Amazon May Turn To Its SpaceX Rival For Satellite Launches (gizmodo.com) 34
Amazon is on a tight schedule to launch its internet satellites to orbit, so the company may have to turn to its competitor SpaceX for rides. Gizmodo reports: During a live interview with the Washington Post, Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp expressed the company's openness to use SpaceX's heavy lift rockets to deploy its Project Kuiper internet satellites. "We are open to talking to SpaceX, you'd be crazy not given their track record here," Limp said. However, Amazon is not interested in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets that are currently lofting the company's Starlink satellites. Amazon's internet satellites are larger than those being deployed by SpaceX, which explains why the company is eyeing SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and its upcoming Starship rocket, the latter of which is still in development.
Limp's statement come as a surprise considering that Amazon signed deals earlier this year with Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance to lift its satellites into orbit, while leaving out SpaceX from the mix. Both companies are aiming to bring high-speed internet to remote areas across the world by beaming down data signals from low Earth orbit. [...] Amazon is seemingly running out of options for rockets, while SpaceX has rockets-a-plenty, so a future deal between the industry rivals does make sense. A 2020 authorization order from the Federal Communications Commission stipulates that Amazon launch 50% of its 3,236 Project Kuiper satellites by 2026, and the remainder by 2029, or the company will lose its license.
Limp's statement come as a surprise considering that Amazon signed deals earlier this year with Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance to lift its satellites into orbit, while leaving out SpaceX from the mix. Both companies are aiming to bring high-speed internet to remote areas across the world by beaming down data signals from low Earth orbit. [...] Amazon is seemingly running out of options for rockets, while SpaceX has rockets-a-plenty, so a future deal between the industry rivals does make sense. A 2020 authorization order from the Federal Communications Commission stipulates that Amazon launch 50% of its 3,236 Project Kuiper satellites by 2026, and the remainder by 2029, or the company will lose its license.
What IS Blue Origin doing ? (Score:1)
Could they be working in secret and actually be far ahead with it, or are they just working at old-space speeds ? I mean, it's not like they've got a juicy cost-plus contract to drag out.
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They’re working on New Glenn, but it can’t fly until BE-4 is ready. They recently changed their design to stainless steel from aluminum, so they must be thinking that’ll take a while. If they were smart, they’d ask SpaceX to sell them Raptors instead.
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If they were smart, they’d ask SpaceX to sell them Raptors instead.
If they were smart, they'd realize its not like SpaceX has prepared themselves a market to sell Raptor engines, which they would have to sell at a hugely inflated cost, because those engines are "reusable" in their rocket infrastructure, which means they have way more value to SpaceX. Sales of those rockets to Blue Origin only make sense to SpaceX if Blue Origin's market targets with those engines had no relevance to SpaceX's business, which obvious BO does. Finally, its likely that New Glenn would have t
Re: What IS Blue Origin doing ? (Score:2)
Generally speaking, if youâ(TM)re running a for-profit business, selling things is better than not selling them. SpaceX is planning to make hundreds of engines a year, but theyâ(TM)re not launching yet, so they may have some unused capacity. They could make a couple billion dollars selling these to BO and ULA. Thatâ(TM)s not chump change, and it would allow the Starship program to earn back some of the development expense before itâ(TM)s flying regularly.
Aerojet Rocketdyne had access to
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> Aerojet Rocketdyne had access to the RD-180 and blueprints and manufacturing information for decades, and they havenâ(TM)t been able to build an equivalent engine.
I suspect that the issue there isn't inability (given Rocketdyne's long history of engine manufacturing) but cost---cheaper then to buy from Russia.
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They’re working on New Glenn, but it can’t fly until BE-4 is ready. They recently changed their design to stainless steel from aluminum, so they must be thinking that’ll take a while. If they were smart, they’d ask SpaceX to sell them Raptors instead.
The three rockets they signed up to use as launch vehicles are Ariane 6 (not yet flying), Vulcan Centaur (waiting for BE-4 engines to work) and the New Glenn (waiting for the BE-4 and possibly other elements) are all rockets yet to fly and not expected to fly this year and New Glenn at least may not fly next year either. Now some of the satellites are going up on a different ULA rocket but it uses Russian engines and the engines in stock are all they will ever have, they will launch a significant number o
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They’re working on New Glenn, but it can’t fly until BE-4 is ready. They recently changed their design to stainless steel from aluminum, so they must be thinking that’ll take a while. If they were smart, they’d ask SpaceX to sell them Raptors instead.
The three rockets they signed up to use as launch vehicles are Ariane 6 (not yet flying), Vulcan Centaur (waiting for BE-4 engines to work) and the New Glenn (waiting for the BE-4 and possibly other elements) are all rockets yet to fly and not expected to fly this year and New Glenn at least may not fly next year either. Now some of the satellites are going up on a different ULA rocket but it uses Russian engines and the engines in stock are all they will ever have, they will launch a significant number of satellites but not nearly enough.
The aluminum to stainless on New Glenn is for the 2nd stage which they need to redesign to make it reusable or New Glenn can't operate profitably. Initial launches are supposed to use the original disposable design.
Since they have time frame to get up a significant portion of their constellation the clock is ticking and it may be SpaceX or no one.
Now as long as Bezos is both a major owner of Amazon (which is the owner of Kuiper) and is the owner of BO that keeps suing them SpaceX may be "reluctant" to launch at anything but premium prices. They also are launching better than 1 rocket a week this year and next year plan more even without launching for Kuiper, they might have a hard time squeezing it in. This could change if BO makes a serious commitment to no longer suing.
As to selling Raptors not likely. They are not plug in replacements for BE-4. They don't have as much thrust as BE-4 is supposed to so it would take more engines to replace the 2 on Vulcan and the 7 on New Glenn. Also they don't use the same mountings and likely not the same controls. It would take a LOT of redesign work to make them usable on those rockets.
SpaceX is unlikely to turn away Amazon's request for launch. DOJ can go after them if they don't offer market rate to launch them as they currently have a de facto superiority in commercial launch market. Note I say market rate, not the usual going rate that SpaceX charge which tends to be lower.
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They’re working on New Glenn, but it can’t fly until BE-4 is ready. They recently changed their design to stainless steel from aluminum, so they must be thinking that’ll take a while. If they were smart, they’d ask SpaceX to sell them Raptors instead.
The stainless upper stage is a test article, commissioned to be done by a separate team for the purpose of trying to recover it. It's not in the production plan as far as I know.
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But I think we have to have faith in Spacex's engineers.
You've got to BELIEVE !
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How can you even doubt Starship will work? They've already done multiple practice launches with it (not sure if they "stuck" a landing yet). SpaceX has guaranteed revenue streams coming in (ISS, private, Starlink), so they're not going to go bankrupt developing Starship. Finally, I'm sure he'll have no problem finding private investors if he needs to raise more capital to complete development. Its not a matter of if it works, but whether its meets its commercial timetable.
I wonder what's going to be Sta
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I wonder what's going to be Starship's final test payload. Musk has already done his roadster.
Musk's massive ego?
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I wonder what's going to be Starship's final test payload. Musk has already done his roadster.
Cybertruck or maybe New Shepherd so BO will finally have a rocket reach orbit.
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I wonder what's going to be Starship's final test payload. Musk has already done his roadster.
Cybertruck or maybe New Shepherd so BO will finally have a rocket reach orbit.
ROFLMAO. Yes, an old New Shepherd would be hilarious
Re: What IS Blue Origin doing ? (Score:3)
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Whereas, AFAICT, Bezos is just the money guy, who pays people to do the work but doesn't really understand what they do. Again, AFAICT...
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But they also had an ENGINEER as CEO who, I think, knew where best to allocate resources.
Just as important, was able to choose and impose an aggressive development schedule. BO's big problems was that Bezos picked an experienced, old hand at rocket development, and the schedule (and target goals) were based on how much money Bezos was willing to burn, along with a conservative, "safe" development schedule. In fact, back in 2010(?) BO was still considered the leader at the time in developing the first commercial rocket.
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Although - from what I can tell - Spacex could hardly work any faster even if there was competition !
It is also surprising that a billionaire (even a non-engineer one) could not educate himself enough to be able to really LEAD Blue Origin.
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Spacex had plenty of funding for Starship. But they also had an ENGINEER as CEO who, I think, knew where best to allocate resources.
It's really their COO, Gwynne Shotwell, who has an engineering degree (which technically Musk does not have, although I think it's still fine for him to use engineer in his job title due to convention) who drives most of that. Musk did have the sense to put her in charge of getting things done though.
Wasting time and focus (Score:5, Funny)
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One of us is confused.
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You're not confused. OP is obviously confused. A joyride to 100km above sea level is not LEO.
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Really? (Score:3)
"However, Amazon is not interested in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets that are currently lofting the company's Starlink satellites. Amazon's internet satellites are larger than those being deployed by SpaceX, "
SpaceX sends up up to 60 satellites of theirs with a Falcon 9, so there's room.
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SpaceX sends up up to 60 satellites of theirs with a Falcon 9, so there's room.
The Falcon 9 could launch 60 of the original V1 Starlink satellites, but with the V1.5 satellites they're down to 53 per launch. Looking forward the V2.0 satellites have been designed specifically to launch on Starship and are physically too large & heavy to launch on Falcon 9 in meaningful quantities. It's not entirely surprising that Kuiper satellites would be pushing up against the volume limits of the Falcon 9.
I was wondering when this would happen. (Score:2)
Not if. When.
"We are open to talking to SpaceX, you'd be crazy not given their track record here,"
What wasn't said was the cost of $/kg to LEO. $5,000/kg compared to $25,000/kg is a pretty significant factor in any business plan.
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What wasn't said was the cost of $/kg to LEO. $5,000/kg compared to $25,000/kg is a pretty significant factor in any business plan.
But you need to take into account the founder of Amazon for a decade annoying the heck out of the founder of SpaceX and still doing it today. Don't expect low ball prices while SpaceX is launching rockets as fast as they can even without Amazons business.
Ouch, they must really be in trouble (Score:3)
I knew something was up when they bought up the rest of the launch industries flights, but this doesn't bode well for New Glenn. Either they expect to still be having engine difficulties for years to come or they're expecting a long development cycle for the rest of the rocket. Who knows, with the scrapping of their recovery ship maybe they're giving up on being a direct launch provider completely, though the activity at their production facility seems to make that unlikely. They had seemed to be suggesting that their traditional design methodology would result in a pretty much ready to go rocket on their first launch, in comparison to SpaceX's method of launching incremental designs. But if that were the case you would think they would be launching their own payloads one after another starting in 2024 and only relying on the other providers to temporarily bolster their launch rate to meet their FAA requirements. But if they're even going to hit up SpaceX then they must not expect New Glenn to be launching regularly for years to come.
awkward. (Score:2)
uh,
Jeff?!!!"
insert Spidermans pointing meme