Eutelsat OneWeb: Constellation - General Thread

[playadelmars]

The race is getting heated, probably not all the capital they need but certainly a large percentage of it!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-18/oneweb-raises-fresh-1-25-billion-for-internet-system-from-space

[RedLineTrain]

Additionally, there is the oddity that the main company is registered as a domestic LLC in Massachusetts, but a branch is registered as a foreign LCC in Florida. Is this to facilitate foreign investment and to provide an ITAR barrier?

Companies are registered in states, usually by the Secretary of State.  A "foreign" LLC means that the company's "domestic" registration is in another state.  It doesn't mean that the company's domestic registration is in another country.

This has nothing to do with ITAR.

[AnalogMan]

The race is getting heated, probably not all the capital they need but certainly a large percentage of it!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-18/oneweb-raises-fresh-1-25-billion-for-internet-system-from-space

OneWeb press release:
https://www.oneweb.world/newsroom/oneweb-secures-1-25-billion-in-new-funding-after-successful-launch

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/OneWeb/status/1113899110854217736

Another big milestone for our first six satellites 🛰️- we have finished the testing of the primary and the redundant systems. All are performing well and are ready for Orbit Raising. Our team will now raise them now up to 1,200 km above Earth! Up, Up, and Away!

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/OneWebSatellit1/status/1124295096034385922

First F6 satellite has arrived to the final orbit ! Congrats Airbus OneWeb Satellites, Congrats OneWeb ! Great achievement #ENDOFSL12EOR 😃

[Craftyatom]

Someone beat me to it in the VO thread, but it deserves a mention here as well.  Doesn't sound good for Oneweb - but then, we don't know the whole story.  I'm tempted to say this and that about their money situation, but we'll just have to wait and see.  Via SpaceNews:

Virgin Orbit takes OneWeb to court over canceled launch contract

WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit is suing OneWeb for refusing to pay a termination fee for canceling all but four of the 39 launches it ordered from Virgin Orbit in 2015 to fill gaps in its planned constellation of at least 648 broadband satellites.

According to a complaint Virgin Orbit filed June 4 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, OneWeb canceled 35 of its planned 39 launches last June, triggering a $70 million termination fee. Virgin Orbit says OneWeb still owes $46.3 million. The lawsuit was first reported by Law360.com.

Link to Article

[TrevorMonty]

Now LauncherOne (500kg)will need to compete directly against RL Electron(225kg) and Firefly Alpha(1000kg) in near term, to be followed by Relativity Terran1 (1,250). Uptil now Virgin had Oneweb contract to support them for a couple years without needing other customers.

Electron might be slightly more expennsive per Kg, but it does have proven flight history and Curie kick stage capable of precision orbit insert of individual payloads.

Alpha and Terran1 will be cheaper per kg.

[Robotbeat]

It was always kind of questionable to use expendable smallsat launchers at incredibly high cost per kg to launch megaconstellation satellites. Proper spare management is WAY cheaper. A one-off emergency launch might make sense, but...  Actually planning ahead for a whole bunch of incredibly expensive one-offs makes very little sense and is obviously hard to justify financially.

Expendables GENERALLY for megaconstellations are hard to make close.

[Robotbeat]

Someone beat me to it in the VO thread, but it deserves a mention here as well.  Doesn't sound good for Oneweb - but then, we don't know the whole story.  I'm tempted to say this and that about their money situation, but we'll just have to wait and see.  Via SpaceNews:

Virgin Orbit takes OneWeb to court over canceled launch contract

WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit is suing OneWeb for refusing to pay a termination fee for canceling all but four of the 39 launches it ordered from Virgin Orbit in 2015 to fill gaps in its planned constellation of at least 648 broadband satellites.

According to a complaint Virgin Orbit filed June 4 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, OneWeb canceled 35 of its planned 39 launches last June, triggering a $70 million termination fee. Virgin Orbit says OneWeb still owes $46.3 million. The lawsuit was first reported by Law360.com.

Link to Article

It’s a good decision by OneWeb. While it does mean they probably aren’t swimming in cash, having fiscal discipline and addressing previous poor decisions is good long term.

Even WITH the cancellation fee, launching the same number of birds on one or two Soyuz is literally less than half the price. They seem to have kept a few LauncherOne launches in case of emergency replenishment.

It’s sort of kind of good for OneWeb but really not good for VirginOrbit.

[gongora]

PBdeS summed it up pretty well    (I haven't actually read the article, don't have a subscription)

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1136914429076017152

.@Virgin_Orbit lawsuit demanding $46.3M in termination fees from @OneWeb describes a launch contract that OneWeb never should have signed -- but did. @Arianespace @richardbranson.

[TrevorMonty]

PBdeS summed it up pretty well    (I haven't actually read the article, don't have a subscription)

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1136914429076017152

.@Virgin_Orbit lawsuit demanding $46.3M in termination fees from @OneWeb describes a launch contract that OneWeb never should have signed -- but did. @Arianespace @richardbranson.

OneWeb signed it because they wanted Virgin investment money. Virgin is a shareholder of OneWeb.

[meekGee]

PBdeS summed it up pretty well    (I haven't actually read the article, don't have a subscription)

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1136914429076017152

.@Virgin_Orbit lawsuit demanding $46.3M in termination fees from @OneWeb describes a launch contract that OneWeb never should have signed -- but did. @Arianespace @richardbranson.

OneWeb signed it because they wanted Virgin investment money. Virgin is a shareholder of OneWeb.

Exactly.

IMO, the only way for VG to get customers is for Branson to talk money into the customers.  Now he's getting back the public message that OW would rather pay cancellation fees than fly with VG. 

Yuck.

[ZachF]

Now LauncherOne (500kg)will need to compete directly against RL Electron(225kg) and Firefly Alpha(1000kg) in near term, to be followed by Relativity Terran1 (1,250). Uptil now Virgin had Oneweb contract to support them for a couple years without needing other customers.

Electron might be slightly more expennsive per Kg, but it does have proven flight history and Curie kick stage capable of precision orbit insert of individual payloads.

Alpha and Terran1 will be cheaper per kg.

All of them may have to compete against SSO Starlink bus rideshares if SpaceX so chooses.

SpaceX could probably sell a launch + bus for $3 million, make a pretty hefty profit, while providing a very good deal for consumers that would be very hard to beat.

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/OneWeb/status/1139132920659087360

We’re proud to announce the deepening of our commitment to the UK. We are creating more than 150 new jobs through the expansion of our Global Operations Center in White City, London 🇬🇧 #Investment #InvestInGREAT #LTW. Read more: https://bit.ly/2WExohc

[Semmel]

Out of curiosity, who actually owns OneWeb? I tried to find info on that on Wikipedia but it was not clear to me who is behind the company.

[gongora]

Out of curiosity, who actually owns OneWeb? I tried to find info on that on Wikipedia but it was not clear to me who is behind the company.

In mid-2018 Qualcomm had 16%, Softbank 37%, and 1110 Ventures (Greg Wyler) had 12%.

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/OneWeb/status/1146168460059316224

Mission Update: Corks popped from UK to VA last week as we hit an exciting milestone. All our satellites reached final mission orbit of 1,200 km & are communicating with our ground systems. Learn more about our satellites at: http://bit.ly/2ROPw78  🛰️  #ConnectivityEverywhere

[TrevorMonty]

Out of curiosity, who actually owns OneWeb? I tried to find info on that on Wikipedia but it was not clear to me who is behind the company.

In mid-2018 Qualcomm had 16%, Softbank 37%, and 1110 Ventures (Greg Wyler) had 12%.

Thats 65% who owns remaining 35%?

Thought Airbus and Virgin were share holders.

[gongora]

The FCC documents required them to list those holding at least 10%, so other stakes should be smaller.  They've also raised a lot more money since then so the percentages are probably different now.

[niwax]

Out of curiosity, who actually owns OneWeb? I tried to find info on that on Wikipedia but it was not clear to me who is behind the company.

In mid-2018 Qualcomm had 16%, Softbank 37%, and 1110 Ventures (Greg Wyler) had 12%.

Thats 65% who owns remaining 35%?

Thought Airbus and Virgin were share holders.

Their Series A funding was by Qualcomm, Virgin, Coca Cola, Intelsat, Airbus, Bharti, Hughes and Totalplay. Their recent $1.3B offering was bought by Softbank, Qualcomm, Grupo Salinas and the government of Rwanda.

What's interesting about this is that all the funding comes from some sort of stakeholders - early on Greg Wyler trying to secure as big a stake as possible, but later on also their suppliers. I don't know if that's a good thing, as we've seen they've had issues with the bad launch contracts they've signed with Virgin in exchange for the investment. They are also partially owned by every one of their major suppliers, and notably no general fund that's mainly interested in growing its investment (other than Softbank).

It makes for an impressive list of companies involved until you realize that each of them has some kind of other interest that they've tied their investment to. I suspect a shareholder meeting with Airbus, Virgin and Qualcomm at the table goes quite differently than at SpaceX, where the satellite project is being funded by people largely interested in them actually finding the most efficient solution.