Amazon Kuiper places largest commercial launch order with ULA, Arianespace, Blue

[M.E.T.]

Why don't people buy iPhones?

"People" are not publicly-held corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. The Amazon board of directors needs to have a defensible economic reason to have not chosen SpaceX, or risk a shareholder lawsuit. "Don't fund your competition" may be defensible.

this is more of the same flawed and absurd premise that ONLY SpaceX "makes sense" because it is or appears to be cheapest...this was, in a sense the same logic behind dependency on Russia for the RD-180 --why would we want to try to just "redo" what they have successfully done?" goes the saw --well, becasuse there are risk factors other than just cost factors --as we have become painfully aware.  As an Amazon shareholder (and frankly, who isn't in some form or other), I recognize that they are INVESTING in the development of something that will have significant upfront costs -- and this is far from new for any Tech company, not just the Tech Titans.  The long term perspective of investing demands that they focus on the emerging industry that involves competition, and need to ensure that enabling environment is assured. This course of action addesses that. Moreover, I may want to avoid the risk factors of a single launch provider who likewise is or will be a direct competitor, and one that is run by someone who often acts out like a spoiled child.  My investment is not assured, but is MOST LIKELY managed better by the course of action Amazon is taking here. this is far from just a grudge -although that is undoubtedly one factor, but a relevant one.  Key to investing: think like an owner --because you are.

So in this scenario an added cost for any non-SpaceX entrant to the LEO internet market is to artificially subsidise the otherwise non-competitive launch providers in order to stave off single-provider dominance?

Seems like a rather hefty burden for all would-be entrants to carry. Or if we apply a form of game theory, for SOME entrants to carry, as any that choose not to engage in this subsidization can just go to SpaceX for cheap launches, leaving the subsidizers to carry the burden alone.

[Steve G]

Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is a direct competitor to Starlink’s. They will not use SpaceX even if they were half the cost. They will not let SpaceX anywhere near their birds that have proprietary technology they want to keep far away from their rivals, even if safeguards were put in place such as classified military satellites.

Furthermore, it’s in everyone’s interest to have multiple LV suppliers. No one wants to see SpaceX have a monopoly on the launch market. Kuiper using SpaceX will never happen, and any debate concerning this is folly.

[ulm_atms]

Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is a direct competitor to Starlink’s. They will not use SpaceX even if they were half the cost. They will not let SpaceX anywhere near their birds that have proprietary technology they want to keep far away from their rivals, even if safeguards were put in place such as classified military satellites.

Furthermore, it’s in everyone’s interest to have multiple LV suppliers. No one wants to see SpaceX have a monopoly on the launch market. Kuiper using SpaceX will never happen, and any debate concerning this is folly.

While I 100% agree with you, the bolded part could, one day, easily not be true.  People were saying the exact same thing with OneWeb and SpaceX....where are we now?

[DanClemmensen]

Why don't people buy iPhones?

"People" are not publicly-held corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. The Amazon board of directors needs to have a defensible economic reason to have not chosen SpaceX, or risk a shareholder lawsuit. "Don't fund your competition" may be defensible.

this is more of the same flawed and absurd premise that ONLY SpaceX "makes sense" because it is or appears to be cheapest...

What part of my post do you believe to be "flawed and absurd"? My post is not part of a premise. It stands alone.

[RedLineTrain]

Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is a direct competitor to Starlink’s. They will not use SpaceX even if they were half the cost. They will not let SpaceX anywhere near their birds that have proprietary technology they want to keep far away from their rivals, even if safeguards were put in place such as classified military satellites.

Furthermore, it’s in everyone’s interest to have multiple LV suppliers. No one wants to see SpaceX have a monopoly on the launch market. Kuiper using SpaceX will never happen, and any debate concerning this is folly.

Important notes...
(1) Kuiper has chosen to forgo the high inclination market and therefore certain customers who need global coverage.  It will only compete from 56 degrees North to 56 degrees South.
(2) Amazon has data center needs and it seems likely that it will not serve Azure's or Google's data center needs.  So Amazon has a sizeable captive market -- i.e., not touched by Starlink.

Amazon could probably justify the constellation based solely on its data center needs, in which case they should wish to economize and get to market as quickly as possible.

[Robotbeat]

I don’t think Amazon’s data centers can be affordably serviced by Kuiper. The price Amazon itself pays for bandwidth between data centers is one or two orders of magnitude less than residential folk pay on average.

MAYBE at Starlink scale with Starship, you could actually start being competitive, but probably not otherwise. At least not with the architecture Kuiper is using.

However, service direct to users (residential or business, etc) is another story.

[RedLineTrain]

This is a new type of service not offered to data centers by other means, such as fiber.  It is high value and as an added layer of resiliency probably can support a 10x or more price than what Amazon currently is paying for bandwidth.

For context, in 2021, AWS did $61 billion in business (at a very high profit margin).  Mid-decade, it could be multiples of that.  It seems worth improving the resiliency of the offering, if possible.

[Tev]

AWS already has expensive bandwidth compared to competitors, I doubt you would find many buyers for 10x price.

Network resilience is also only a minor part of cloud reliability.

[TrevorMonty]

Why don't people buy iPhones?

"People" are not publicly-held corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. The Amazon board of directors needs to have a defensible economic reason to have not chosen SpaceX, or risk a shareholder lawsuit. "Don't fund your competition" may be defensible.

this is more of the same flawed and absurd premise that ONLY SpaceX "makes sense" because it is or appears to be cheapest...

What part of my post do you believe to be "flawed and absurd"? My post is not part of a premise. It stands alone.

I don’t think Amazon’s data centers can be affordably serviced by Kuiper. The price Amazon itself pays for bandwidth between data centers is one or two orders of magnitude less than residential folk pay on average.

MAYBE at Starlink scale with Starship, you could actually start being competitive, but probably not otherwise. At least not with the architecture Kuiper is using.

However, service direct to users (residential or business, etc) is another story.

Kuiper provides very high data security unlike terrestrial internet. Its very hard ease drop on these satellite transmissions especially both way traffic.

There are lot AWS customers who are willing to pay for extra data security.



Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

[Asteroza]

Why don't people buy iPhones?

"People" are not publicly-held corporations with a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. The Amazon board of directors needs to have a defensible economic reason to have not chosen SpaceX, or risk a shareholder lawsuit. "Don't fund your competition" may be defensible.

this is more of the same flawed and absurd premise that ONLY SpaceX "makes sense" because it is or appears to be cheapest...

What part of my post do you believe to be "flawed and absurd"? My post is not part of a premise. It stands alone.

I don’t think Amazon’s data centers can be affordably serviced by Kuiper. The price Amazon itself pays for bandwidth between data centers is one or two orders of magnitude less than residential folk pay on average.

MAYBE at Starlink scale with Starship, you could actually start being competitive, but probably not otherwise. At least not with the architecture Kuiper is using.

However, service direct to users (residential or business, etc) is another story.

Kuiper provides very high data security unlike terrestrial internet. Its very hard ease drop on these satellite transmissions especially both way traffic.

There are lot AWS customers who are willing to pay for extra data security.



Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

Gonna have to remark on the data security aspect. It's not like the old days of terrestrial unencrypted links getting tapped. Google learned their lesson regarding the NSA tapping their unencrypted links between US datacenters, and every other major multi-datacenter organization now manages their own encrypted VPN links between datacenters, or uses a cloud providers encrypted VPN link. That's enough for tapping protection via traffic data encryption, maybe not enough for traffic/metadata analysis protection. It also means nothing in the face of a legal government tapping like a national security letter, if a tapping device gets dropped into a network right before the VPN gateway. Some of the newer cloud architectures do traffic encryption at all levels, including every server themselves (see mesh overlay types like wireguard/tailscale).

There are niches in low latency though, such as synchronization activities (between databases for instance), or out-of-band management plane networks, that could garner a premium network service.

[Star One]

Amazon had reasons for making the decision they did. If it turns out in a few years that that it was wrong and they've blown it financially AND jerked around several large launch companies while doing so, then SpaceX will just shrug and continue what they've doing, which is selling launches and Starlink.

I really like what SpaceX is doing. I also will bet that many who are accused in a knee-jerk fashion of being SpaceX "amazing people" would, in fact, be happy to see more competition with them. But being competitive with SpaceX means radically reducing costs through reusability, and so far, other operators of medium-to-large rockets are struggling to get (several years from now), where SpaceX has already been for some time.

A lot of the unhappiness with B.O. is because of disappointment with their performance.
New Glenn will be a nice tool in the toolbox if Blue can get it going, but they can't continue plodding along at their present rate.

Vulcan isn't going to have a great future if ULA can't get at least SOME reuse out of it. Blue's secretive delays on the BE-4 aren't helping.

Ariane 6 is already obsolete before it's even flown and a reusable replacement is years away.

Some of you who've spent your careers in the legacy companies and bureaucracies don't like the enthusiasm that SpaceX attracts. That's understandable, but do something better instead of disparaging people who like SpaceX   

And you clearly missing what Ariane means to ESA and Europe, as you are not understanding that it is as much about having independent access to space without having to rely on a US company.

[Star One]

Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is a direct competitor to Starlink’s. They will not use SpaceX even if they were half the cost. They will not let SpaceX anywhere near their birds that have proprietary technology they want to keep far away from their rivals, even if safeguards were put in place such as classified military satellites.

Furthermore, it’s in everyone’s interest to have multiple LV suppliers. No one wants to see SpaceX have a monopoly on the launch market. Kuiper using SpaceX will never happen, and any debate concerning this is folly.

This and this. I very much doubt they wanted a direct competitor to see their satellites so from that viewpoint not choosing Space X is logical.

[Asteroza]

Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is a direct competitor to Starlink’s. They will not use SpaceX even if they were half the cost. They will not let SpaceX anywhere near their birds that have proprietary technology they want to keep far away from their rivals, even if safeguards were put in place such as classified military satellites.

Furthermore, it’s in everyone’s interest to have multiple LV suppliers. No one wants to see SpaceX have a monopoly on the launch market. Kuiper using SpaceX will never happen, and any debate concerning this is folly.

This and this. I very much doubt they wanted a direct competitor to see their satellites so from that viewpoint not choosing Space X is logical.

The odds of Amazon PR not showing a sat before fairing encapsulation is next to nil in this age of social media.  Which means the sats will be seen, pretty much informing anybody who wants to pay attention. Just look at the resolution on press kit photos these days.

Generally a sat maker only needs to provide masses and moments of inertia to the launch provider, along with payload adapter interface specs, and that it. SpaceX wouldn't be extracting substantially more info than OSINT hounds if Kuiper rode with them. Heck, there are probably many NSF'ers contributing to OSINT data on the sats already.

[Jim]

Generally a sat maker only needs to provide masses and moments of inertia to the launch provider, along with payload adapter interface specs, and that it. SpaceX wouldn't be extracting substantially more info than OSINT hounds if Kuiper rode with them. Heck, there are probably many NSF'ers contributing to OSINT data on the sats already.

and outer mold line

[Asteroza]

Generally a sat maker only needs to provide masses and moments of inertia to the launch provider, along with payload adapter interface specs, and that it. SpaceX wouldn't be extracting substantially more info than OSINT hounds if Kuiper rode with them. Heck, there are probably many NSF'ers contributing to OSINT data on the sats already.

and outer mold line

Would that be necessary as long as you remain within the payload users guide available volume instructions? As long as you are out of the keep-out zones during launch and separation, the shape shouldn't really matter?

[Jim]

Would that be necessary as long as you remain within the payload users guide available volume instructions? As long as you are out of the keep-out zones during launch and separation, the shape shouldn't really matter?

Every ICD I have seen includes one (even IXPE). 

[LouScheffer]

Would that be necessary as long as you remain within the payload users guide available volume instructions? As long as you are out of the keep-out zones during launch and separation, the shape shouldn't really matter?

Just guessing, but I suspect there is a step in the launch readiness process that says something like "Run the payload-fairing compatibility test program" and verify output says "it fits".  There is no check box for "program not needed; result is obvious".  It's easier to provide the actual mold line than the get a waiver, which would need to go through a review board.

[Barley]

Are the supplied mold lines always minimal?

As a mathematician I'm happy to say that a 1m diameter sphere will fit in a 1m cube, but this tends to incite violence from engineers.  Saying a 1m sphere fits in a 10m cube will definitely cause violence.

[Seamurda]

While Bezos is chairman of board he isn't CEO anymore and isn't solely responsible for deciding which launch providers Amazon uses. Management may have excluded him from decision making process given he owns Blue and conflict of interests.

Amazon is on a tight schedule and can't risk relying on new RLVs like Neutron and Terran R. A6 and Vulcan maybe new LVs but they are flying lot of flight proven systems and expected to fly in next few months. The other big plus is both companies have excellent launch records.
New Glenn on other hand is riskier option but likely to be cheaper than A6 and Vulcan.

 The initial constellation of 3500 satellites won't be last expect 1000s more over the coming years. There will be other launch contracts in future, by which time the new generation of RLVs will be flying.

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The choice of launch system providers will not have made it anywhere near Jeff Bezos. Kuiper is a business unit of Amazon, they will own the processes used to select the vendors.

An investment of this size will certainly need to be signed off by the board of Amazon itself but I would expect that they would be scrutinizing the process rather than driving it.

[meekGee]

Boy, the SpaceX bias is really evident in this thread.

You can't have it both ways.

First you argued how Kuiper is not Bezos's play toy because Bezos doesn't have the majority of Amazon shares.

Now you're arguing that Kuiper shares your personal disdain of SpaceX and so will rather choose expendable rockets than finance SpaceX.

So which is it?

And remember, you got equally upset over people predicting oneWeb should choose  SpaceX. You just forgot the personal angle deorbited when Wyler got the boot.