Did you watch the video? This person didn't say it was impossible to launch enough satellites for Starlink.
He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg.
Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people said this would be really hard but they did it." Or you can say "Musk set a goal to 4x performance and got to an also-remarkable 3x" or whatever.
Even in this video, the smug Ariane guy heaps a decent amount of praise upon SpaceX and what they've achieved. He just said a $5MM launch will not be one of those things, and he was correct.
His underlying tone is that reusability is "a dream" (his words). Without reusability, Starlink as a network of tens of thousands of satellites would not be practical.
He said this in 2013, two years before the first Falcon 9 booster landing.
Calling reusability "a dream" is different from saying "Starlink is impossible."
You can try to read the tea leaves on tone and some creative interpretation of implicature (despite Starlink actually needing fewer than 1000 satellites for its public launch), but they're different claims.
Not sure why there's a need to exaggerate the victimhood of SpaceX lol, super strange.
The Ariane guy was quite clear about what he thought was practical and not. He said $5MM launch won't happen (it didn't). He said reusability is a dream (he was wrong). He said nothing about the impossibility of Starlink, either implicitly or explicitly.
He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg.
Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people said this would be really hard but they did it." Or you can say "Musk set a goal to 4x performance and got to an also-remarkable 3x" or whatever.
Even in this video, the smug Ariane guy heaps a decent amount of praise upon SpaceX and what they've achieved. He just said a $5MM launch will not be one of those things, and he was correct.