I haven’t forgotten, but we need to see a variety of satellite providers to provide redundancy and competition. Including Amazon etc in this. Certainly Taiwan should have its own national satellite service too.
It’s like the situation with electric cars here now or should I say the non existent situation as there are so few except for Tesla. Government won’t permit Chinese brands to sell, and yet teslas may be made in china I assume anyway?
The Teslas in Taiwan are imported from USA and Germany.
And local (non-Tesla) EV production is slowly growing.
First Blue Origin loss of Blue Bird 7.
Today Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket exploded in a massive fireball during a “static fire” engine test at Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The destruction of the New Glenn rocket and the severe damage to Launch Complex 36 is a massive blow to AST SpaceMobile’s ambitious deployment timeline for 2026.
Space is a risky business. This is the second failed launch related AST right (well it was a test I suppose)? I was thinking to buy their stock also.
This is a booster that was supposed to launch 48 Amazon Project Kuiper broadband satellites.
But it will further delay the AST timeline and crush their goals. They are already pushing more launches to SpaceX, but they bet on the wrong horse and are paying for it.
ASTS never had any planned Blue Origin sendoffs for rest of the year. The one in April in which Blue Origin failed (not ASTS) was a tester. ASTS launching 3 satellites in June on SpaceX and 3 in July.
SpaceX doesn’t make any revenue launching its own payloads. It makes U$20-40mn in net profit on standard commercial launches for its customers like ASTS. It has a vested interest to its shareholders to do commercial launches, irregardless if for a competitor to its Starlink like ASTS. Plus, U.S. alphabet agencies have a vested interest in successful ASTS launches (they don’t care about Starlink). And once SpaceX is listed, Elon won’t be wanting any mishaps on commercial payloads like with Blue Origin.
Their plan heavily relies on Blue Origin. Only there they can send up to 8 satellites at once. SpaceX can do max 3.
They are back in line at Blue Origin and now that line has been delayed further.
With SpaceX they won’t be able to catch up significantly.
Three Block 2 satellites
Watch Falcon 9 launch the AST BlueBird 8-10 mission to orbit [Starting Jun 17, 2:25 PM]
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1XxyggrrXmeGM
Deployment of all three BlueBird satellites confirmed
SpaceX on X: "Deployment of all three BlueBird satellites confirmed" / X
“Starlink has now partnered with 41 airlines worldwide, covering more than 7,000 aircraft under installation or contract.” No Taiwan airlines though.
I read this just after I landed on a China Airlines flight which included WiFi but was pretty much unusable the entire flight.
It’s best that Taiwan or it’s airlines DON’T depend on starlink, but they could do with satellite internet for sure.
Taiwan requires communication providers to have local ownership, as they are seen as national security infrastructure. Starlink can’t fit that and the fact is, Elon Musk could turn it off if he wanted to. Taiwan wouldn’t want that.
Yep. Taiwan Mobile smart signing up with ASTS.
True but I don’t see why Taiwan doesn’t allow Starlink and also works on it’s own satellite internet at the same time.
Currently what we have is the equivalent to if Musk turned off Starlink - no satellite internet.
the telecom management act will be amended to allow satellite telecom cos to be exempted from certain ownership and chairmanship requirements. It seems now that the way for starlink is paved.
Oh wow that’s awesome news! Thanks for the heads up, I completely missed this in the news.
Fingers crossed China Airlines and EVA Air get ultra fast onboard wifi soon
Then we just hope Elon doesn’t use that to curry favor with China, I’m sure the PRC would love free access to that pipe. 
The exemption is not automatic, NCC must review each request on national security grounds