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Comment by neverminder | Hacker News Reader

So OneWeb is dead. Again. Unless of course they launch with SpaceX, which would be ironic. I think SpaceX would agree though, because OneWeb is never gonna be a serious competitor to Starlink anyway.

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I imagine SpaceX would launch enthusiastically.

Sad to see roscosmos obliterate itself.

There was bad blood between Elon Musk and Greg Wyler the messianic swindler founder of OneWeb. But Greg Wyler is long gone to find new credulous investors. And his main investor support in OneWeb, Masayoshi Son of Softbank, has lost most of its stake OneWeb after the Chapter 11 bankruptcy. So who knows ?

Besides that, it is hard to get a balanced view of the question because SpaceX zealots paint a rosy picture of the benevolence of the company toward what is still the only constellation that may look like a competitor to Starlink (even if it is a weak competitor).

Also, most of the news reports focus on OneWeb buying Soyuz Russian rockets. But the reality is that OneWeb bought launches from Arianespace that buys Soyuz rockets / Baikonour access through its subsidiary Starsem co-owned with Russia. So Arianespace/ArianeGroup may be on the hook for the breach of contract and possibly loss of 36 satellites.

And they are in deep trouble with the planned end of Ariane 5, no more Soyuz, Vega with no Ukranian upper stage and an uncertain progress of Ariane 6.

Disclosure: I have been involved in the OneWeb project but not a OneWeb employee.

Bad blood between Elon and a direct competitor. I can't imagine it.

Do you know what the contract says. Is Arianespace required to launch them? My understanding as an outsider is you buy specific launch vehicles. Do you have any idea what the legal implication of a move like that is?

Not a competitor, a former partner.

Early in the OneWeb project Greg Wyler was coming with his O3B background and positioning himself as the mastermind for the constellation aspects (satellite production and operation) with Elon Musk and SpaceX handling the launches.

Then Elon started questioning Greg Wyler decisions (which turned out to be a correct assessment) and OneWeb went its own way with Arianespace assuming SpaceX would never invest seriously and catch-up for the design and mass production of satellites. History has proven them wrong.

For Arianespace, no idea. It will probably keep a number of lawyers busy for the coming years.

To my understanding, Greg Wyler isn't involved anymore in OneWeb. He is working on E-space which is a cloud in orbit service (or something like that).

I think SpaceX has no choice but to agree. They're firmly in a monopoly position right now, and refusing would be an abuse of that monopoly.

Remember that monopolies are legal as long as they are fairly attained and aren't abused.

One of the reasons for the Starlink project was to keep SpaceX busy with productive launches. OneWeb launches help further that goal, even if they were able to pull away a small percentage of Starlink's business. I imagine they'd jump on the opportunity eagerly.

What about launching with Ariane Space?

OneWeb is/was lanuching with Arianespace. But Arianespace basically does not have any rocket anymore. A few Ariane 5 left with an uncertain Ariane 6 ramp-up, no more Soyuz, an probably very few complete Vega until Ukraine is back to work.

From the Arstechnica article posted above:

> Europe has no spare launch capacity, with all of its remaining Ariane 5 launches spoken for, and the Ariane 6 rocket is probably at least two years away from having operational capacity.

Let's see, we are working on a payload, onboard upper stage of the 1st Ariane6 launch.

Launching with China is more likely, as they can ramp up capacity in two years for far less money and timeline risk. The Indians, too, could theoretically reach the orbits that OneWeb needs but with far fewer sats on each PSLV. OneWeb is partially owned by an Indian firm, so though it would be more expensive there could be other advantages.

More likely than either is to put the OneWeb birds on a Falcon 9.

The article states they have no capacity available

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