Swarm Technologies, Inc. (“Swarm” or “Transferor”) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX” or “Transferee”) (together, the “Applicants”) hereby request Federal Communications Commission (“Commission”) consent to transfer to SpaceX control of the earth and space station licenses held by Swarm, a U.S.-licensed satellite operator in the non-voice, non-geostationary mobile-satellite service (“NVNG MSS”) authorized to operate in the 137–138 MHz and 148–150.05 MHz bands (the “NVNG VHF Bands”). Swarm and SpaceX have executed a merger agreement pursuant to which, as described more fully in Section I.C below, Swarm will become a direct, wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX (the “Proposed Transaction”)....On July 16, 2021, SpaceX, Swarm, Swarm Holdco, Inc., a Delaware corporation and wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX (“Merger Sub”), and Dr. Sara Spangelo, solely in her capacity as Stockholder Representative, entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (“Merger Agreement”). The Merger Agreement provides for the merger of Merger Sub with and into Swarm (the “Merger”), with Swarm surviving the Merger as a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX upon consummation of the Proposed Transaction.
Will they add the spacebee receivers to future starlink satellites or will they keep separate constellations?
1/ In a recent podcast I predicted that SpaceX and other space operators would continue moving the industry from a horizontal to a vertical structure, with businesses moving up the stack into providing new services. Increases TAM and hopefully margins.
2/ "One of the ways to create enough demand for [SpaceX] launch is to be your own demand. And so there's Starlink.... Starlink is most likely to be a gusher of cash, not from selling bandwidth, but from selling services on top of that bandwidth." Tren
3/ In a space business, there are two ways to generate absolute dollar free cash flow. You can build a better horizontal service like rocket launches, or you can go vertical, preferably higher in the stack into higher margin application services with software style margins.
Rare acquisition. SpaceX usually just hires people from whatever company they're interested in and/or reverse engineers the technology they want, makes some improvements and declares they haven't violated any patents or IP.
If I had to guess, they would just add them to at least a subset of the Starlinks; and to all of them in later Starlink revisions. It's likely not going to add much to mass/cost of Starlinks and will add another large market for them. Having global IoT connectivity for a small incremental cost will be a good revenue stream in the future. Agriculture and oil/gas pipelines would be a big market where you need cheap, low bandwidth sensors.I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add other sensors/transmitters to the constellation eventually (cameras, IR imaging and SAR come to mind.)
Quote from: lonestriker on 08/08/2021 05:26 amIf I had to guess, they would just add them to at least a subset of the Starlinks; and to all of them in later Starlink revisions. It's likely not going to add much to mass/cost of Starlinks and will add another large market for them. Having global IoT connectivity for a small incremental cost will be a good revenue stream in the future. Agriculture and oil/gas pipelines would be a big market where you need cheap, low bandwidth sensors.I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add other sensors/transmitters to the constellation eventually (cameras, IR imaging and SAR come to mind.)I agree that Starlink will carry more sensors and widgets to expand the revenue stream, the entire constellation will be a platform where you can just add on various services, anything that can be done via a separate LEO constellation can be integrated into Starlink. This should start happening with v2 which could have a lot more mass budget to play with given it'll launch on Starship.But I have always assumed SpaceX will develop these additional hardware in house. Buying some other company is not their MO, although it would certainly speed things up if they're in a hurry (to get Starlink v2.0 ready to launch on Starship?). If that's the case, we may see more acquisitions in the near future.
Quote from: FlattestEarth on 08/08/2021 12:50 amWill they add the spacebee receivers to future starlink satellites or will they keep separate constellations?If I had to guess, they would just add them to at least a subset of the Starlinks; and to all of them in later Starlink revisions. It's likely not going to add much to mass/cost of Starlinks and will add another large market for them. Having global IoT connectivity for a small incremental cost will be a good revenue stream in the future. Agriculture and oil/gas pipelines would be a big market where you need cheap, low bandwidth sensors.I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add other sensors/transmitters to the constellation eventually (cameras, IR imaging and SAR come to mind.)
I was thinking about it from the other end: how could SpaceX increase the utility of the VHF service if the mass and power constraints were lifted almost entirely? This assumes that SpaceX actually wants the already-approved license.
Quote from: RedLineTrain on 08/09/2021 04:50 pmI was thinking about it from the other end: how could SpaceX increase the utility of the VHF service if the mass and power constraints were lifted almost entirely? This assumes that SpaceX actually wants the already-approved license.I don't think it's likely that increasing the mass and power would really increase the utility at all. It's a tiny slice of frequencies.
It means that SpaceX is not after Swarm brains. (the arrangements would be done otherwise).
