Watching a Falcon 9 launch at Cape Canaveral
SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 for the eighth time. For a European provider on board it's a premiere – and a signal of how powerful reusable rockets have become.
Watching a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral up close is an unforgettable experience. I was there for a Handelsblatt report and came back with two stories: a Falcon 9 rocket being reused for the eighth time – and the launch of two satellites from Luxembourg-based SES, which are set to build a competing service to SpaceX right up in orbit.
What is at stake
The Falcon 9 is not just a means of transport – it is a symbol of how reusable launch systems have transformed the economics of space access. On this flight the rocket was making its eighth trip; its body was still blackened from the last landing. On board: two O3b mPower satellites from SES, built by Boeing, intended to carry the company’s satellite internet into its next generation.
Why SES is taking on Starlink
The twist of the trip: SpaceX’s own Starlink service is one of SES’s direct competitors. SES CEO Steve Collar remained relaxed about it. “We bring fast internet to every place on earth,” he said. The Europeans are pursuing a different strategy from Starlink – their satellites fly far higher, in Medium Earth Orbit. Six satellites are sufficient to cover the entire globe, Boeing’s Michelle Parker explained. The advantage: high data throughput, low latency, fewer objects in orbit.
What the technology is changing
Satellite internet used to be expensive, unreliable and dependent on specialist equipment. That is changing rapidly. SpaceX plans to work with T-Mobile in 2023 to make standard consumer smartphones reachable directly via satellite – no new hardware required. That would break with every existing mobile business model. For ships, aircraft, remote regions and crisis zones, satellite internet is becoming the standard solution rather than the exception.
Why Europe must keep pace
The race to build satellite constellations has long been a strategic one. Whoever controls the infrastructure controls a critical communications artery. Starlink demonstrated in the Ukraine war how heavily political and military outcomes can depend on a single private provider. Europe’s answer is IRIS², a planned EU satellite network. For that to become a genuine counterweight will take years, billions – and a political will that Brussels has rarely shown.
I wrote the full Starlink reportage for Handelsblatt.