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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

Starlink is SpaceX's way of guaranteeing SpaceX has a launch client. It increases the number of launches they make, and drives down the cost per launch, both for themselves and for their other customers. They are creating a business model which is both profitable and drives profits to their launch business. This is similar to the synergy Amazon's online store and AWS have with each other.

If SpaceX has room on a launch vehicle or an empty launch vehicle, they stuff it with Starlink satellites. Since Starlink will require constant refreshes, SpaceX has a constant client, it becomes far easier for them to offer smaller payloads at good rates. This is SpaceX's way of commoditizing launches and keeping their launch service running regularly.

It's extremely clever use of complimentary resources.

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Yes, and they reuse the rockets more often than they would do with just external customers while proving to them that it's safe to use the same rockets uo to 10 times.

I love how undoectacular their flights have become, and wonder how long it will take until they stop commenting their live streams. I still watch them, but I started to skip forward or just listen to it in the background while programming.

> undoectacular

Your typo of `unspectacular` is almost as spectacular as a Starlink mission has become.

Glad for the decode on that typo. I thought it was some new word.

AWS and the Amazon.com store may have synergy now, but for many years the store was its own thing. Amazon.com only finished migrating off Oracle DB in 2019:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/migration-complete-amazons-...

The last Oracle DB migration was just for one part of internal retail operation that was particularly difficult or just needed more resources. Most of retail had been using AWS for quite some time before that (earlier than 2009). Source: worked there and knew the team that did that migration.

If they have empty space on payloads they also sell it for a (very reasonable) 1 million USD.

https://youtu.be/DB1Aii8NoC0

At that price it makes me wonder if there's a market in vanity satellites for the wealthy.

In Planetes an old anime series of hard scifi which I loved there is an episode of exactly that, the protagonists need to recover a "space burial" coffin launched into deep space which accidentally after decades does a flyby of low earth orbit

So yeah, maybe, look forward to billionaires launching their dead bodies into space, after all that tesla car is still somewhere out there floating about heh

+1 Planetes is amazing. It is not available on streaming service in the US though. If someone has $100k lying around, they should aquire US distribution rights. Could probably make it back easily if it gets a million views an episode on YouTube.

Why is this special to Amazon and SpaceX? Literally every vertical integrated company does what you said. That's the definition of vertical integration.

Vertically integrating space logistics with space products is pretty cool.

Definitely!

A vertically integrated company owns increasing amounts of production of their end product. Apple is vertically integrated, they have products where they make the CPU, the device, the OS, and retail the devices. But ultimately they only sell the end products.

If Apple were to start selling CPUs, you could argue that they had a similar model, but they don't (and won't because their CPUs are a competitive advantage).

What Amazon and SpaceX are doing isn't vertical integration in the classic sense. While Amazon sells AWS, they also have an online retail platform. Their retail platform consumes AWS services. Similarly, SpaceX is both the supplier of launch services and the consumer of launch services.

Amazon's retail operations are profitable, but by being their own best customer, they help Amazon drive profitability and demand for AWS.

Flywheel integration is probably a better term. I.e. not vertically integrating for the supply of your current product, but in such a way that demand for both is increased.

Ive heard fly wheel in regards to tech company strategy 3 times in a month, was there a conference I wasnt invited to?

It's not unlikely you're experiencing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

Jeff Bezos talks about it a lot. So it makes sense it would come up in the context of similarities between SpaceX's and Amazon's strategies.

Same here. I'm guessing it's a term that's come up in a few popular posts here (especially considering Jeff Bezos left Amazon a few weeks ago and he talks about it a lot in his book and in general) and is not part of the vernacular of commenters here. Similar idea for other circles that you might have heard it in.

Like this term a lot.

What's different is that the entire commercial space launch business isn't very big. I think it's been somewhere in the ballpark of a couple dozen launches a year. SpaceX could conceivably satisfy it just by building one rocket and flying it over and over again. (Granted they don't have upper stage re-usability yet, and the Falcon 9 boosters have a limited lifespan, but they're working to get there with Starship.) So, if they want to have a viable business that involves a large fleet of reusable rockets they need to become their own customer to make sure the rockets don't just sit idle.

Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time with new companies in new markets. The space launch market though has been around for a long time. To me it seems unusual for an industry that's been around for half a century or so to not be big enough to absorb the excess capacity of a newcomer.

Unfortunately it's also littering the sky with a shitload of eventual junk, and immediate astronomical blight.

SpaceX satellites are designed to remove themselves from orbit and burn up. Few of them will be space junk.

They are a headache for astronomers. Its debatable which is the bigger public good.

Continuing to say it doesn't make it true. They deorbit the satellites that stop working and their reliability thus far has been high other than the first two or three launches which had a higher failure rate. Even if they do fail completely and become uncontrollable, they're designed to deorbit within 5 years from operational altitude. They're relatively low mass and have very large solar panels for their size.

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