USD or so (that was from a 7 Soyuz group contract). Still could save money on a Falcon 9, not least because of the higher performance of a Falcon 9 (and the big price discount on F9R).

While talking about exchange rates it is good to remember that Russian ruble has taken a severe nosedive during last year. A dollar buys a lot more in Russia today.

USD/RUB;


Haven't seen anywhere officially confirmed or denied that OneWeb Soyuzes would be 'European' version. The quoted spacenews piece starts with Arianaspace's intentions to start selling non-European 'economy' version;

KOUROU, French Guiana — Europe’s launch service provider, Arianespace, is having discussions with the Russian space agency on a block buy of Soyuz rockets to be operated from Russia’s Baikonur spaceport and sold commercially for much less than the Europeanized Soyuz, Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel said. - See more at: http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/#sthash.9lqzLho2.dpuf

F9 higher performance is not that much of use here. Both vehicles can put the 40 sats into one inclination. F9 can't fill two in one go, plane change costs ~2.4km/s.

The higher performance can be, alternatively, used for reuse, significantly reducing costs. We'll see in about 20-30 minutes if they've mostly solved this or not, but it seems quite unlikely that the problem will remain unsolved by the time OneWeb launches (I'd put the odds of worsening relations with Russia as higher than failing at reuse for the next 4 years).

Welp, unfortunately we had a 2nd stage failure during first stage ascent, so it'll be a little while before we find out. :C

[gosnold]

I read on Spacenews that the satellites would be injected at 500km and raise themselves to 1200km. So maybe Oneweb does not need the Fregat upper stage, which can reduce the costs a bit.

[Sam Ho]

F9 higher performance is not that much of use here. Both vehicles can put the 40 sats into one inclination. F9 can't fill two in one go, plane change costs ~2.4km/s.

The higher performance can be, alternatively, used for reuse, significantly reducing costs. We'll see in about 20-30 minutes if they've mostly solved this or not, but it seems quite unlikely that the problem will remain unsolved by the time OneWeb launches (I'd put the odds of worsening relations with Russia as higher than failing at reuse for the next 4 years).

Given that OneWeb are planning a 500km injection orbit, with electric propulsion for the satellites to raise themselves to 1200km, filling two planes in one launch is not out of the question.  If the operational orbit is high-inclination but not quite polar (80° or so), loitering at 500km for about a month would allow nodal precession to move the orbit over to the next plane (assuming 24 planes).  Precession is 40% faster at 500km than at 1200km.

[dkovacic]

The complete press conference (probably source of most of SpaceNews articles) is available on youtube:



I have to admit Greg Wyler talk and attitude is really inspirational. When asked about competing constellations:

"Come back to the mission - provide affordable internet access for everyone. We want to connect all the schools to the Internet. And if somebody beats us to it, I say - job well done."

[dkovacic]

Here is another video from Bloomberg from January 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=EQPbW-PaQtY

Based on the contents, it seems that there will be no inter-satellite communication link, so probably they will need data centers in each country/area connected to fiber.

[Nomadd]

Here is another video from Bloomberg from January 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=EQPbW-PaQtY

Based on the contents, it seems that there will be no inter-satellite communication link, so probably they will need data centers in each country/area connected to fiber.

That would be very disappointing. Ships, airliners and people in remote parts of the world would be cut out in lots of locations. It will be a big Globalstar instead of a big Iridium.

[Oli]

Here is another video from Bloomberg from January 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=EQPbW-PaQtY

Based on the contents, it seems that there will be no inter-satellite communication link, so probably they will need data centers in each country/area connected to fiber.

That would be very disappointing. Ships, airliners and people in remote parts of the world would be cut out in lots of locations. It will be a big Globalstar instead of a big Iridium.

Wyler founded O3b for backhaul services.

[Prober]

Might be a 3rd possible system that would push the technology 

Your input welcome  http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37951.0

[Voyager778]

I was wondering if someone could explain to a layman such as myself how many large NGSO constellations the Ka band could support?

The CEO of Leosat, who wants to build a LEO Ka band constellation for government/enterprise clients said recently in an interview “The ITU allows five coordinated nongeostationary systems per spectrum allocation. That is generous."

So if SpaceX gets version 1 of their 4,000 satellite constellation up, would there still be future/yet to be allocated Ka band spectrum available for say, Samsung to build their 4,000 sat clone of the SpaceX system they proposed? Or for OneWeb to expand into the Ka band if they ever decided to? When the ITU says 5 systems per frequency allocation, what ultimately does that mean? How many Ka band frequencies are suitable for this purpose? Could SpaceX be forced to share their Ka band spectrum with other large NGSO Ka band constellations?

I was also curious what the Ka band spectrum portfolio looks like for the older incumbent companies and how if it all the operational orbit affects these holdings. For example Inmarsat currently operates a global Ka band network called Global Xpress that does indeed provide global Ka band coverage, however it consists of three geostationary orbit satellites. If Inmarsat due to competition wanted to go the SpaceX route and develop a large LEO Ka band constellation, could they transfer use of the spectrum they currently use for the Global Xpress system to a new system and utilize that spectrum in LEO instead of GSO?

Sorry if this sounds nonsensical, I am a layman in the truest sense.

[NaN]

OneWeb is raising serious concerns about how much interference they would cause for existing comm satellites, at low latitudes.  This presentation argues that their planned mitigation just won't work:

http://spacenews.com/oneweb-gets-slide-decked-by-competitor-at-casbaa/

[Robotbeat]

OneWeb is raising serious concerns about how much interference they would cause for existing comm satellites, at low latitudes.  This presentation argues that their planned mitigation just won't work:

http://spacenews.com/oneweb-gets-slide-decked-by-competitor-at-casbaa/

Honestly, I think that one is "advantage SpaceX." SpaceX's more ambitious satellite will likely mean a tighter beam and less per-link interference.

[savuporo]

Meanwhile, OneWeb has opened its factory in Florida, formed the joint venture with Airbus for building the sats, and submitted its licence application:

http://spacenews.com/oneweb-files-for-u-s-license-will-debut-as-b2b-broadband-wholeseller-before-expanding-to-worlds-poorest/

I understand that for a favorable position with global regulators it would be good to get at least one experimental-license prototype sat on orbit - so far OneWeb hasnt been saying much about such. Just 2018/2019 'initial capability'.
And this is going to be a global regulatory and legal battle more than technical, for sure. Seems like OneWeb and its investors have formed a pretty strong front for this so far.

[Robotbeat]

More than technical? When someone says the legal/regulatory work is harder than the technical, that often means to me that the project hasn't gotten too far into the technical yet.

[Ronsmytheiii]

Meanwhile, OneWeb has opened its factory in Florida, formed the joint venture with Airbus for building the sats, and submitted its licence application:

http://spacenews.com/oneweb-files-for-u-s-license-will-debut-as-b2b-broadband-wholeseller-before-expanding-to-worlds-poorest/

I understand that for a favorable position with global regulators it would be good to get at least one experimental-license prototype sat on orbit - so far OneWeb hasnt been saying much about such.

They will do something similar, they will build 10 in their factory in France first before the rest are made in the US:

Airbus and OneWeb said the first 10 satellites will be produced at the Airbus plant in Toulouse, France. The remaining 890 satellites will be assembled at an undisclosed site in the United States.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/15/oneweb-selects-airbus-to-build-900-internet-satellites/

[savuporo]

More than technical? When someone says the legal/regulatory work is harder than the technical, that often means to me that the project hasn't gotten too far into the technical yet.

Not if you are dealing with global market and have to comply with global regulations regardless if you operate in the market or not.