Starlink's role in last year's Los Angeles fires

Los Angeles area fires, January 2025 (source)

As shown above, the largest and most costly were the Palisades fire by the ocean and the Eaton fire, roughly 25 or 30 miles apart -- separated by the city of Los Angeles and surrounded by many smaller Los Angeles County cities.  Grok estimates that the fires covered around 57,529 acres.

As power outages and fire-related damage knocked out cell service and terrestrial internet in many areas, Starlink, in conjunction with Tesla and T-Mobile, provided an alternative means of connectivity for residents, journalists, firefighters, and other emergency personnel. 

Elon Musk delivering Starlink kits (source)

SpaceX donated 1,350 standard and mini Starlink kits to public safety agencies, disaster relief non-profits, and frontline emergency personnel. The front-line personnel received portable, backpack-sized mini kits while the standard kits were installed at fixed locations.  While these kits were donated, SpaceX received publicity and goodwill, and Elon Musk was very visible.

In addition to these kits, SpaceX provided one month of free service for customers in areas affected by the fires. (Note that the eligible region included areas like downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica, which were only indirectly affected by the fire).

Tesla lent eight Cybertrucks that acted as mobile Starlink Wi-Fi hotspots with Internet connectivity for both residents and emergency operations where terrestrial networks had failed. They also provided electrical power via their batteries for equipment at command posts and other locations suffering power loss. Some reportedly brought water, snacks, and supplies to support first responders and community members. Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Adam Van Gerpen said the trucks were  “essential for our public information officers and our incident commanders, even for our strike teams who are out there trying to communicate. We have radio communications, but this will enable cell phone and wireless communication.”

T-Mobile offered temporary unlimited talk, text, and data to customers in affected areas and activated Starlink direct-to-cellular (DTC) service, which had not yet been beta tested. This enabled SMS messaging, emergency alert receipt, and texting to 911 on compatible phones when cell towers were offline or power was out.

 

"The only reason you are able to see us right now is
because of the Starlink connection we just got today." Source

Perhaps the most valuable role for Starlink was in providing news media connectivity, enabling journalists to report on the fire to the general public in and outside of threatened areas, was kept aware of the situation.

Satellite emergency response will improve

DTC has now rolled out, and it will improve. New Satellites will take advantage of the FCC allowing Starlink’s DTC service to operate at higher power, enabling faster, more reliable service. We can also look forward to low-speed mobile data and voice communication in the future. This service will be ubiquitous and will enable firefighters and others to access fire-status maps, weather information, equipment, and personnel inventory and location, etc. Next-generation satellites with more power will also perform better in areas with trees and atmospheric humidity.

Industry initiatives (3GPP NTN standards) are aligning satellite and cellular networks so that phones can seamlessly switch between terrestrial and satellite links — crucial for full voice and data over space networks.

The Ukraine war dramatically demonstrated the value of drones using Starlink to surveil a battlefield and attack enemies. One can imagine Starlink-connected drones playing a similar role in fighting fires, with drones continuously streaming fire location and spread data and the locations of firefighters and fire-fighting assets to command centers who direct operations.

The response of SpaceX and Tesla to last year's California fires was ad hoc. For example, the eight Cybertrucks mentioned above were temporarily diverted from planned deliveries to customers. Establishing systems and relationships within Starlink (and its competitors) and between them and emergency-response organizations will be even more important than new technology. Stable bureaucratic procedure will replace ad hoc improvisation. (SpaceX has taken steps in this direction.) Also expect to see new equipment standards. For example, all fire trucks will have Starlink (or Amazon LEO, Qianfan, etc.) dishes.

This may sound expensive, but Grok estimates the Los Angeles fires cost $250 million to fight and $28-53.8 billion in property damage, and a Helsinki University study concluded that the wildfires contributed to at least 440 deaths.

Starlink in Ukraine: What Three Years of Wartime Connectivity Taught Us

Ukrainian soldier with a Starlink dish near Kreminna, eastern Ukraine. Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, few people thought of satellite Internet as strategic, but what began as an emergency request made on Twitter became one of the most consequential infrastructure decisions of the war.

At 4:04 a.m. on February 26, 2022, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked Elon Musk to activate SpaceX’s Starlink service over Ukraine. That same day, Musk replied that service was active, and within forty-eight hours, a truckload of terminals arrived. Minutes after their arrival, Ukrainian engineer Oleg Kutkov posted a speed test from Kyiv. Starlink was live. 

At the time, this looked like a dramatic but limited response—an emergency patch to help a government under attack stay online. Over the next three years, it became something much more consequential: a privately owned satellite network evolved into a core layer of wartime infrastructure. Today, there may be as many as 200,000 terminals in Ukraine, making it the biggest Starlink user in Europe.

I have been writing about Starlink in Ukraine since those first days of the invasion, beginning with early observations on connectivity, coverage, and ground-station dependence, and following its rapid expansion into government, military, energy, healthcare, and civilian use. Those earlier pieces are collected here on CircleID (see links below). This post is not another update. It is a synthesis of what the Starlink experience in Ukraine tells us about Internet infrastructure in war and dependency.

From novelty to infrastructure

In the earliest phase, the number of Starlink terminals in Ukraine was small, but their value quickly became clear. A handful of portable terminals in the hands of senior officials, military commanders, communications staff, and journalists could preserve continuity of government if fiber lines were cut, cellular towers destroyed, or local networks surveilled or jammed.

By mid-March 2022, more than 5,000 Starlink terminals were operating in Ukraine. Terminals were used by the armed forces, energy companies, emergency services, hospitals, NGOs, journalists, and local governments. In some towns, a single terminal provided backhaul connectivity for thousands of civilians.

Political and Army leaders used Starlink for military planning and decision-making. Starlink also facilitated propaganda and foreign relations. We saw videos of President Zelensky at the front lines, meeting foreign leaders, and addressing foreign parliaments. We also saw daily evidence of Russian atrocities on Telegram and in the news.

Software-defined warfare

Early Starlink terminals depended upon ground stations in neighboring countries -- Poland, Lithuania, and Turkey. Coverage and availability varied by geography, but performance was consistently good enough for coordination and reporting. Reliability, not elegance, was the wartime requirement.

Then the  Russian forces began jamming Starlink terminals. SpaceX responded not by shipping new hardware, but by pushing software updates. Roaming was enabled, allowing terminals to be used briefly, powered down, moved, and used again. Power consumption was reduced so terminals could operate from vehicle outlets. Jamming countermeasures were deployed over the air. (These changes occur without the delay of traditional military procurement cycles).

This was a glimpse of a new kind of infrastructure contest: electronic warfare meeting software-defined networks. Ukraine has given us a clear example of how modern Internet systems blur the boundary between civilian engineering and military operations, and shown us new skills that are needed.

Starlink and drones -- over land and on sea

Starlink’s military significance became clearest when paired with drones.

Ukrainian reconnaissance units used Starlink to relay imagery and targeting data from surveillance drones to artillery units, shortening sensor-to-shooter loops. Drones equipped with thermal cameras hunted at night. Others documented battlefield damage and war crimes. Starlink did not make this possible on its own—but it made it scalable.

At the same time, drone footage flooded social media and news outlets. Open-source intelligence groups analyzed videos and satellite imagery. Journalists verified claims. Governments responded. The Internet did not merely report the war; it became one of its primary theaters.

Civilian support ecosystems

By 2023, tens of thousands of terminals were in Ukraine, and distribution channels, training, repair, and modification were needed. Ukraine built a distributed ecosystem of engineers, service centers, and informal supply chains capable of repairing damaged terminals, adapting them for mobile and battlefield use, and keeping them operational under harsh conditions. A consumer product had become military infrastructure, often acquired, modified, and maintained by civilians.

This civilian technical mobilization—much of it voluntary—was as important to Starlink’s effectiveness as the satellites themselves. Without it, the system would have degraded quickly under battlefield conditions.

This was possible because the digital transformation in Ukraine began years before the Russian invasion. A Harvard study reports that before the war, Ukraine was arguably the number one country in the world regarding the pace and speed of digital transformation. The mobilization of Ukraine's commercial and technical Internet community should be noted and serve as a warning to other nations that are not as well prepared.

Dependence

By 2024 and 2025, Starlink was no longer an emergency backup but a routine part of military and civilian operations. That dependence carried risks. Ukraine’s experience highlighted the strategic implications of relying on privately owned, globally operated infrastructure whose technical evolution, pricing, and policy decisions ultimately lie outside national control – with Elon Musk in this case.

The lesson is not that Starlink is unreliable or that commercial systems should be avoided. On the contrary, Ukraine’s experience demonstrates the extraordinary value of Starlink. The lesson is that connectivity has become a strategic asset that must be planned with redundancy, diversification, and governance in mind—long before a crisis begins.

Today, OneWeb is Starlink's only operational commercial low-Earth orbit (LEO) competitor, and it is not close to being able to provide the service Starlink does. I hope the war in Ukraine is over before others, such as Amazon, Telesat, and IRIS^2, are ready to offer meaningful competition to Starlink, and I worry that, if Starship proves to be economically viable, the gap will grow significantly. 

Three years on, it is clear that LEO satellite connectivity is strategic, and when strategic infrastructure depends on privately owned networks, domestic competence, governance, redundancy, and accountability become matters of national security—not afterthoughts. 

Earlier posts in this series include:

SpaceXStarlink Service in Ukraine Is an Important Government Asset

SpaceXStarlink in Ukraine—A Week Later

FiveThousand SpaceX Starlink Terminals for Ukraine

TheUnprecedented Role of the Internet in the War in Ukraine

CivilianTech Mobilization in Ukraine

Starlink Is Critical in Support of Ukraine, and It Will Continue

 

AI chatbot conversations should be archived

To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s 1990 campaign slogan, “it’s the conversation, stupid”, and Alan Turing would agree.

ChatGPT shareable links are to the end of the conversation, implying that the purpose of the conversation is to find a conclusion, like an answer to a question or a link to a relevant document. That makes sense for a search engine, but with AI chatbots, the conversation itself is of interest. Much of the value lies in the dialogue, the back-and-forth in which assumptions are tested, errors corrected, alternatives explored, and ideas refined, not a final answer. 

I subscribe to the ChatGPT service and find it well worth the monthly fee, but it treats our conversations as ephemeral interface entities rather than durable intellectual work products of interest in their own right. The user interface is misleading. It has a "history" feature, which I assumed meant that it permanently archived conversations, until a reader pointed out that a link to a conversation I had published was broken.

The history feature allows users to view and continue past conversations for an unspecified time, but provides no native way to permanently archive an individual conversation in a standard document format like Word or PDF. There is no per-conversation export, no versioning, and no user-controlled guarantee of long-term retention. The only built-in alternative is an “export all data” function that produces raw HTML and JSON files, requiring additional processing before the material becomes usable.

This is not a minor usability issue. It reflects a deeper assumption: that the conversation is a disposable means to an end, rather than a work product with independent value. That assumption may be reasonable for customer-support chatbots (which I hate), but it is not reasonable when AI systems are used for writing, learning, decision-making, policy formulation, etc. In those contexts, the dialogue itself documents reasoning, uncertainty, correction, and collaboration. Often, it is precisely the conversational path—not just the destination—that one wishes to preserve.

Other software categories recognise this distinction. Word processors save drafts. Version control systems preserve history. Collaborative tools maintain change logs. AI chat services, by contrast, still behave as though conversations are transient means to an end. As a result, users who care about their work are pushed into awkward workarounds: manual copy-and-paste, browser extensions, or, in the case of ChatGPT, "export all data," which mixes valuable conversations with trivial ones. 

The solution does not require new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, just adding a new feature to existing chatbots. (ChatGPT shared links should also offer the option of linking to the beginning or end of the conversation).

AI systems are not mere search engines but tools for thinking and writing, and AI platforms should support per-conversation export in standard formats, user-controlled guarantees of retention or deletion, stable identifiers suitable for citation, and optional versioning to capture the evolution of a dialogue. I'd be happy to pay ChatGPT for storing my conversations or just adding a button that allowed me to save them on Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.

Finally, I asked ChatGPT if any of the well-known US and Chinese AI chatbots had an "archive-conversation" feature, and it said none did.

Alan Turing suggested a test for machine intelligence: a machine was intelligent if a human evaluator could not reliably tell whether the transcript of a conversation was with it or a person. In the early 1970s, I installed two public-access Teletypes with dial-up Internet access in the Venice, California Public Library, and, among other things, I saw users carry on lengthy conversations with Eliza, a simple BASIC program, that fed their statements back to them in the manner of a non-directive therapist. Eliza passed the Turing test with those users as evaluators, and chatbot conversations should be archived.

Starlink and the Seven Dwarfs

In the 1960s, IBM dominated the computer market, which was often referred to as “IBM and the seven dwarfs.” IBM is prosperous today, but no longer dominant. The low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet service market today is reminiscent of that time, but it’s "SpaceX Starlink and the seven dwarfs."

As was the case with IBM, Starlink has seven dwarfs, which I have described in two fairly recent posts. Three are Chinese: Guowang, Qianfan, and Honghu-3, and four are from the west -- the US, Canada, and Europe -- Amazon LEO, OneWeb, Telesat, and IRIS². (Russia may emerge as the eighth dwarf).

Today, Apple's market cap is approximately $3.95 trillion, and IBM's is approximately $278 billion. I do not expect Starlink to drop off that precipitously, but its lead will be significantly diminished. Five of IBM's dwarfs failed, and two merged to form Unisys. I expect Starlink and all the dwarfs will survive, and the gap between them to shrink, but not as dramatically as the gap between IBM and its dwarfs. Here are some of the factors that will shape the future LEO Internet market (in no particular order):

A divided world market

After World War II, the relatively unscathed U.S. became the world’s leading power, shaping a liberal international order through its economic and military strength and promotion of democracy and free markets. Subsequent US actions like the wars in Vietnam and Iraq diminished our global stature, and Trump has accelerated that trend with isolationist policies, while China has been opening. 

This leaves us in a world where some nations will deal only with Starlink and the "western" dwarfs, others will deal only with the Chinese dwarfs, and others will be open to either. This shields the dwarfs and Starlink from total global competition.

Approximate GDP shares (source)

We can get a very rough idea of market opportunities by considering the GDPs of three groups: nations that are members of the G7 and/or the European Economic Area, those that are BRICS-plus nations and/or have Digital Silk Road projects, and the rest of the world. As we see here, the potential market for Chinese dwarfs is somewhat larger using GDP, and the difference would be even greater were we to consider global population percentages.

China is open to private investment

Landspace ownership, mid-2025, (ChatGPT)

The stereotype of China as a Communist nation with an inefficient, corrupt government controlling everything is outdated. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms transformed China from a centrally planned economy into a socialist market economy. During 1978–1992, GDP quadrupled, and productivity, trade, and foreign direct investment surged. Living standards rose sharply, though inequality and regional gaps widened. China transitioned from isolation to global integration, laying the groundwork for its rapid growth in the following decades.

The trends set by Deng continued, and in 2014, China’s State Council opened its space sector to private investment. In 2015, the launch company Landspace Technology, which owns 48% of the developer of the Honghu-3 constellation and is planning an IPO, was founded. As shown here, Landspace provides an example of the mixed ownership structure possible in China today, and many Chinese space companies already have publicly traded stocks. Two other Chinese launch firms are moving toward IPOs, and more are in the works. Many people and organizations, including national and local governments, have stakes in the game.

Government investment and planning

US and China capital formation (source)

It's not government versus private investment; it's the mix of the two. The United States government's planning and investment played a key role in advances in electronic data communication, from Morse's telegraph to Whirlwind, the SAGE early-warning system, the ARPAnet, CSnet, NSFnet, and the NSF Higher-Education and International Connection programs. However, government Internet ownership was phased out in the first half of the 1990s.

After 1978, Chinese policy favored foreign and domestic investment over consumption —for example, investing in infrastructure and (over) investing in housing —while enacting measures like the one-child policy. The Chinese government also plays an active role in planning and setting goals. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) called for building an integrated communications, Earth observation, and satellite navigation system with global coverage. 

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) is expected to promote low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite Internet as part of its “new-type infrastructure” strategy. A Ministry of Industry and Information Technology directive calls for  “accelerated development of low-orbit satellite Internet,” commercial trials, and global broadband coverage, targeting over 10 million users, including direct-to-mobile handset service, by 2030. The Communist Party recommendations include building “information-communication networks” and “aerospace and low-altitude economies” as strategic sectors. Together, these indicate that LEO satellite internet will be clearly encouraged within China’s 2026–2030 policy framework.

Note that the Landspace pie chart above refers to "State and Local Government Funds." Local governments play an important role in coordinating and financing space and other industries in China, and Landspace has several key facilities within the G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor. (This is reminiscent of Silicon Valley.)

Elon Musk and Donald Trump

Starlink will remain a major satellite ISP, but Elon Musk has tarnished the Starlink and Tesla brands, opening market space for the dwarfs. Many individuals and organizations view Musk's "chainsaw" cuts of federal regulators, watchdogs, experts, and agencies as detrimental and/or cruel. The most striking example of his political acts was dismantling USAID.  A recent study published in The Lancet by researchers from Africa, South America, Europe, and the United States estimates that 91 million deaths were prevented by USAID between 2001 and 2021 and predicts more than 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030, including more than 4.5 million dead children under five. For a real-time update on deaths caused by our aid discontinuation, click here, and for a short documentary, click here.

Musk is reminiscent of Henry Ford. Both were manufacturing geniuses with strong political views that alienated many people. Ford was an antisemitic publisher of the Dearborn Independent, who was praised by Hitler and given the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime’s highest honor for foreigners in 1938. Hitler also had a portrait of Ford in his office.

The Trump presidency has diminished the United States' stature and soft power/influence in the world. In the first year of his second term, Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Agreement, OECD Global Tax Deal, UNESCO, and the United Nations Human Rights Council. His arbitrary, possibly illegal, tariffs have alienated allies, provoked retaliatory trade measures, and signaled to many nations that the U.S. is an unreliable ally and economic partner. Trump's (and to a lesser extent, Musk's) waffling on Ukraine, where Starlink and, to a small extent, OneWeb have been valuable assets, calls U.S. reliability as an ally into question, opening markets for the Chinese and European dwarfs. 

Starlink has proven to be a valuable military asset in Ukraine, but at one point, there was speculation that Musk would stop the service. He denied that and indeed has not terminated the service, but no government, military, or other organization is comfortable with a sole supplier of a critical good or service, so Canada and European governments will not allow their dwarfs to fail, nor will the United States government, which has multi-billion dollar contracts for Starlink, Starshield, and NASA and DOD launch service. Amazon will compete for U.S. government contracts, and it is conceivable that in a post-Trump world, other western dwarfs might also. (Trump will favor Bezos now that he and Musk have had a falling out).

In the far-far future, one can even imagine global collaboration with China. In May 1961, President Kennedy initiated the "space race" in a joint presentation to Congress requesting funds to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade, but by September 1963, he had changed to a call for collaboration in space with the Soviet Union in an address before the UN General Assembly:     

Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries--indeed of all the world--cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

New technology, distribution channels, and regulations

IBM was dethroned by new technologies like time-sharing, networks, and personal computers. They knew about these technologies and tried new products, but those products failed. For example, Christopher Strachey's early paper on time-sharing was widely read, and IBM had early online projects like the SABRE airline reservation system, the SAGE early warning system, and later general-purpose time-sharing systems. (While working for IBM, I first encountered time-sharing on a QUICKTRAN terminal at IBM Research and later built my dissertation on the IBM AN/FSQ-32, a bespoke IBM time-sharing system.) They offered computer networking products like System Networking Architecture and Token Ring, but they failed because of open networking standards like TCP/IP and Ethernet.

IBM was also aware of personal computers from the time of the LINC at Lincoln Labs, and sold personal computers from the early IBM 610 Autopoint in 1957 through the desktop IBM 5100 in 1975, and finally the mass-market IBM PC in 1981. 

The problem was not ignorance or engineering, but the company culture, overhead, and customer base. IBM salespeople were well-paid men wearing blue suits and wingtip shoes, spending months on a sale of a large, expensive computer. IBM was not ready for computer stores and Walmart. SpaceX does not face as extreme a culture mismatch as IBM did, but workers may be unwilling to work the long hours SpaceX is known for.

As the global space industry grows, new technologies and applications will be developed worldwide, and SpaceX and Starlink may be slow or struggle to adopt them, given their commitment to vertical integration, unlike, for example, OneWeb, which has worked with partners from the start. Furthermore, the battle between Trump and universities is hurting research in need of federal funding, while China is funding research and education.

We will also see increasing pressure for global regulation as incidents like the recent stranding of Chinese taikonauts due to a debris strike occur, the world becomes increasingly dependent on space, and LEO becomes increasingly crowded.  Those regulations will constrain Starlink since it already has over 8,000 satellites in orbit and over 8 million customers in over 150 countries. In the US, Jeff Bezos may have more influence over regulatory decisions than Musk, who has fallen out of favor with Trump. (Regulators face a dilemma in trying to achieve national autonomy and space sustainability.) 

Starship and launch capability

SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket gives Starlink a significant advantage, but others will master reusability. Blue Origin has recently landed a New Glen booster with significantly greater capacity than the Falcon 9 on a drone ship, China's LandSpace hopes to safely land a Zhuque-3 this year, and many other companies are working on Falcon 9-class reusable rockets.

While these companies will match SpaceX's current launch capability in a few years, catching up will take much longer if its next rocket, Starship, meets Elon Musk's projected cost, payload capacity, and launch cadence goals, but they have had several test launch failures and are behind schedule. Musk has done some amazing things, like achieving routine rocket reusability, but he has also failed to meet ambitious goals. For example, in 2016, he predicted Tesla would complete a coast-to-coast autonomous drive with no human intervention by the end of 2017.

Those are some reasons I expect Starlink's competitors, the dwarfs, to survive and cut into its immense lead. I'd welcome arguments pro and con on my belief that the gap between Starlink and the dwarfs will shrink significantly, but Starlink will continue to be an important player.

Update 11/21/2025

I stated above that no government, military, or other organization is comfortable with a sole supplier of a critical good or service, and that includes the U.S. Section 2273 of Title 12 of the US code calls on the President to act to ensure "the availability of at least two space launch vehicles (or families of space launch vehicles) capable of delivering into space any payload designated by the Secretary of Defense or the Director of National Intelligence as a national security payload".  Amazon's New Glen rocket will become the second such vehicle.

Update 12/4/2025

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) recently formed the Commercial Space Department to serve as the specialized regulator for all commercial space activities. The CSNA also released a 22-point Action Plan for Promoting the High-Quality and Safe Development of Commercial Space (2025–27). This is the kind of integrated planning and action that brought China out of poverty, as mentioned above. (Note the emphasis on safe development, indicating concern for the future. (It's reminiscent of the Chinese investment in electric vehicles and charging infrastructure).

As shown above, state and local government funds 27.5% of Landspace, but that is just one example of Chinese provinces funding commercial space.

Update 12/9/2025

Spain and Poland pushed Europe's new priorities with record contributions to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Spain is now the fourth-largest ESA contributor and is focused on developing its own space industry. “Spain will continue to work with ESA to develop its own industry,” said Diana Morant, Spain’s Minister of Science, Innovation, and Universities. “The agency should be the architect of the European spatial infrastructure with industry policy that takes into account all of the stakeholders, particularly SMEs, startups and medium-sized businesses.”

Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine and was the first nation Germany invaded in 1939, has a more immediate motive.

Western LEO Satellite Internet Update: OneWeb, Telesat, Amazon Project Kuiper and IRIS²

In an earlier post, I updated the status of three Chinese low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet constellations. This one looks at four western competitors: OneWeb, Telesat, Amazon Project Kuiper, and IRIS². While Starlink is far ahead of each of them and only OneWeb is in operation at this time, I expect each of these and the Chinese constellations to survive and eventually compete with Starlink (stay tuned for the next post).

OneWeb

Bill Gates and two partners founded Teledesic, a would-be LEO satellite Internet service provider, in 1990, but the technology was not yet ready, and Teledesic declared bankruptcy in 2002.

The next potential LEO Internet service provider, OneWeb, was founded by Greg Wyler, who had extensive experience with networking in developing nations, with the mission of “bridging the digital divide by 2027.” However, it entered bankruptcy in 2020. The company was reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy, and in 2023, it merged with the established geo-stationary satellite (GEO) operator Eutelsat, creating the "Eutelsat Group" company, with subsidiaries "Eutelsat" and "Eutelsat OneWeb.”

In spite of that rocky start, OneWeb is the only company other than Starlink that is offering LEO satellite Internet service today. OneWeb LEO revenue was 187 million euros ($216 million) for the 12 months ending June 30,2025, representing around 15% of total Eutelsat Group sales. Starlink revenue for 2024 was $2.7 billion. OneWeb’s market share, and more importantly, global capacity, are minuscule compared to those of Starlink.

That sounds grim, but given Elon Musk’s political activity, Trump’s MAGA/isolationist policy, and the military value of LEO Internet, Europe will not let OneWeb fail unless there are viable alternatives to Starlink. This is evidenced by European support of OneWeb in Ukraine, including German funding of OneWeb and a recent British investment.

Finally, note that the Eutelsat Group can offer multi-orbit service, switching seamlessly between Eutelsat GEO and OneWeb LEO satellites or offering OneWeb service to other GEO providers. They signed their first multi-orbit contract three years ago and have added others since.

While this gives them an in-house advantage, SES, which operates a middle-Earth orbit constellation, will partner with any LEO or GEO provider to provide multi-orbit service.

Telesat

Telesat, an established Canadian GEO satellite operator, was the next LEO Internet company. Telesat recognized the trend to LEO, but decided not to offer consumer connectivity. 

Telesat has been beset by delays and has reduced its initially planned constellation size, but they have contracted (with SpaceX) to begin launching satellites next year. Trump’s immigration and tariff policies, along with talk of annexing Canada, assure us that the Canadian government, which, along with Quebec, has invested in Telesat, will not allow it to fail.

Its initial “Lightspeed” constellation will consist of 198 satellites with a mass of 750 kg, roughly that of Starlink V2 mini satellites.  SpaceX is slated to deploy them over the course of a year, starting in mid-2026. Telesat has been booking customers, and their LEO backlog now exceeds their GEO backlog. They plan to provide global service with polar and inclined sub-constellations, are seeking a ground station partner, and have terrestrial deals with Vocus, Orange, and Space Norway.

While Telesat will not bundle its own LEO and GEO services, they have tested a hybrid deployment between LEO and GEO using the Telesat Lightspeed emulator, showing seamless integration without any issues. Software like the emulator is part of their strategic decision to use Aalyria Spacetime, a multi-layer, multi-orbit operating system for a temporospatial network, which they acquired from Google when the Loon project was abandoned.

Amazon Project Kuiper

Project Kuiper, which has launched 153 satellites, is far behind Starlink, which has over 8,000, but Amazon has many things going for it. From the time it was founded, Amazon was an infrastructure company, and Project Kuiper is an orbiting infrastructure that will be strategically paired with Amazon’s complementary terrestrial infrastructure, like fiber and datacenters. Amazon has vast experience in manufacturing and logistics that will stand them in good stead with the manufacturing of terminals as well as satellites. 

Project Kuiper is a wholly-owned subsidiary and an initiative of Amazon, and Jeff Bezos is the founder of both Amazon and the Blue Origin launch company, which will launch some Project Kuiper satellites. Amazon itself will also be a significant Kuiper user, and Kuiper will use Amazon’s ground station service. 

That’s the good news, but Amazon faces an FCC deadline to launch half the constellation by July 30, 2026, and the remainder by July 30, 2029. They say they will be able to receive, test, and pack 100+ Kuiper satellites per month into the appropriate fairing and claim to have secured 80 launches, but how fast can they manufacture them? They will apply for a waiver from the FCC if necessary, and, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos has a lot of money and attended Trump’s inauguration. Earlier, Musk might have stopped an Amazon waiver, but now Trump is looking into deporting him, and  Bezos has made editorial changes at the Washington Post, which he owns. A political contribution might solve the FCC deadline.

IRIS²

IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) is a €10.6bn project with 61 percent funded publicly and the balance coming from the SpaceRise industrial consortium, led by Eutelsat, Hispasat, and SES. SpaceRISE will design, deliver, and operate IRIS² for a period of 12 years.

They have contracted for 274 satellites in LEO and 18 in MEO, with first launches anticipated for 2029 and completion in 2030. Eutelsat will act as prime contractor leading the design of the LEO segment and co-leading the development of common system elements. SES will be responsible for procurement, integration, and operation of the MEO satellites, and Hispasat will lead the very-low orbital layer of the constellation and design, deliver, and operate the ground segment, manage operations, and interconnection with terrestrial networks. They also expect to eventually add a GEO sub-constellation.

This is a unique and complex organization that will have to manage suppliers like Airbus, Thales, OHB, Deutsche Telekom, and  Orange. Bureaucracy might be a problem, but Europe can not rely on Starlink as Ukraine has during the war with Russia.

SES's unique three-orbit satellite Internet strategy

SES's three-orbit offering is unique.

In 2021, OneWeb CEO Neil Masterson said, "Interoperability with GEO satellites must happen -- it's common sense ... Customers don't care whether it's a LEO satellite or a GEO satellite -- all they want is connectivity," and ten months later, OneWeb and Intelsat signed the first multi-orbit broadband agreement. SES, which was already a LEO-MEO operator in 2021, is now pursuing a three-orbit strategy, but they are not planning to launch a LEO constellation, but will blend multiple partners’ constellations into a unified three-orbit offering.

• SES's first multi-orbit partnership was Cruise mPOWERED + Starlink,  providing a managed blend of SES MEO and Starlink LEO service for maritime operators, and we can expect similar bundled services in aviation and enterprise markets. 
• SES and Lynk Global plan to provide direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity through Lynk's "cell towers in space" and SES's MEO backhaul and terrestrial infrastructure. (SES operates the largest fiber network among satellite providers, with global reach through 150 owned and partner teleports and 50 points of presence.) Might SES also offer AST SpaceMobile D2D service?
• SES recently completed its acquisition of GEO operator Intelsat, giving it 120 LEO and MEO satellites, but it also inherited Intelsat's commitment to buy $250 million worth of LEO capacity from OneWeb over six years, giving it access to an operating LEO constellation.
• SES and OndWeb's parent company Eutelsat are both members of the SpaceRISE consortium that is building the Iris^2 multi-orbit network.
• Amazon’s Project Kuiper is ramping up launch campaigns and seeking distribution partners, and SES’s global ground infrastructure and government contracts make selective Kuiper integration plausible, especially for defense and enterprise deals. Project Kuiper expects to offer service in the US and four other countries by the end of March and approximately 26 countries by the end ot next year.
• Telesat's  LEO constellation Lightspeed targets enterprise and government -- markets SES knows well. If Lightspeed reaches orbit at scale, SES could combine its MEO and GEO coverage with Telesat’s polar-friendly LEO. Telesat also offers GEO connectivity, but instead of offering multi-orbit service, they will sell Lightspeed to other GEO providers. For example, they have an agreement to provide LEO service to Viasat.

These early and potential LEO partners are all US or European companies, and SES is in Luxembourg, which is now a member of NATO, but it was neutral before World War II and is relatively liberal. While it is inconceivable today, might SES collaborate with a Chinese LEO constellation one day? Perhaps starting with geo-fenced service in China or Belt and Road initiative nations.  

This move makes SES unique. They will offer three-orbit service without the cost and delay of a new LEO constellation, and will be able to select the best LEO provider for a given application. They also plan to gradually grow their MEO constellation, adding a satellite every year.

That being said, they are facing stiff competition from Starlink today, and Amazon's Project Kuiper will be in service soon. They will be competing with their partners in some cases and sharing profits with them in all cases. It also remains to be seen how smoothly they can technically and operationally integrate heterogeneous LEO partners at a competitive cost. Stay tuned.

Chinese LEO satellite Internet update

China has pursued a strategy of competition among government-owned organizations, and it initiated two government-owned constellation projects, Hongyun and Hongyan, in 2018. In April 2020, China’s National Development and Reform Commission included “satellite internet” on its “new infrastructures” list, and China applied to the ITU for a new constellation, called  GW. Hongyun and Hongyan were dropped, and GW, also called China Satnet or Guowang, emerged as China’s global Internet service provider and it was followed by two others, Qianfan and Honghu-3. These are all far behind Starlink, but they will have protected markets and China is developing new launch vehicles and satellite manufacturing capacity.

Gwowang

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 called for building an integrated communications, Earth observation, and satellite navigation system with global coverage. Guowang is the constellation they called for.

Guowang consists of two sub-constellations, designated GW-A59 (6,080 satellites) and GW-2 (6,912 satellites). GW-2 will orbit at 1,145 km, and  GW-A59 will orbit around half that. The ITU filing was in September of 2020, and after a long delay, the first ten GW-2 satellites were launched at the end of 2024, and they now have 81 in orbit. The cadence has picked up recently -- China just launched another batch of Guowang satellites. This was the ninth Guowang launch this year and the sixth in the last 30 days. Even at this cadence, it is unclear that they can manufacture and launch enough satellites to meet the ITU launch deadlines. Perhaps the Chinese have decided that, given launch and manufacturing resources, they would not be able to meet ITU deadlines for all of their constellations, so they are focusing on Guowang, which can be seen as most critical for the government.

Little technical information is available, but considering the capacities of the various rockets used to launch Guowang satellites and the number of satellites in each launch, it seems there are two sizes of satellite: large satellites of around 16,600 kg and smaller satellites of around 889 kg. While these are imprecise estimates, they indicate two classes of satellite with different capabilities and functions. (Note that the relatively high altitude GW-2 sub-constellation has both large and small satellites).

Several Guowang test satellites have also been launched, suggesting strategic government and military applications like Signals intelligence, positioning, navigation, and imaging applications in addition to Internet service.

Qianfan

Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a private company backed by the Shanghai municipal government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is developing the Qianfan constellation. The planned satellites will orbit at 1,160 km, which is higher than the other announced LEO satellite competitors except Telesat. While this will increase latency, collision risk, satellite lifespan, handoff frequency, and coverage footprint should improve.

Their plan called for 648 satellites providing regional service by the end of 2025 and global service with a second 648 satellites by the end of 2027. By 2030, they planned to have 15,000 satellites in orbit and offer direct-to-mobile service, but it does not look like they will make these goals.

It's been a year since the first Qianfan launch, but five months since the last on? Blae. Is the slowdown due to satellite or launch availability, or are they pausing for some redesign, or bothine Curcio reports that they are “having a very hard time" finding rockets to send full batches of 18 satellit to orbit, but they have also had operational problems. The upper stage of the first launches fragmented, creating over 300 pieces of trackable debris, and ninety satellites are in orbit, but fourteen have not reached their operational altitude. Furthermore, the satellites are interfering with astronomy, and some are tumbling. Regardless of the cause for delays, Qianfan is unlikely to meet its ITU launch deadlines.

Qianfan is a more direct competitor to Starlink than Guowang, which is primarily focused on domestic telecommunications and national security. SSST has been actively marketing wholesale service through foreign telecom companies under the Sailspace brand name. They had MOUs with several nations in six initial target markets, as shown below, and they have subsequently been actively marketing in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 

Honghu-3

Landspace Technology Corporation was founded in 2015, following a 2014 central government policy shift that opened the launch and small satellite sectors to private capital. Landscape owns 48% of Hongqing Technology, which is developing the 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 constellation. Honghu-3 satellites will be in six planes, ranging from 340-550 km. 

Landspace has a pending IPO and is developing the Zhuque-3 rocket, which they plan to launch later this year. The Zhuque-3 will carry about 21,000 kg to LEO in an expendable configuration – less than an expendable Falcon 9, but more than a reusable Falcon 9. This connection to a rocket manufacturer is reminiscent of SpaceX's relationship with Starlink and Project Kuiper's with Blue Origin. (Several other Chinese companies are also working on reusable rockets).

Honghu-3 was announced after Guowang and Qianfan, and relatively little is known of their plans and technology, but Landspace has valuable experience as a private company. As you see in this conversation with ChatGPT, Landscape has a complex mix of private, state, and local government investors dating back to its founding, and it estimates the ownership breakdown as roughly 60% private, national government 15-20%, and provincial/municipal around 20%.

Update 9/14/2025

The Hong Kong Office of the Communications Authority has released a report on a Qianfan test using both the standard and high-performance terminals conducted on a cruise ship in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. The ship had an unobstructed view of eight satellites orbiting in a plane over Hong Kong.  They tested Web page loading, HD video playback, WeChat video calls, and large online games.

• The tester accessed the Baidu hot search page using a mobile browser, and images and text loaded quickly; video playback was also smooth.
• There was no lag or abnormal playback when streaming 4K high-definition video from the CCTV website.
• The WeChat video communication quality was comparable to that of terrestrial 4G/5G networks. The video remained stable during the test, with no noticeable lag.
• The user experience while playing League of Legends was good, and the network delay was kept at 60 to 70 milliseconds.

The report also lists the technical specifications of both the standard and high-performance terminals, and speed tests for both terminals are shown below.

Update 10/23/2025

Quinfan resumed launches with a batch of 18 satellites after a six-month delay, presumably to correct for the problems of an exploding first stage, tumbling satellites, and interference with astronomy. They have now launched 108 satellites, and 14 have failed and are decaying, 94 are working, and 67 are in their operational orbit. 

As mentioned above, Blaine Curcio noted that they were also “having a very hard time" finding rockets to send full batches of 18 satellites to orbit, but Andrew Jones reports that they have expanded launch procurement beyond state provider CASC, awarding $187 million in contracts to Landspace, Space Pioneer, and CAS Space. Still, there is no way they will meet the original goals of 648 satellites providing regional service by the end of 2025 and global service with a second 648 satellites by the end of 2027.

Update 1/9/2026

After the December 26 launch of nine satellites, there are now 136 Guowang spacecraft in space, functioning in and heading up to their operational orbit. They were launched by a Long March 8A rocket, so they were probably the smaller Guowang satellites. Guowang plans to launch 310 satellites in 2026, 900 in 2027, and 3,600 every year beginning in 2028. 

A Chinese fisherman was able to retrieve the fairing from the launch -- a cool souvenir.

Starlink and the seven dwarfs

This post has been superseded, see: 

https://cis471.blogspot.com/2025/11/starlink-and-seven-dwarfs.html

Source: ChatGPT

In the 1960s, IBM dominated the computer market, which was often referred to as “IBM and the seven dwarfs.” IBM is prosperous today, but no longer dominant. The low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet service market today is reminiscent of that time, but it’s "SpaceX Starlink and the seven dwarfs." 

As of August 2025, Apple's market cap is approximately $3.363 trillion, while IBM's is around $223.03 billion. I do not expect Starlink to drop off that precipitously, but its lead will be significantly diminished. Five of IBM's dwarfs failed, and two merged to form Unisys, which has a market capitalization of $280.18 million; however, I expect all of Starlink's dwarfs to survive.

Let's look at today's dwarfs. 

OneWeb

Bill Gates and two partners founded Teledesic, a would-be LEO satellite Internet service provider, in 1990, but the technology was not yet ready, and Teledesic declared bankruptcy in 2002.

The next would-be LEO Internet service provider, OneWeb, was founded by Greg Wyler, who had extensive experience with networking in developing nations, with the mission of “bridging the digital divide by 2027”, but it entered bankruptcy in 2020. The company was reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy, and in 2023 merged with established geo-stationary satellite (GEO) operator Eutelsat, creating the "Eutelsat Group" company, with subsidiaries "Eutelsat" and "Eutelsat OneWeb.”

In spite of that rocky start, OneWeb is the only company other than Starlink that is offering LEO satellite Internet service today. OneWeb LEO revenue was 187 million euros ($216 million) for the 12 months ending June 30,2025, representing around 15% of total Eutelsat Group sales. Starlink revenue for 2024 was $2.7 billion. OneWeb’s market share, and more importantly, global capacity, are minuscule compared to those of Starlink.

That sounds grim, but given Elon Musk’s political activity, Trump’s MAGA/isolationist policy, and the military value of LEO Internet, Europe will not let OneWeb fail unless there are viable alternatives to Starlink. This is evidenced by European support of OneWeb in Ukraine, including German funding of OneWeb and a recent British investment.

Finally, note that the Eutelsat Group can offer multi-orbit service, switching seamlessly between Eutelsat GEO and OneWeb LEO satellites or offering OneWeb service to other GEO providers. They signed their first multi-orbit contract three years ago and have added others since.

Telesat

Telesat, an established Canadian GEO satellite operator, was the next LEO Internet company. Telesat recognized the trend to LEO, but decided not to offer consumer connectivity. 

Telesat has been beset by delays and has reduced its initially planned constellation size, but they have contracted (with SpaceX) to begin launching satellites next year. Trump’s immigration and tariff policies, along with talk of annexing Canada, assure us that the Canadian government, which, along with Quebec, has invested in Telesat, will not allow it to fail.

The initial “Lightspeed” constellation will consist of 198 satellites with a mass of 750 kg, roughly that of Starlink V2 mini satellites.  SpaceX is slated to deploy them over the course of a year, starting in mid-2026. Telesat has been booking customers, and their LEO backlog now exceeds their GEO backlog. They plan to provide global service with polar and inclined sub-constellations, are seeking a ground station partner, and have terrestrial deals with Vocus, Orange, and Space Norway.

While Telesat will not bundle its own LEO and GEO services, they have tested a hybrid deployment between LEO and GEO using the Telesat Lightspeed emulator, showing seamless integration without any issues. Software like the emulator is part of their strategic decision to use Aalyria Spacetime, a multi-layer, multi-orbit operating system for a temporospatial network, which they acquired from Google when the Loon project was abandoned.

Amazon Project Kuiper

Project Kuiper, which has only 101 operational satellites in orbit today, is far behind Starlink, which has over 8,000, but Amazon has many things going for it. From the time it was founded, Amazonwas an infrastructure company, and Project Kuiper is an orbiting infrastructure that willbe strategically paired with Amazon’s complementary terrestrial infrastructure, like fiber and datacenters. Amazon hasvast experience in manufacturing and logistics that will stand them in good stead with the manufacturing of terminals as well as satellites. 

Project Kuiper is a wholly-owned subsidiary and an initiative of Amazon, and Jeff Bezos is the founder of both Amazon and the Blue Origin launch company, which will launch some Project Kuiper satellites. Amazon itself will also be a significant Kuiper user, and Kuiper will use Amazon’s ground station service. 

That’s the good news, but Amazon faces an FCC deadline to launch half the constellation by July 30, 2026, and the remainder by July 30, 2029. They say they will be able to receive, test, and pack 100+ Kuiper satellites per month into the appropriate fairing and claim to have secured 80 launches, but how fast can they manufacture them? They will apply for a waiver from the FCC, if necessary, and. like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos has a lot of money and attended Trump’s inauguration. Earlier, Musk might have stopped an Amazon waiver, but now Trump is looking into deporting him, and  Bezos has made editorial changes at the Washington Post, which he owns. A political contribution might solve the FCC deadline.

IRIS²

IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) is a €10.6bn project with 61 per cent funded publicly and the balance coming from the SpaceRise industrial consortium, led by Eutelsat, Hispasat, and SES. SpaceRISE will design, deliver, and operate IRIS² for a period of 12 years.

They have contracted for 274 satellites in LEO and 18 in MEO, with first launches anticipated for 2029 and completion in 2030. Eutelsat will act as prime contractor leading the design of the LEO segment and co-leading the development of common system elements. SES will be responsible for procurement, integration, and operation of the MEO satellites, and Hispasat will lead the very low orbital layer (Low LEO) of the constellation and design, deliver, and operate the ground segment, manage operations, and interconnection with terrestrial networks. They also expect to eventually add a GEO sub-constellation.

This is a unique and complex organization that will have to manage suppliers like Airbus, Thales, OHB, Deutsche Telekom, and  Orange. Bureaucracy might be a problem, but Europe can not rely on Starlink as Ukraine has during the war with Russia.

Three Chinese Dwarfs

China has pursued a strategy of competition among government-owned organizations, and it initiated two government-owned constellation projects, Hongyun and Hongyan, in 2016. In April 2020, China’s National Development and Reform Commission included “satellite internet” on its “new infrastructures” list, and China applied to the ITU for a new constellation, called  GW. Hongyun and Hongyan were dropped, and GW, also called China Satnet or Guowang, emerged as China’s global Internet service provider and it was followed by two others, Qianfan and Honghu. These are all far behind Starlink, but they will have protected markets

Gwowang

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 called for building an integrated communications, Earth observation, and satellite navigation system with global coverage. Guowang is the constellation they called for.

Guowang consists of two sub-constellations, designated GW-A59 (6,080 satellites) and GW-2 (6,912 satellites). GW-2 will orbit at 1,145 km, and  GW-A59 will orbit around half that. The ITU filing was in September of 2020, and after a long delay, the first ten GW-2 satellites were launched at the end of 2024, and they now have 81 in orbit. The cadence has picked up recently -- China has launched another batch of Guowang satellites. This was the ninth Guowang launch this year and the sixth in the last 30 days. Even at this cadence, it is unclear that they can manufacture and launch enough satellites to meet the ITU launch deadlines. Perhaps the Chinese have decided that, given launch and manufacturing resources, they would not be able to meet ITU deadlines for all of their constellations, so they are focusing on Guowang, which can be seen as most critical for the government

Little technical information is available, but considering the capacities of the various rockets used to launch Guowang satellites and the number of satellites in each launch, it seems there are two sizes of satellite: large satellites of around 16,600 kg and smaller satellites of around 889 kg. While these are imprecise estimates, they indicate two classes of satellite with different capabilities and functions. (Note that the relatively high altitude GW-2 sub-constellation has both large and small satellites).

Several Guowang test satellites have also been launched, suggesting strategic government and military applications like Signals intelligence, positioning, navigation, and imaging applications in addition to Internet service.

Qianfan

Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a private company backed by the Shanghai municipal government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is developing the Qianfan constellation. The planned satellites will orbit at 1,160 km, which is higher than the other announced LEO satellite competitors except Telesat. While this will increase latency, collision risk, satellite lifespan, handoff frequency, and coverage footprint should improve.

Their plan called for 648 satellites providing regional service by the end of 2025 and global service with a second 648 satellites by the end of 2027. By 2030, they planned to have 15,000 satellites in orbit and offer direct-to-mobile service, but it does not look like they will make these goals.

It's been a year since the first Qianfan launch, but five months since the last one. Is the slowdown due to satellite or launch availability, or are they pausing for some redesign, or both? Blaine Curcio reports that they are “having a very hard time finding rockets to send full batches of 18 satellites to orbit, but they have also had operational problems. The upper stage of the first launch fragmented, creating over 300 pieces of trackable debris, and ninety satellites are in orbit, but fourteen have not reached their operational altitude. Furthermore, the satellites are interfering with astronomy, and some are tumbling. Regardless of the cause for delays, Qianfan is unlikely to meet its ITU launch deadlines.

Qianfan is a more direct competitor to Starlink than Guowang, which is primarily focused on domestic telecommunications and national security. SSST has been actively marketing wholesale service through foreign telecom companies under the Sailspace brand name. They had MOUs with several nations in six initial target markets, as shown below, and they have subsequently been actively marketing in Africa.

Honghu-3

Landspace Technology Corporation was founded in 2015, following a 2014 central government policy shift that opened the launch and small satellite sectors to private capital. Landscape owns 48% of Hongqing Technology, which is developing the 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 constellation. Honghu-3 satellites will be in six planes, ranging from 340-550 km. 

Landspace has a pending IPO and is developing the Zhuque-3rocket, which they plan to launch later this year. The Zhuque-3 will carry about 21,000 kg to LEO in an expendable configuration – less than an expendable Falcon 9, but more than a reusable Falcon 9. This connection to a rocket manufacturer is reminiscent of SpaceX's relationship with Starlink and Project Kuiper's with Blue Origin.

Honghu-3 was announced after Guowang and Qianfan, and relatively little is known of their plans and technology, but Landspace has experience as a private company. (I asked the ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot chatbots how much state and private capital Landspace had received since it was founded, and the answers and explanations varied so much as to make them worthless, but they all agreed that the private investment was greater than the public.)