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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: 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]