Comment by ripley12
5 days ago
Lotta "Europe could never build this!" points in here, missing that Telesat (Canadian) is already building this, planning to launch in Q1 2028, and will happily sell to Europe.
5 days ago
Lotta "Europe could never build this!" points in here, missing that Telesat (Canadian) is already building this, planning to launch in Q1 2028, and will happily sell to Europe.
Lotta "Europe is already working on it!" points in here, missing the fact that it's been in the work for a long time, and maybe let's wait until it's actually deployed to count the cows. Over the past decades a lot of things have been "in the work" in Europe and never really went anywhere. It's very easy to "put things in the work".
The ending of the original article" was:
"Going forward a U.S. founder selling into European defense or government now needs an answer to “who holds the switch” before the first meeting; and European founders just got sovereignty as a sellable feature.
What was done in a fit of pique will cost the U.S. both leadership and jobs."
Do you agree or disagree with that?
Telesat launches are still on SpaceX Falcon 9s. So the non American alternative still depends on American launch capacity to get there.
Don't forget that US can always strong arm Canada and make it bend to its will. We are too dependent on them. It's nearly impossible to disassociate with United States due to our proximity.
The timeline has changed before, like the ASIC issues pushed full service into 2028. Also scale and capability obviously differ, but it could be a good starting point.
Regardless, I think Europe is better served focusing on its own tech like IRIS and Eutelsat.
There is a Canadian company developing launch capability[1].
There was some awareness that relying on American launch capability was a problem after the Radarsat-2 kerfuffle. The Americans deemed that satellite a threat to U.S. national security, so it had to be launched by Russia. Now Russia's off the table too.
If Nordspace pans out, Canada will finally have domestic launch capability and won't have to worry about a foreign country refusing to launch satellites.
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[1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/article/nordspace-signs-20-m...
ICEYE from Finland is valued at 12 billion USD
Telesat is a different product than StarLink. My understanding is that Telestat is for telecom operators and large network providers which cannot run fibre cables to their cell towers.
Replacing dependency on one foreign power with another foreign power is better how?
For one, Canada's been getting much closer to the EU recently: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwyzrr9d3dko
And Canada is a lot more stable than the US lately.
Buying German submarines as one example, joint with Norway to defend the Arctic.
https://team212cd.ca
USA was also close to the EU until it wasn't. Outsourcing critical parts of national security infrastructure to any country is idiotic, friendly or not.
What makes you think they aren’t one election away from a US style shit show too?
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If the goal is to replace US technology, replacing it with Canadian technology does, in fact, accomplish that goal.
Canada is becoming a lot less foreign to Europe than US on the current trajectory.
I just replaced a dependency that that fucked all its users with an open source alternative that can not do that in the future. Sometimes what you're replacing it with does make a difference.
It's certainly wise to diversify as much as possible, a healthy mix of sovereign home-made tech plus US and Chinese tech and from all other countries where it seems fit. The problem right now is the extreme dependence on US tech, such a dependence is always a bad idea no matter what country the tech comes from.
I think the other thing that is not being discussed is jointly developed tech, and jointly controlled systems - if its not controlled by any one party the dependency problem does not exist.
Canada is not a huge world power, so it realizes it needs friends. European countries are all in the same boat.
I wouldn't trust any country where the citizens somehow think they are bigger, better and stronger than anyone else.
Well, bigger they are. Horizontally at least.
Wasn't there news of Canada kinda, sorta but not really getting into being part of the EU recently? To begin with, the EU is just a bunch of independent countries getting cozy with each other.
There are discussions of "associate membership" but since this is not a thing that exists yet speculation on the matter has ranged from "this is just an economic partnership" to "we are going to become de-facto EU members".
We'll see the details when this becomes a bit more concrete but I imagine it's mostly going to be an economic partnership via trade agreements, maybe aligning some regulations to facilitate trade, etc.
When it's not likely that Canada is going to betray you, I would argue it's better than depending on the US.
The US is becoming to Canada what North Korea is to South Korea.
Yes, hyperbole, but funny/sad.
Also, have you heard Mark Carney speak, and contrasted it with how Trump speaks. It's like The Freeze versus randomly chosen baseball fan (https://youtu.be/WxXypNqiS5A).