In its bid to catch up with Starlink, the company plans to build as many as four satellites a day:
Amazon has applied to the FCC to increase its constellation to 7,774 satellites, which would allow it to cover regions further north and south, including Alaska, as Starlink does.
There are riches to be had: SpaceX currently charges $110 a month to access Starlink, with an up-front cost of $599 for an antenna to connect to the satellites. According to a letter to shareholders last year, Amazon is spending "over $10 billion" to develop Kuiper, with more than 1,000 employees working on the project. Andy Jassy, Amazon's current CEO, has said that Kuiper has a chance of becoming a "fourth pillar" for the company, alongside its retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and its widely used cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services
"Amazon's business model relies on people having internet connectivity," says Shagun Sachdeva, an industry expert at the space investment firm Kosmic Apple in France. "It makes a lot of sense for them to have this constellation to provide connectivity."
Amazon is not yet disclosing the pricing of its service but has previously said a goal is to "bridge the digital divide" by bringing fast and affordable broadband to "underserved communities," an ambition Starlink has also professed. But whether costs will ever get low enough for that to be achievable remains to be seen. "Costs will come down, but to what extent is really the question," says Sachdeva. On March 14, the company revealed it was producing its own antennas at a cost of $400 each, although a retail cost has not yet been revealed.
Amazon has said it can offer speeds of up to one gigabit per second, and bandwidth of one terabit per satellite. Those are similar to Starlink's numbers, and the two services seem fairly similar overall. The key difference is that Starlink is operational, and has been for years, whereas Amazon does not plan to start offering Kuiper as a service until the latter half of 2024, giving SpaceX a considerable head start to attract users and secure contracts.
There remain concerns, too, about space junk and the impact on ground-based astronomy. Before 2019 there were only about 3,000 active satellites in space. SpaceX and Amazon by themselves could increase that number to 20,000 by the end of this decade. Tracking large numbers of moving objects in orbit—and making sure they don't collide with one another—is a headache.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NateMich on Monday March 27, @04:07PM (6 children)
SpaceX has their own rockets which launch like 75% of everything on the entire earth, and Amazon has nothing but promises of something similar from Blue Origin.
I'm sure they pose a huge threat.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 27, @04:29PM
Usually you see this kind of corporate posturing when one company provided an offer at the wrong price, so "we're going to do this ourselves" until the price is fixed or the project is abandoned.
What possible use would Amazon have for satellite internet? My best most imaginative guess is something like the Amazon "Sidewalk" IoT peer to peer network was going to be added to all spacex terminals for a fee, but the agreement was a ridiculous price, so amazon was like "f you guys and your high price, we'll launch our own satellites" and maybe spacex will cave, or maybe the whole business idea will get tossed out.
The other imaginary idea, which I find somewhat compelling, is some kind of logistical battle over shipping perhaps 10x the number of starlink terminals. The idea of amazon Prime handling all the logistics is appealing. Amazon's always had a service arm that seems to be going nowhere, perhaps installing a couple million starlinks would be somewhere. Anyway my theory based on this paragraph is Amazon was provided with a proposed contract, "f you guys and your rules and prices, we're better off launching our own satellites than signing your deal" and we'll see what happens.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Monday March 27, @05:27PM (2 children)
Has Blue Origin even made it to orbit yet? I lost track. To the best of my knowledge, Blue Origin has made it to space, but has never established an actual orbit. If it hasn't even orbited a spacecraft, then Amazon will be dependent on SpaceX's good graces (and compatible scheduling) to get their satellites into space.
At best, Amazon is several years behind Starlink, and will not be even a potentially viable competitor in the foreseeable future. There is no "head to head" situation here. There is an "ass to head" situation, though, and Amazon will be smelling that stink for a long, long time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 27, @05:52PM (1 child)
Has Blue Origin made it to orbit in their spacecraft? No. That said, they have a longstanding partnership with ULA, and ULA has been to orbit a bunch of times. The $AMOUNT question is "Will they pay ULA or SpaceX to fly their kit?" That's an open question.
Blue Origin made a set of BE-4 engines and delivered them to ULA last fall. They are supposed to test fly on a ULA Vulcan, and I think it's set for May of this year. Take that with a grain of salt as both the rocket and engine are new, and I haven't been following the development closely.
(Score: 3, Informative) by datapharmer on Tuesday March 28, @01:11PM
Given the rocket engine nozzles were determined to be the cause of the new shepherd NS-23 anomaly I suspect there will be a delay in use of those engines for anything critical. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/blue-origin-provides-a-detailed-analysis-of-its-launch-failure/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by takyon on Monday March 27, @06:18PM (1 child)
I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX agreed to launch hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites for Amazon. It would be a blow to Blue Origin, but money's money. They might bet that they can defeat Starlink in the future even after pouring some money into SpaceX.
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-spacex-rival-project-kuiper-satellite-launches-1849715511 [gizmodo.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @10:01AM
"Amazon's not done
until
Ebay won't run!"?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 27, @05:07PM
More like bridging the corporate surveillance gap at the ISP level, so Amazon can truly track who visits what website continuously.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 27, @07:00PM (7 children)
Building up to four satellites per day, or any number per day won't get your internet service deployed until you can get even one gram of mass into orbit.
I know this is shocking, but buying rides on other rockets that actually can get to orbit is not as cheap as launching your satellites on your own rockets. Assuming you actually build satellites. Assuming you actually build rockets.
Any specs or prices, no matter how good, on a service we can't get, doesn't really compete with a service that we can get today. It's like a discount furniture store with low prices and guaranteed delivery within 24 months!
Congratulations on figuring out the problem that caused the explosion on your New Shepard rocket last September. It's good that you can get back to the business of selling brief suborbital joyrides to the super rich.
Good luck with that Tortoise and the Hare
tragedystrategy!How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27, @08:01PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 27, @09:21PM
The 3D computer graphics of Blue Origin's eventual New Shepard look amazing.
Pixels the eye popping appeal to distract you from the details written on paper so that you don't read too closely.
SpaceX doesn't need 3D graphics. They instead impress us with actual video, achievements. SpaceX makes things experts said was impossible look easy, routine and cheap.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 27, @10:35PM (4 children)
I believe SpaceX would happily take Bezos' dollars to launch his satellites. They already launch satellites for other competing services. Their business moat isn't "No-one else can get hardware to orbit.", it's "No-one else can get hardware to orbit cheaper than we can do it." Agreeing to launch kit for Amazon is a double-whammy that shuts down anti-trust arguments and gives them more launch opportunities for R&D.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 28, @12:20AM (3 children)
I suspect that Musk might charge Amazon a bit more per gram/ounce/metricbuttload than he will charge a high school class to orbit a space experiment. I mean, why make it easy for your potential competition to get a leg up? Make Amazon pay the rates that Big Government pays, plus a couple percent!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 28, @07:36PM (2 children)
Musk might get charged with anticompetitive behavior if he discriminates against Blue Origin. Of course, he certainly could charge top dollar. My advice would be not to exceed that. SpaceX could also make sure that Blue Origin follows every last dot and tiddle of the prayload integration specifications.
That leads me to the question: Is SpaceX a monopolist?
My take on that would be that their competitors' inability to match SpaceX is not the fault of SpaceX. Especially since Blue Origin started out earlier than SpaceX, with lots of bluff and bluster.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 28, @08:45PM (1 child)
There's a lot of leeway in pricing, without getting into monopoly discussions. Amazon is known to offer higher prices to some people, than to others. It could be interesting, if we prepared a list of items, then each of us went to Amazon to purchase the items. The higher prices may or may not be across the board - perhaps with some things, I would get the lower price, and with other things, you would get a lower price. The algorithms aren't open source, and publicly published.
If Musk were pricing launches 10, 15, or even 20% higher for this potential competitor, I don't think any regulator would really take notice. If Musk simply refused his services to Amazon, there might be a problem. Likewise, if he charged hundreds of times more for Amazon than he charges anyone else, there would be a problem.
Months ago, I would have said Musk was smart enough to avoid traps like that - but then he ran off at the mouth about buying Twitter, and was forced to follow through.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29, @02:00PM
SpaceX could very plausibly claim that Blue Origin must pay a premium for launches since it needs so many launches and SpaceX seems to have a very full manifest and customers competing for SpaceX launch capacity. Including BO using capacity that SpaceX might otherwise use for it's own competing satellite constellation.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday March 28, @04:17AM (2 children)
How does it cost Amazon $400 each for antennae? DirecTV essentially gives theirs away: if you cancel their service, they don't even bother picking up the dish.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @09:42AM (1 child)
That's a static dish. These things have to actively track multiple low orbit satellites.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28, @05:23PM