Amazon launches Project Kuiper satellite internet prototypes
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/amazons-first-internet...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems#Test_satellites
- " The two satellites, likely weighing a few hundred kilograms, are the sole expected payload on the Atlas V rocket that is otherwise capable of deploying 8 metric tons into low-Earth orbit"
They also bought launches on Ariane 6 and New Glenn, neither of which exist yet either..
Saying this in light of:
- how many satellites are in orbit - this chart showing the change over recent years: https://astrodon.social/@Astromeg/111164811749991554
- this thread a while back speculating about starlink: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1563158073694310401.html
The time for that was centuries ago.
Try naked eye, changes are you'll find the north star if at all. Simple light pollution already makes this really hard.
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=571785082&q=starlink+a...
The satellites reflect a significant amount of sunlight. It's many, many times worse than existing satellites and lights from airplane traffic and more difficult to remove the tracks, plus whatever was hidden behind the reflecting satellite is lost.
Things are even worse for radio astronomy, because apparently the starlink satellites emit significant RF pollution: https://www.space.com/starlink-electronics-hum-disturbs-radi...
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2023/08/aa46374-...
The interference apparently varies satellite to satellite in both intensity and band, and exists in a very wide range of frequencies, including those protected for scientific observation by the ITU.
It's infuriating that one man has so significantly impacted nearly an entire field of science.
Radio looks pretty bleak, noise floor is about to get a lot higher.
Mitigation strategies might be needed, such as changing the scanning strategy. Masking out the point sources effectively reduces sensitivity, effectively losing money in the sense that they are either going to miss the target from initial funding, or need to ask for more funding.
In short, all astronomers are affected, the more expensive programs are likely affected most as they often are targeting higher sensitivity (hence it will be sensitive to even small amount of contamination) and/or large fraction of the sky (hence it is impossible to avoid scanning across any of them).
With prosumer telescopes, images are stacked from dozens, if not hundreds of relatively short exposures - it's trivial to discard the images which were photobombed by a satellite.
I feel sorry and I understand the feeling, but if we are to be a space faring civilization (and we really should), there will be lots of things flying in LEO all the time, and many of those much bigger - and brighter - than these. Companies can try to mitigate that somehow (flat surfaces, materials with less diffuse reflections etc...) but we'd better be prepared for that.
I can't wait to see IR observatories in the lunar poles, radiotelescopes on the far side, and visible-light ones anywhere else, where astronomers could live nearby and maintain their structures. And, with 1/6 of Earth's gravity, it'll be easier to build larger reflectors.
The US gov will use Starlink first, and as with all other private space company initiatives they buy services from will want a 2nd independent supplier to create 'competition' just like e.g. the Boeing starliner.
If Kuiper is 2nd place, they'll get basically the same govt contracts as SpaceX, & will be able to use those funds for basically whatever - including R&D of Blue Origin rockets I imagine.
https://www.satellitetoday.com/broadband/2021/05/13/google-c...
As I said I don't know the current state
I'm all for additional competition in that space. I am, however, concerned that Weyland-Yutani... I mean... Amazon is doing it.
I enjoyed the ULA coverage of the launch. Nice and relaxing.
Blue Origin starts competing with SpaceX in launch cadence/cost to make Kuiper competitive with Starlink...
or SpaceX/Musk spins up an AWS competitor with blackjack and solar panels?
He already has some experience buying datacenter chips for Tesla Dojo (or whatever it's called), not sure if it helps his case.
"It was a mistake!" they said. The price should have been $71,000.
I had to get 5G from T-Mobile, which was actually excellent.
- "It has booked 77 launches – deals that include options for more launches when needed – from that trio of companies to deploy the satellites fast enough to meet regulatory requirements. That massive purchase has come under scrutiny from an Amazon shareholder lawsuit, which alleges the company snubbed SpaceX for valuable satellite launch contracts because of Jeff Bezos' personal rivalry with Elon Musk."
Far from irrelevant celebrity gossip, that personal relationship between America's two top oligarchs is a powerful factor shaping America's space industry. Apparently some Amazon investors believe Kuiper would be, and should be, a SpaceX client, if not for Bezos' and Musk's personal rivalry. (I'd go a step further and posit both Kuiper and Blue Origin wouldn't even exist without that factor. Mine's not a fringe view. Kuiper particularly looks like a long shot, because it's directly fighting against SpaceX's biggest strength: large-number launch economics. Of all the ways to try to get a foothold in the new space industry, the Kuiper approach is one of the least logical).
This misses Amazon’s strength - AWS. Launches are a fraction, granted a non-trivial fraction, but still a fraction, of actually running a space-to-ground network.
Who’s going to have the best latency to your enterprise infra in AWS DCs? Offer you “free egress to satellite links”?
The US military will want multiple providers.
List goes on.
Other posters have already pointed out why Amazon would want this. Since they have the money to spare why not roll their own instead of being at the mercy of another company for what could be crucial infrastructure.
As for using SpaceX, the person who owns it operates a rival internet satellite network, it’s a conflict of interest.
If Amazon doesn’t support an alternate launch provider, SpaceX will have a monopoly and then they are in trouble.
Also, Bezos isn't the CEO at Amazon anymore and hasn't been since mid 2021, so blaming any Amazon decisions in the last two years on him is just misinformed.
More than 20 years of leadership leaves a mark that doesn't fade so fast as that. Most of Amazon's present management and leadership was hired and advanced during Bezos's tenure.
I suspect we will not be seeing Kuiper cargo on a SpaceX rocket ever, costs be damned, if it can be avoided...
For:
* SpaceX is very price competitive
* SpaceX may be able to launch sooner than other launch providers (Amazon may be able to "outbid" other customers for Falcon payload capacity)
* Every Falcon (or Starship) carrying KuiperSats is _not_ carrying Starlink satellites. SpaceX uses Starlink launches as a way to tune and optimize the Falcon launch platform. Launching KuiperSats potentially hurts the SpaceX launch vehicle and Starlink businesses in subtle ways.
Against:
* Social media trolling
* SpaceX does not have a reputation for working well with other companies https://spacenews.com/darpa-satellites-damaged-at-processing...
SpaceX will not remain constrained by launch cadence. Also, very Kuoper launch would make money for them funding further Starlink launches.
Space X is the one direct competitor. You never find your competitor.
This would be astonishing to Apple (which buys phone components from Samsung), Google (which pays Mozilla and Apple to be the default search engine on their browsers), or indeed Amazon itself (which sells Apple and Google products that directly compete with their own, buys software from Microsoft, licenses Microsoft software for some of their cloud services, etc.)
On the other hand, you’d be surprised to see Apple launch an entirely new product and then select, as a primary supplier, a side business owned by Tim Cook with zero track record of delivering the necessary service.
Jeff Bezos’ side business, Blue Origin, has been unsuccessfully trying to compete with SpaceX for years. This unsuccessful competition rose to the level of public feuding and lawsuits against NASA for selecting SpaceX over Blue Origin for their moon lander contract. Suddenly, Bezos’ main business, Amazon, launches Project Kuiper to directly compete with Starlink, and contracts with Blue Origin for launch services that Blue has zero track record of successfully delivering on, as well as ULA for launch services using Blue Origin rocket engines that Blue has zero track record of actually delivering. This is an obvious case of conflict-of-interest and self-dealing.
Amazon does not need to launch new products and services for the purposes of satisfying Jeff Bezos’ personal rivalries and grudges in the first place, let alone shifting Amazon’s cash flows into his struggling side business.
- Dependence on a mercurial billionaire’s company for a vital service - these satellites will eventually need to be replaced. The same billionaire also operates a rival service, it will be a conflict of interest not in your favor.
It seems people sometimes move focus and believe Twitter drama directly means SpaceX is some wildcard, while by literally every piece of evidence it isn't.
> it will be a conflict of interest not in your favor.
SpaceX has already made the policy clear that they will launch competitors sats. Should that change in the future, you still got the initial benefit now. And even if you don't want to relay on that 100%, you could still do 1/2 or 1/3 of the inital launches on SpaceX.
Literally way? This is just flat out false.
> SpaceX does not have a reputation for working well with other companies
That's totally ridiculous. SpaceX works with pretty much every sat provider in the world.
The link you sighted is literally a single small mishap when integrating lots of sats. How does this give SpaceX a bad reputation.
They have launched 1000s of sats, having one issue during integration is pretty normal thing to happen. Specially in a case like this where this isn't a very expensive sat. SpaceX has launched dozens of very expensive Darpa/DoD sats totally fine.
In comparison Northrop Grumman recently dropped a 500M sat. So Darpa/Dod have some experiance with things going wrong sometimes.
If anything:
Against: Giving money directly to your competitors.
It's that one. You may have your views about which is better, or by which criteria we should evaluate better, but that's just like your opinion, man.
Frankly speaking in rockets and sats it incredibly unlikely they are gone be cheaper. The rocket they had to buy alone already makes their whole thing not competitive with Starlink.