Amazon’s Project Kuiper books 83 rockets to launch internet-beaming satellites | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s Project Kuiper books 83 rockets to launch internet-beaming satellites

theverge.com

47 pointsdonohoe29 comments

Edit: terafo pointed out I've got BO rocket's names wrong! Fixed!

And most of these launches on rockets that have never flown.

> The satellites will fly on powerful rockets currently being developed by European launch provider Arianespace, US-based United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin

Arianespace: probably the Ariane 6, which might get a test flight this year if all goes perfectly.

ULA: 9 launches planned on the Atlas V, but afaik the rest will have to be on Vulcan. But Vulcan is still waiting on Blue Origin to provide it's new BE-4 engines, which are years late.

Blue Origin: New Glenn uses same engines as Vulcan, the BE-4, stuck by the same delays. Plus, if BO uses the BE-4 on New Glenn before delivering to ULA, ULA will get very upset.

My guess is that the Atlas V launches will launch a few test satellites for Kuiper to prototype with, and nothing else will launch until mid-23. Meanwhile SpaceX is launching almost weekly right now, and offering a real product today.

You confused New Shepard and New Glenn. New Shepard uses BE-3 and performs sub-orbital flights for rich tourists. New Glenn is heavy reusable orbital rocket that uses BE-4.

Thanks, my mistake. Sheppard was the first American in space, Glenn the first to orbit, so it should be easy to remember.

> New Glenn is heavy reusable orbital rocket

That's "will be a heavy reusable orbital rocket". New Glenn hasn't flown yet, even in prototype. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action. But I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah, this is a red flag. I expect actual launches to happen in 2+ years.

The engine situation actually looks even more grim for New Glenn than what you portray. The differences between making an engine survive flight once and one that can be reused are not insignificant.

All the remaining Atlas V launches are spoken for. Another customer will have to back out before Kuiper can get on an Atlas V.

I'm of many minds about this whole thing. Increased competition for Internet access is nice - gone are the days where I had one choice for Internet access. I have the option for 2 cable providers, ATT Fiber or DSL, and T-Mobile Home Internet (I've used it at a relative's and it's quite good). Presumably I could sign up for Starlink too. But the thought of Amazon controlling Internet access is not ideal. Also I worry about the effect on astronomy which is I think one of humanity's more interesting pursuits.

Your confusion is well founded, these products are not for you and the true customers don't care. LEO Satellite network connectivity is every military's wet dream: impossible to deny without triggering global condemnation for creating space debris; only accessible to those with the most money (and access to launchers); allows you to run operations without deploying large power-hungry ground infrastructure.

Why do you think Amazon fought so hard to take away the JEDI contract from Microsoft?

Didn't Russia jam starlink in Ukraine with 50 year old tech? or was that debunked?

Also DoD announced their own project a month or so back https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/28/pentagons-sda-awards-transpo...

DoD can announce whatever fantasy procurement project they want, Starlink exists today and you can pay for it and use it immediately.

> Didn't Russia jam starlink in Ukraine with 50 year old tech? or was that debunked?

Starlink hasn't been successfully jammed anywhere. They noticed some jamming attempts degrading the signal quality and put out a software update that fixed it. Ukraine is already using it to boostrap restarting the cell phone connectivity in destroyed areas near Kyiv.

If you already have a reasonable option for internet then you're probably not the target audience for this.

Probably not, but I do think that more options will push legacy ISPs to up their game which will be a benefit to all consumers of Internet.

They should rename it to Amazon Project Kessler because thats what they are going to cause.

do you realise how small one satellite is?

well, the kessler syndrome [1] is a real phenomenon and has real consequences. More satellites == more debris == high probability of collisions which can create a positive feedback loop.

It requires real management and processes ahead of time, not after the fact.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

What about it is a real phenomenon at this point?

If they're comparable with Starlink satellites they're 1/4 of a ton each, and made of a lot of parts that could fragment on impact. That's small in satellite terms, but you wouldn't want to try to pick one up.

When a satellite collides with a different satellite in the same orbit, none of the parts move to a higher energy orbit, and most move to a lower energy orbit. Given that the original orbit is 380 miles, almost all fragments will immediately deorbit due to atmospheric drag.

Wait, starlink sats are 250kg? Given their number and all they have to do is forward some packets (no big equipment like a telescope), I kinda figured they'd be a few kilos each, like a bit more fancy than a cubesat.

I'm actually a little out of date - the newest ones are about 300kg.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

It won't. Any sat can't be on LEO long without constant orbit corrections. And bunch of scrap that is created by few sats colliding will just burn in atmosphere in just few months(maybe years).

Arianespace: 18 launches

Blue Origin: 12 launches

United Launch Alliance: 38 launches

Total: 18 rocket launches and 50 lawsuits

The cost of the launches would be great to know

I wonder if in the end this will be like another Eternal September as with the introduction of Cell Phones w/ 3G+ and AOL.

> like another Eternal September

I'm not sure what you're saying. Am I misreading your comment when it sounds to me like you're afraid of the situation in which currently-poorer places can have Internet access, as though they'll be less civilised than the mostly rich constituents of today? (Assuming that Amazon or whoever figures that the sats have virtually no load while over those countries anyhow and they might as well make it cheaper than a land connection would otherwise be.)

No, in the same sense that carrier/telecom deployed cheap phones, and more and more people online without understand what they are leaving on the table.

Then they'll assume the "internet" is really just "facebook" as there is no net neutrality in "currently poorer places" to use your vocabulary.

Then their Internet experience becomes paywalled, or gatekeeped and dependent on foreign businesses instead of local infrastructure, meaning that if USA demands/wishes to drop content or dns resolving such as youtube dropping Russian News regardless of opinion, it just doesn't follow Alphabet/Google's Narrative to the point of USA not having a direct hand in manipulating how searches work and such per demand of USA based ISP's such as Starlink, Amazon and etc.

Okay, but that is not what eternal September means:

> The only exception to this was September of every year, when large numbers of first-year college students gained access to the internet and Usenet through their universities. These large groups of new users who had not yet learned online etiquette created a nuisance for the experienced users [...] lamenting what they saw as an increase in low quality posts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

(Phrasing it less politically correctly, it sounded like you thought the poor countries would be savages coming without our western etiquette norms to invade our Internet. Apparently you found an entirely different definition of ES somewhere that isn't about etiquette.)

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