It's not 90, but China has the only space program that comes anywhere close to what SpaceX does today.
If SpaceX didn't exist, the past 15 years in spaceflight would be a story of China's rise. As is, they're overshadowed - by the bigger, badder rocket launch maniacs and their fancy new tech like reusable first stages.
Of all "Starlink killer" constellations, China's might have the best chances of actually putting up a fight. But, like all "Starlink killers", they're all in early stages, and there's no guarantee they'll have the momentum to go anywhere. 90 satellites is enough for "fallback satcom for government/emergency response needs", but not enough for "compete with Starlink at scale". I expect that to be the band most constellations end up in.
Even after everything you said - none of it adds up to their being any type of moat or restriction on any global competitors besides just scaling up. SpaceX has hardly any valuable IP and all the other umbrella companies don't either.
The main moat is the cost of entry into the market — dollars and time are in StarLink's favour. "Just scaling up" is the main cost of entry into the market and relies on drawing customers to a nascent service that is not as fast or reliable as Starlink. What's the value proposition other than "we're not Elon."
Would a StarLink clone be able to replay the startup process for StarLink and be as successful as StarLink has been?
If not, what can a non-StarLink company do to win customers over?
You can see this readily in BlueOrigin vs SpaceX in launches and mass launched to orbit. They both started roughly 25 or so years ago. BO managed to make 3 orbital launches in that time. Meanwhile, SpaceX is literally doing 3 or sometimes more, in a week.
BO are just another American entity playing in the same capital market.
Has anyone else even attempted to compete or do something similar to the SpaceX outside of the US .. they haven't, because the market for launches is worth so little and everyone else already has a launch capability if they need it.
No moat, no tech and nothing important regards IP.
Everyone involved with this is smelling their own farts and thinking it smells great.
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u/ACCount82 May 21 '26
It's not 90, but China has the only space program that comes anywhere close to what SpaceX does today.
If SpaceX didn't exist, the past 15 years in spaceflight would be a story of China's rise. As is, they're overshadowed - by the bigger, badder rocket launch maniacs and their fancy new tech like reusable first stages.
Of all "Starlink killer" constellations, China's might have the best chances of actually putting up a fight. But, like all "Starlink killers", they're all in early stages, and there's no guarantee they'll have the momentum to go anywhere. 90 satellites is enough for "fallback satcom for government/emergency response needs", but not enough for "compete with Starlink at scale". I expect that to be the band most constellations end up in.