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Comment by ajwin | Hacker News Reader

I still do not understand how something so significantly more expensive and less ambitious will compete with Starlink or even be viable? Will they make their $$ back ever?

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They don't really have to compete against SpaceX, just against ViaSat, HughesNet and others.

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.

SpaceX and Starlink are amazing but I wonder how much Kuiper’s access to the huge muscle that is AWS will bolster its chances of being #1? SpaceX definitely has the early bird advantage but Amazon knows products and the direct access to AWS could position Project Kuiper to dominate Starlink.

I doubt it will make much difference, especially since iirc starlink already has direct conections to google's datacenters. Even if they can cut a few ms that is unlikely to overcome the advantages of Starlink over Kuiper

I did not know Starlink is using Google! Google definitely knows datacenters. Thanks for sharing.

I don't know how much collaboration is actually involved, I think it's basically just a peering agreement

https://www.satellitetoday.com/broadband/2021/05/13/google-c...

It was more than peering. I don't know what it's like now, but Google ran the entire starlink terrestrial network. Including providing CGNAT. Starlink addresses showed up as Google Fi.

As I said I don't know the current state

Plus Amazon certainly has dozens of ideas of how to generate revenue from this over-and-above subscription/bandwidth fees.

Interesting comment. Can you expand on it?

I have a feeling the long term bet here is to tie it in with AWS in a significant way. End user internet helps pay off the expensive R&D, but enterprise has to be where the money is.

The actual goal is probably just to transfer money directly from Amazon to Blue Origin. Also indirectly by way of ULA.

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