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Communications The Internet

Amazon's Satellite Launch Schedule Puts It Nearly 4 Years Behind Starlink (arstechnica.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the but-who's-counting... dept.
Amazon plans to launch its first prototype broadband satellites in Q4 2022, which would be nearly four years after SpaceX launched its first prototype Starlink satellites. Ars Technica reports: "This morning, we filed an experimental license application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch, deploy, and operate two prototype satellites for Project Kuiper," Amazon said in a blog post. "These satellites -- KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 -- are an important step in the development process. They allow us to test the communications and networking technology that will be used in our final satellite design, and help us validate launch operations and mission management procedures that will be used when deploying our full constellation."

Amazon said it will launch the satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on ABL Space Systems' RS1 rocket, as part of a multilaunch deal the companies announced today. Amazon's prototype satellites will operate at an altitude of 590 km. "While operating under the experimental license, the KuiperSats will communicate with TT&C [telemetry, tracking, and control] Earth stations in South America, the Asia-Pacific region, and McCulloch, Texas, as well as with customer terminal units and a single gateway Earth station located in McCulloch, Texas," Amazon told the FCC.
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Amazon's Satellite Launch Schedule Puts It Nearly 4 Years Behind Starlink More

Amazon's Satellite Launch Schedule Puts It Nearly 4 Years Behind Starlink

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  • Is it really just a vanity project for Bezos? He's not an engineer, he's a business/MBA type. What is he getting out of this?

    • Re:What's the purpose of Blue Origin? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by larwe ( 858929 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:13AM (#61950169)
      To quote Hans Gruber (Die Hard): "When Alexander (The Great) saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." The ability for markets to expand on Earth is intrinsically limited by finite resources. New markets must be created. To quote Dick Jones (Robocop): "I say good business is where you find it."

      • "When Alexander (The Great) saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer."

        Exactly, Saturday Night got it right, Space is too small for 2 billionaires.

    • Re: What's the purpose of Blue Origin? (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @03:19AM (#61950175)

      Bezos came from Talos IV and he longs to return home.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?ti... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Is it really just a vanity project for Bezos? He's not an engineer, he's a business/MBA type. What is he getting out of this?

      There's nothing in what you said that's contradictory. Blue Origin right now seems to be nothing but a big ego-boosting vanity project. Doesn't matter that Bezos isn't an engineer, he just wants some big ass project to make it known he has a big dick. Of course, the fact that the rocket is shaped like one helps, too.

      Basically a billionaire with too much money wants an ego boost. What

      • I think Bezos should fuck off immediately but realistically commercialization of space is only going to begin with tourism and we need it to get heavy industry off of this planet. I only wish it had happened sooner, before it was probably too late.

      • Didn't you hear that going into space was the next big thing for billionaires? I mean, the private jet, yacht, etc are nice, but a rocketship is still out there that mere millionaires can't afford.

        Funny thing, the current biggest billionaire with the best rocket in the world (Elon Musk), has not bothered to do it.

        Shows you that the other billionaires are just trying to compensate for something else which is lacking.

    • Is it really just a vanity project for Bezos? He's not an engineer, he's a business/MBA type. What is he getting out of this?

      Triggering the Musk cult.

    • These are vanity projects for Elon and Branson, too.

      Competition is good. Unfortunately, the two richest douchebags in the known universe are the ones at the helm of each project

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        Starlink is not theoretical. It's working today and it will only grow in the future. You can't get 18,000 LEO satellites in orbit and make money if you're paying retail launch prices. SpaceX was a necessary precursor to Starlink.

        He already has so many successful projects it's hard to argue that any one could be labelled a vanity project, because he was already getting praise for Tesla and Neuralink that having SpaceX fail would only hurt his legacy.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alcari ( 1017246 )
        I know the starlink dish uses about three times as much power as my fridge does, and ten+ times what my regular modem/router/accespoint uses, but it's not the "most environmentally destructive industry"...

  • *grabs a bucket or popcorn for the first launch date.

  • Do we really need another competing system? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BusterB ( 10791 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:09AM (#61950229)
    We have legacy geosynchronous systems and StarLink already. Any reason why there needs to be another competing system at all, or at least not one that can't interoperate with at least one of the others as a common carrier? They say this is to "deliver a small, affordable customer terminal to connect unserved and underserved communities around the world", they'd reach that goal a lot sooner if they just worked with StarLink, rather than needing to have multiple incompatible sets of satellites and terminals. At least starLink's mission is more honest, and doesn't try to pretend it's cheap or necessarily for the good of society. After all, you need plenty of rich tech workers from remote locations to get your operation at least cash-flow neutral. "Starlink provides high-speed, low-latency broadband internet across the globe. Within each coverage area, orders are fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis." Their competition is clearly cell and terrestrial incumbent providers who have failed to provide universal coverage for decades.

    • Re:Do we really need another competing system? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by larwe ( 858929 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:28AM (#61950251)

      Any reason why there needs to be another competing system at all, or at least not one that can't interoperate with at least one of the others as a common carrier?

      This is a really interesting and complex question. On one hand, you might say "Why do we need Android and iOS? One mobile ecosystem is enough for the world". On the other hand, isn't it better to have diversity - especially in terms of data carriers. Just look at the horrific cable Internet monopoly in the US - do we want to replicate that in the satellite Internet realm? But then to flip the coin yet again - The resource and environmental cost of launching and maintaining a satellite constellation is staggering. Are these resources we want to burn?

      • Re:Do we really need another competing system? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:31AM (#61950329)

        This is a really interesting and complex question.

        It's really the heart of capitalist market based economics when you think about it. Competitive markets should not be the most efficient way to do things - just think of all the duplicated work being done among, say, the different car companies to achieve the same objective. In theory it would be a far more efficient use of resources for all the best engineers at those car companies to work together on a range of cars that represent the peak of human engineering achievement.

        Yet despite this, competitive markets seem to work better than anything else we've tried.

        Imagine what the human race could achieve if we ever figured out a way to motivate people beyond this neo-tribalist construct.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by larwe ( 858929 )

          It's really the heart of capitalist market based economics when you think about it.

          I get the theory. But almost all natural (life) processes seem to be based on competitive equilibrium, for want of a better phrase. The best way to regulate resource usage is by using price as a signal for scarcity; a scarce resource rises in price because of the cost of extraction (or other factors, such as transportability), and signals consumers to find substitutes. Consumers who can be successful with an alternate for the scarce resource have an advantage. The beauty of such a system is that using only

        • Re:Do we really need another competing system? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Åke Malmgren ( 3402337 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @08:31AM (#61950661)
          We have figured it out, and it's called the open source movement.

          • I wish I had mod points for you, because you're exactly correct.

          • Right, because with Open Source, there is no duplication of effort at all. There is just one editor, one desktop environment, one window manager, one hypervisor, one office suite, one kernel, one file system, one messenger, one compiler, one shell, ...

            • We have figured it out, and it's called the open source movement.

              Right, because with Open Source, there is no duplication of effort at all. There is just one editor, one desktop environment, one window manager, one hypervisor, one office suite, one kernel, one file system, one messenger, one compiler, one shell, ...

              No kidding. I haven't had mod points in months or I'd mod you up.

            • But the effort is duplicated because people want to, not because they're forced to. And when they don't want to, they can make a hundred competing routers all running embedded Linux, for instance. The fruits of anyone's labor can be freely picked instead of hoarded by litigators.

        • It's really the heart of capitalist market based economics when you think about it. Competitive markets should not be the most efficient way to do things - just think of all the duplicated work being done among, say, the different car companies to achieve the same objective.

          Why shouldn't they be? They're marvelous at encouraging efficiency, compared to, say, being able to tax your competitor or make rules for them.

          Imagine what the human race could achieve if we ever figured out a way to motivate people beyond this neo-tribalist construct.

          Letting free people negotiate things with each other seems pretty civilized to me. "Chief knows best" seems rather tribal, by comparison.

        • Yet despite this, competitive markets seem to work better than anything else we've tried.

          Automakers behave as cartels. They tend to engage in the same types of malfeasance at the same time. Whether this is actual conspiracy stuff or just crimes of apparent opportunity is anyone's guess for the most part; sometimes it's a clear conspiracy, as in the case of the streetcar scandal. Sometimes it's not so clear, as in the case of German Diesel emissions cheating. The only thing we know for sure is that all the automakers in question had help from the same company that makes all their PCMs, namely Bo

      • Interesting that you mentioned cable and telecom. It was all the poles and wires creating an eyesore that led to incumbent monopolies managed by the Public Service Commission. Crowding our skyline and making for a more treacherous launch window of other rockets very well establish another.

      • "isn't it better to have diversity"

        Are distinct choices being offered, or just two instances of the same thing?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by larwe ( 858929 )

          Are distinct choices being offered, or just two instances of the same thing?

          That's hard to answer, because I feel another way to state your question is "Is a duopoly better than a monopoly?". These networks will be run by rich guys in charge of big companies. You and I are not going to be rich guys in charge of big companies, so there's inherently a power gap there. All things considered, though, I would rather have a choice between two evil giants than be constrained to just one. Because the two evil giants probably hate each other (in the Musk vs Bezos case, they ASSUREDLY hate e

    • However this Musk, his motivation is not the same as Bezos.

    • Monopolies are bad, mkay?

    • I'm not sure I can use Starlink because of my trees, but every person that signs up puts pressure on 4g/5g/LTE markets to lift their goddamn data caps and become price competitive. T-Mobile and ATT are moving into fixed rural wireless now, with T-Mobile offering some decent prices.

      If Starlink wasn't literally hanging over their heads, would they really want to let loose of charging people 55.00 a month for 25 gig of hotspot data?

      The more choices, the better.

      And if Starlink actually works for me, I may try i

      • Cellular modem? As in only 1 device? Or is it also a NAT router?

        • Yes, sim card in a router/wireless-router that does NAT. It's worked fantastically well since ~2018. Now I have a data cap, and all signs point toward ATT.

          I worked in fixed wireless for years, and 4g/LTE is amazing. I'm not a data hog. With the router in a closet and 4 inch antennas on it, I have been mostly happy all these years, with just a couple of bars of signal strength.

          My fixed wireless went out after every big storm. Granted it was free for me, but it was a pain to install and maintain.

          When I finall

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by e3m4n ( 947977 )
            DSL technologies are very touchy. Do you happen to remember the tech? ADSL2+, VDSL, VDSL2, SHDSL? They all have issues with distance, and line condition. Any sort of drop down to heavier gauge wiring or other bridge taps can create issues. If you try to run it on the same inside wiring that is wired up to RJ11 jacks within the home, VDSL totally craps out. This often requires unwiring your jacks and using scotch-locks to re-connect the wiring directly back to your modem/router. Often bonding is required to

            • > IMO the future of fixed line last-mile internet is GPON fiber.

              I just can't see fiber in rural areas being a widespread thing. Maybe twenty years from now. Don't get me wrong. I worked in wireless for an eternity, and a cable is the only thing that "just works." Bonus points for fiber, because the cable isn't made of copper.

              The company I used to work for is deploying fiber right now. Will it ever reach me? Nope.

              Licensed fixed wireless is probably OK, if you get equipment that survives a lightning strike

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by e3m4n ( 947977 )
                the advantage GPON has over DSL in rural areas is distance. In a rural area how many properties are going to be within 3000-5000ft of the DSLAM? Even a 24port DSLAM would be a waste if the density is 3 at best. The nice thing about single-mode fiber is that it can be 20KM from the splitter to the farthest ONT. Another 20km from the OLT to the splitter. 40km is a decent spread. The work required to bury the fiber from the splitter to your property in a rural area might be more work and the cost of materials

      • T-Mobile has been hankering for the rural market for a long time now, possibly longer than Elon has been thinking of Starlink. TMO wants to leverage their C-band spectrum to serve rural populations, and of course they will want to sell that as phone/data, Internet, and maybe revive the TV business they can't make work any better than DirectTV and Dish are managing to. Starlink will probably put pricing pressure on TMO, but if Starlink can make your cell phone into a satellite phone with magic, then they hav

      • And if Starlink actually works for me, I may try it. Although I'm not real hot on an auto-tracking satellite dish. Sounds like a nice point of failure to me.

        It uses its mechanical dish positioning hardware exactly once when it's powered on and aiming itself then stops moving. All further satellite tracking is achieved with the phased array. It's not at much risk of failure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > Any reason why there needs to be another competing system at all

      Gee, why does China need BeiDou when the US already provides free GPS. It seems like a duplication of effort for humanity to have multiple GPS systems.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Is it only 4 years behind? (Score:3)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:29AM (#61950253)

    Has Amazon actually gotten something into orbit?

  • Not too shabby considering it's an online bookseller, hey?

  • Are all these satellites going to sit there forever when obsolete? They will cause increasing reflection effects; some may be blackened but that will probably degrade slowly. Unless they fall into the atmosphere but has anyone evaluated what the end effects of these things falling are?

    In the same way that we have been filling the land and oceans with our own junk, this is increasingly spreading into space. Now this has moved on from nations launching their own limited numbers of comparitively large satell

    • Everyone is putting their next-generation telecoms satellites into LEO because that's where the short round trip times are. Objects in LEO experience enough drag to deorbit them in typically single-digit numbers of years without stationkeeping. There has recently been some interest in making satellite housings out of wood in order to reduce the amount of metals dispersed into the atmosphere when they deorbit. Grossly increasing the number of objects deorbiting will likely have measurable effects, so that is

    • Are all these satellites going to sit there forever when obsolete? They will cause increasing reflection effects; some may be blackened but that will probably degrade slowly. Unless they fall into the atmosphere but has anyone evaluated what the end effects of these things falling are?

      Everything in orbits this low falls out of the sky quite rapidly once it exhausts its station-keeping fuel. And yes, there has been exhaustive evaluation of the effects of falling. The FCC requires a deorbit plan which includes a full evaluation of everything in the satellite and how it will behave during deorbit. SpaceX Starlink satellites are 100% frangible now, after some revisions from the first version. When they reenter, they turn into high altitude dust which settles out of the atmosphere quite q

  • Not blue origin launched (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @09:22AM (#61950793) Homepage

    I think it's telling that they're not launching aboard Blue Origin rockets.

    Meanwhile SpaceX has sent almost 1800 StarLink satellites into orbit on their own F9's.

    • That was my only real take away as well, Blue Origin has rockets, but not launch vehicles.

    • Re:Not blue origin launched (Score:4, Informative)

      by vix86 ( 592763 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @11:20AM (#61951093)

      It's even more telling that the company (ABL) they have chosen to launch with has only been around since 2017 and hasn't even done an orbital launch. This really suggests that Bezos/Blue Origin sees no path forward for their launch systems. Also unless ABL really starts moving fast, they'll be heavily restricted. ABL's current rocket they are developing only can do ~1300kg to LEO, compare that to Falcon 9's 22,000kg to LEO.

      • Curious that they didn't choose to use Rocket Lab, which does have a proven track record.
        I guess either they're already booked for that period, Bezos sees them as a potential competitor, or he just wants someone else to blame for inevitably failing to launch on time.

  • The thing to remember (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Baconsmoke ( 6186954 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @10:31AM (#61950971)
    is we don't want monopolies in space anymore than we do on earth. Being "behind" is a useless concept. Under those rules Apple should never have built a computer because other people invented computers years before the Apple I came out. This concept literally makes no sense and really isn't newsworthy. What is news is that Amazon is getting into the satellite internet business. Not how far behind Starlink they are. I hope other companies follow suit. The dumbest thing would be to allow one org to be the only game in town. Eventually that comes back to bite you in the ass.

    • The issue is, there's a limit to how close satellites can get to each other, out of an abundance of caution, even though they're quite unlikely to actually collide.
      And, more importantly, there's a limited range of frequencies and bandwidth they can transmit on, so right now it looks whoever gets satellites in orbit first, within a reasonable timeframe, gets to use those limited resources.

  • Very confusing (Score:3)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @12:48PM (#61951343)

    SpaceX and Amazon announced, around the same time as I recall, their intention to launch satellites into space. As of now, SpaceX has launched thousands of them and is providing internet access to thousands of customers. Amazon, as near as I can tell, has sent Bezos and William Shatner into a near space orbit for a few minutes and put them back on earth.

    I don't see any business plan for Blue Origin. It seems to me that this is a toy for some bored billionaire to play with. By the time Amazon does come up with a business plan SpaceX will be so far ahead of them it will be too late.

    Personally I would love to see some competition for SpaceX. It will help to drive innovation and drive costs down. But if Amazon has any hope of catching SpaceX they better stop screwing around and get serious about it.

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