The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 36 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gedmark: Single GEO satellites offer cheaper national broadband than LEO constellations
“Once you're up, any asset you can get up in that high orbit is just becomes this incredibly valuable thing because you can park it over a country, Or part of the world and provide, you know, a service with just that one satellite. So it ends up being this like…”
Gedmark: US will win if space becomes a contested domain
“And that is why I am I think very confident to say that if space is a contested domain, that we will win.”
Gedmark: Silicon Valley ensures US victory in the commercial space race
“No, no, absolutely. That is what the United States has that will, even though these other countries are doing a better job of figuring out what to do with their government investment in space and how they're spending those dollars, the United States has Silico…”
Gedmark: Global fiber optic infrastructure has essentially reached its maximum physical reach
“I think we have essentially reached the people we're going to reach with fiber.”
Gedmark: Space industry is the only viable solution for global connectivity
“It is on us in the space industry to solve this problem. I do not see any other means solving it.”
Astranis secured a U.S. Space Force contract in six weeks
“So I'm very proud to say that visit was extremely fruitful, and we are now on a new contract that General Gutlein was able to put in place in just six weeks from when he visited and we are off and rolling on that.”
Gedmark: China will never match US venture-backed space innovation
“And I think that is something That the Chinese will never be able to match, so we should be very proud of that, and we should make use of it.”
Gedmark: Space Shuttle era cost-plus contracts entrenched legacy defense contractors
“Then we entered into this era in the eighties, basically with the space shuttle, things got very entrenched with these cost plus contracts. And the major aerospace defense contractors were basically able to lock in, you know, these programs at a cost of billio…”
Gedmark: Commercial space emerged from dot-com wealth and Space Shuttle retirement
“So you really had all these ingredients of basically private individuals who had made enough money in the dot-com boom and had this passion for space to go and take a run at it. On the government side, you had the retirement of the special Coming up on the hor…”
Gedmark: GEO orbit historically received the bulk of satellite capital
“Historically, GEO is actually the most valuable orbit. That is where the bulk of money has been spent to put satellites into orbit.”
Gedmark: Off-the-shelf space hardware failed GEO specs, forcing custom components
“A lot of the components that you could buy were really designed for LEO satellites. And once we dug into it, would just not work for us in GEO, you know, and that's, you know, that's not through any fault of the of the vendors. It was just designed for a diffe…”
Gedmark: Internet bandwidth demand is effectively unlimited at low enough prices
“On the other end of the spectrum, if you put it up at a low enough price, then the demand becomes almost effectively unlimited. I mean, people will, at a low enough price point, people will consume all the internet bandwidth that is available and then, you kno…”
Gedmark: The global population without internet access has increased to four billion
“People used to talk about the other three billion that don't have access to the internet. When, you know, the internet was first really taking off. Now it's the other four billion. The problem actually got worse.”
Gedmark: Successful space startups inevitably attract US national security interest
“A company doing new technology for space for aerospace, you know, there's by almost by definition, there are national security implications of what we do. So there is almost always you know, I think if you're doing things right, there's almost always going to …”
Gedmark: Geostationary satellites failed to adopt smaller, rapidly iterable hardware
“In some ways satellite technology is just one of these last, especially in geo, it's just one of these last places where, We did not move to smaller hardware that you could build faster and iterate on more quickly and do a faster refresh of technology, right?”
Gedmark: Traditional satellites keep getting bigger instead of shrinking over time
“If anything, they've gotten bigger and bigger over time instead of smaller and smaller. They somehow, you know, got, found themselves in this, you know, part of the design space where they got, they fell into this, you know, local optima. Descending down this …”
Gedmark: Future lunar bases will require a dedicated GPS system for navigation
“The moon will need its own GPS system. You're on the lunar surface. You want to know where you are. Same thing as on the earth. You want to be able to just pull up, you know Google maps, navigate back to your lunar base, right? And then have that have that pos…”
Gedmark: Space industry can now launch small satellites rapidly on demand
“We can now launch small satellites on demand very rapidly and very responsibly. We've never been able to do that before.”
Gedmark: No company used small satellites in higher orbits before Astranis
“In some of the higher orbits that are more difficult to get to, but are still incredibly valuable, no one was going and taking a small satellite approach.”
Legacy GEO satellites cost billions and take years to build
“They're typically only built by a handful of companies in the entire world. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars, ah, on the commercial side, and then on the military, national security side, it's in the billions of dollars. For a single satellite. And th…”
Gedmark: Astranis launching satellites for Alaska and Peru in 2023
“We're launching our first satellite in a couple months for the U.S. State of Alaska and then shortly after that we'll be launching another satellite for Peru”
Gedmark: China conducted more space launches than any nation over four years
“Over the last, ah, several years, last four years, China's been launching, doing more space launches than any country on Earth, including the United States, which I think is a fact people just weren't even aware of.”
Gedmark: Early satellite telecom studies projected six Wi-Fi users per flight
“So in the earliest days of in-flight Wi-Fi, the existing satellite telecoms sort of operators who are notoriously very conservative, very slow, did some studies that they believed that an average of six people per aircraft would be willing to buy this like 20 …”
Gedmark: The technology that won the XPRIZE became Virgin Galactic
“And the company ended up winning that, that, that group and that technology ended up becoming what is now Perger Galactic.”
Gedmark: Early space trade groups were controlled by traditional defense contractors
“And all the organizations at the time were basically run by the major aerospace and defense companies.”
Gedmark: Astranis builds micro-satellites slightly larger than a mini fridge
“Our satellites at Astronus are a little bit larger than that. Similar class you know, what we call micro satellites.”
Gedmark: Broadcast satellite TV was one of space's biggest moneymakers
“One of the biggest moneymakers in in, in the history of all of space was broadcast satellite TV. And that is, that was all done with these large, very expensive geo satellites.”
Gedmark: Roughly a dozen military communication satellites cover the world
“The, you know, the military communication satellites, I think there's roughly a dozen that cover the whole world, so they're spread around the whole world.”
Gedmark: Russia severed Ukraine's communications on day one via satellite cyberattack
“The Russians took out that satellite on day one of the invasion with a massive cyber attack. And just in one fell swoop, cut off comms across, you know, almost all of Ukraine because they've been very heavily reliant on just this one satellite.”
Gedmark: Rocket reusability is driving down space launch costs significantly
“And third is launch reusability, which is already driving down launch costs by a huge amount and opening up an explosion of activity in space.”
Gedmark: Small space startups are now deploying synthetic aperture radar
“You even have a synthetic aperture radar. Something, I think, we never thought a new small company could go and do. And now they're doing it.”
Gedmark: Global broadband data demand grows 33% year-over-year
“The world's demand for broadband data has been growing at an insane exponential rate. 33% year-on-year growth, and that is just showing no signs of stopping.”
Gedmark: Space communications is a $120 billion annual market
“So, to be clear, communications is a hundred twenty billion a year.”
Gedmark: Traditional satellites historically cost hundreds of millions and match bus sizes
“The big satellites that historically cost several hundred million dollars each You know, they are the size of a school bus, if not like a double decker, you know, big, big red London double decker bus.”