OW21: launch more metal crap into space

and hope nobody notices the debris

Right, let’s talk about this week’s parade of satellite soap operas. Because apparently, if you’re rich and bored, you build a space empire instead of just buying a yacht like a normal narcissist.

Elon Musk’s Starlink is now basically the Amazon of the sky. 7,300 satellites in orbit. 5 million users. 125 countries. Probably a few penguins using it in Antarctica. He’s planning 40,000 satellites. Forty. Thousand. That’s a glitter bomb in low Earth orbit. But hey, it might rake in $12 billion in 2025, so who cares if astronomy is ruined forever, right?

Jeff’s Very Expensive Hobby (Amazon Project Kuiper) finally launched 27 satellites. Bless. Only about 39,973 to go to catch up with Starlink. They’re projecting a $20 billion spend, which is adorable. It’s like turning up at a gunfight with a potato.

Eutelsat OneWeb, now a Eutelsat Group problem, err… company, is still waving from the back saying, “Hey! We do stuff too!” Gilat Satellite Networks tested an antenna on it. That’s it. A test. Not a rollout. A test.

Tom Mueller, the engine genius behind SpaceX, is back with Impulse Space, and he’s just signed a “multi-launch” deal with SES Satellites, the king of innovation-by-procurement. Using Impulse’s Helios kick stage, SES plans to skip the months-long orbital crawl and hurl satellites from LEO to GEO or MEO in under eight hours. First mission’s in 2027, and if all goes well, SES gets to look cutting-edge without actually building anything, again.

Enter China, stage left, with Guowang and SpaceSail. Not content with owning your phone, they now want your orbit. They’re charming Belt and Road nations with “joint R&D” and “marketing deals,” which is Mandarin for “you get cheap internet, we get your entire telecom infrastructure and maybe (definitely) your soul.”

The Federal Communications Commission just cracked open the vault and waved around 20,000 MHz of dusty, underused spectrum like it’s a clearance sale for space broadband. Think 12.7, 42, 52, and the mythical W-band, frequencies so high they sound made up. After years of starving satellites, Chairman Carr now wants to look like a visionary, and the SIA is applauding like it’s Christmas morning.

With thousands of satellites crossing borders like backpackers on Interrail, regulators are freaking out. West Africa’s WATRA is forming a group to figure this out. Which means, in three years, someone will publish a PDF nobody reads while SpaceX launches another 800.

So what do you think?
Is this the golden age of connectivity, or just the Wi-Fi apocalypse with better branding?

👇 I’ll wait.