“We are more and more dependent on satellites,” reads the logline of the 52-minute doc Space Empires directed by Véronique Préault & Damien Vercaemer. “The film’s purpose is to reveal the current events related to the rising deployment of satellite constellations, to understand the players and the stakes that are transforming near-Earth orbits into a new territory of geo-political confrontation.”
The race for control of diminishing space is clear, opined producer Laurent Mini of La Compagnie des Taxi Brousse. “The first come will be the first served, with 2,500 satellites already launched and 27,000 still to come,” he said.
“Elon Musk’s Starlink [system] is far above any competitor. The picture gets clearer when you understand that Starlink has teamed with Microsoft to add cloud services to its constellation. On the other side, Bezos’ Quikr has basically teamed with himself because Amazon web service is the biggest cloud service provider. Now you see the picture, two US tech giants teaming with two US tech giants, creating a planetary infrastructure for the benefit of the people…or themselves?”
“Imagine that the bandwidth used to transport internet is like a pie. Each satellite consolation is a bite of that pie. And soon there won’t be any left,” Mini added.
This situation of course raises numerous questions that the documentary will seek to answer. Will we, whether as individuals or as a collective, accept a single internet cloud provider owned by a single tech billionaire? And if we sign up for web use with these companies, can they influence what we see? How is it possible to build and launch such a vast amount of satellites? Can one really handle tens of thousands of satellites without creating a nightmare situation? “Isn’t there some kind of rule somewhere?” Mini asked incredulously. “Is space basically becoming a [wild]west?” And what about China? Surely they won’t allow for US control of the heavens far above us. “[The documentary will be creative, understandable, and not too technical. And we will unveil the stakes of this competition that is happening right now, right here,” Mini promised.
The film will offer the floor to politicians, lawyers, space entrepreneurs and ‘digital actors’ in order to understand the new power relations that arise from this new and potentially destabilising space race. “It deciphers the games of influence that lie behind this competition where low earth orbit has become a major geopolitical issue,” the film notes add.
The producer describes co-director Damien Vercaemer, who is in charge of all the visual aspects of the film, as “a world class DOP” while Véronique Préault is very strong on the editorial side. “They are a perfect match and together they will make a film targeted to a large audience. They worked together on Space Wars, the documentary about space military that we released this year in association with Arte France,” says Mini.
“Our Space Empire documentary can easily be paired with the previous Space Wars as it will give a full picture of what is currently happening above our heads at hundreds of kilometers away from our sight,” he adds of the project budgeted at €340,000, of which €300,000 is already secured. Broadcaster partners are Arte France and RSI (Switzerland). Sales are handled by Big Media (US). Delivery is expected November 2022. Mini further underlined that the structure of the film will easily allow for shorter length modules that can be used on other platforms.
“We need to make this film because the audience needs to realize that what is currently happening is unprecedented. Its scale has never been seen in the history of space conquest. And that is a global issue,” Mini ended.
