
Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says - jason_zig
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-06/amazon-s-satellite-project-will-cost-billions-bezos-says
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zaroth
I assume there are a finite number of these swarms that we can deploy in LEO,
both in economic terms as well as dedicating space and spectrum?

I’ve heard of three companies now that want to achieve this. I’m not sure if
there’s anything particularly distinctive about one versus the other, other
than SpaceX is the only one with the proven launch capacity to bring that much
mass to orbit.

I have a lot less faith in Bezos pulling this off, but mostly it seems a waste
to start an ISP just to earn _Amazon_ shareholders a larger dividend.

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plotteddancer16
Amazon shareholders do not earn a dividend. SpaceX is not public, but rather
would enrich a much smaller set of investors (and particularly Musk). What’s
your point?

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mft_
Aren't SpaceX creating Starlink to generate funds to support other projects;
in particular, their plans to create the rockets and infrastructure to
ultimately colonise Mars?

i.e. not (primarily) to _" enrich a much smaller set of investors (and
particularly Musk)"_?

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slfnflctd
Yeah, that was silly and disingenuous. We're talking about a guy who could
have retired in lavish luxury 15+ years ago if 'riches' were all he wanted. He
is Mars or bust and looks like he's put together a company with the chops to
pull it off.

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mrnobody_67
Gotta give it to them, Amazon is the only big tech company with a vision - the
rest are just sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and no good
ideas against which to deploy all those funds.

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CamelCaseName
Google attempted something similar with loon[0] and FB with internet.org[1]
(IIRC, FB also had a few other initiatives)

[0] [https://loon.com/](https://loon.com/)

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/what-happened-to-facebooks-
grand...](https://www.wired.com/story/what-happened-to-facebooks-grand-plan-
to-wire-the-world/)

And with regards to Amazon being the only big tech company with a vision -- I
hear Apple just redesigned the monitor stand. Visionary.

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ehsankia
It's detailed more in your second link, but Facebook was planning to launch
their first batch back in 2016, which ended up blowing up due to the failed
SpaceX launch. So if it wasn't for that mishap, they may have had something
operational by now.

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onedognight
This is a business that Apple should get into as well. They have the capital
and Phones+internet would have great vertical synergy.

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martythemaniak
What they don't have is the rockets. SpaceX has cheap reusable Falcon 9s. Blue
Origin is aiming to have a cheap reusable New Glenn in 2021. Apple would have
to go with much more expensive traditional launchers.

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waiseristy
Why would Apple not be able to buy Falcon 9 launches? SpaceX is in the
business of selling rocket launches.

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kjksf
They could but I'm guessing SpaceX margins on rocket launches are ~50% (to
make it economical in the face of risk of blowing up billion-dollar payloads).

Which means that if Apple pays $60 million for a single launch, it costs
SpaceX $30 million to do it.

Or to put it differently: if Apple was competing with SpaceX, then every Apple
launch would sponsor one SpaceX launch.

With those economics, it would be hard for Apple (or anyone else) to compete
with SpaceX in this business. All else being equal, their cost to create the
satellite network would be substantially bigger which means they would have to
charge more or have much lower margins and profits than SpaceX.

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sytelus
I thought sats in LEO have fundamental issue that they can’t stay up too long.
In rather short time, their fuel would run out and they will burn off in
atmosphere.

Does this mean you have to keep replishining them at regular intervals like
less than a year or two?

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martythemaniak
This used to be a huge issue when satellites had to be very big and expensive
to launch. But today satellites can be much smaller (several hundred kg) and
are much cheaper to launch, making this approach viable.

~~~
savrajsingh
It’s a “feature” — things self dispose and you don’t end up with lots of junk
in orbit

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ricardobeat
Do we have the capability to manage the traffic with these 3k Amazon
satellites + Starlink's 12k + OneWeb's 650 + all the stuff that's already up
there?

Starlink is the only one that mentions collision avoidance during operations.

~~~
Rebelgecko
OneWeb says plenty about collision avoidance if you look at their FCC filings
and press statements. Amazon hasn't really gone into detail for what they're
doing, but the FCC won't clear them unless they explain how they'll comply
with deorbiting guidelines (and it looks like the FCC expects operators of
these megaconstellations to do much more than the bare minimum).

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nsx147
It would be great if Amazon Prime included internet access. One time fee for
the dish, works with all their in-home stuff.

Didn't FB try do this and scrapped the project?

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notyourwork
As I recall Facebook tried to commandeer the “internet” for Indian citizens by
provided a subset of the real internet.

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onlyrealcuzzo
So... Was the subset just all of Facebook and nothing else?

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nyolfen
a few dozen websites:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Available_website...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Available_websites)

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uncoder0
So we'll be at ~20,000 satellites in orbit with this and Starlink. That's four
times as many as are currently in orbit.

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thrower123
Well, if we want to generate the efficiencies of scale that would ever allow
us to get off this rock, we've got to start with something. There is a lot of
money kicking around not doing a whole lot right now, and building rockets is
more likely to get us going in the right direction than acqu-hiring another
Uber for Cats whizzbang startup for grossly more than it is worth.

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mNovak
Would have liked a more substantive article on the subject...

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bamboozled
Seriously, let’s spend billions in renewable investment and government
lobbying to fix the climate crisis. Wow, this is getting silly. Broadband
internet is just not a fundamental human need, a habitable planet is.

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vatueil
It doesn't do any good to pick an unrelated endeavor and say the resources
would be better spent on a worthier cause instead. Private spending on space,
or public funding of arts and culture, or humanitarian aid, etc. is not
blocking us from tackling global warming.

If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for
measures that would help, such as a carbon price and dividend, instead of
attacking other causes and making unnecessary enemies.

~~~
mrpopo
> If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for
> measures that would help, such as putting a carbon price and dividend,
> instead of attacking other causes and making unnecessary enemies.

Amazon is allegedly the biggest company in the world, and is still not
publishing open carbon emissions data[1]. Is Amazon here an "unnecessary"
enemy?

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-
reluctan...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reluctant-to-
share-carbon-emissions-data/)

~~~
vatueil
That has nothing to do with plans for satellites. Especially not space or
broadband in general, as the original comment decried.

Feel free to criticize other matters, but don't lump in separate projects.

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falcon2_0
If you think this is anything other than post-capitalist market capture
disguised as philanthropy, I have some bad news for you.

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staticautomatic
What's "post-" about it?

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falcon2_0
Capitalism is free markets, but that quickly devolves into regulatory capture
and such, as per Adam Smith, Karl Marx, et. al.

~~~
staticautomatic
If only!

