Amazon's Starlink Rival Struggles To Ramp Up Satellite Production (bloomberg.com) 32
Amazon's internet-from-space venture is struggling to ramp up production, jeopardizing its ability to meet a government deadline to have more than 1,600 satellites in orbit by next summer. From a report: Project Kuiper has completed just a few dozen satellites so far, more than a year into its manufacturing program, according to three people familiar with the situation. The slow pace, combined with rocket launch delays, means the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
The agency, which has oversight of transmissions from space, expects the company to have half its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites operating by the end of July 2026. To meet that requirement, Amazon would have to at least quadruple the current rate of production, which has yet to consistently reach one satellite a day, two of the people said.
The agency, which has oversight of transmissions from space, expects the company to have half its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites operating by the end of July 2026. To meet that requirement, Amazon would have to at least quadruple the current rate of production, which has yet to consistently reach one satellite a day, two of the people said.
Government Extension (Score:5, Insightful)
the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission.
Should be no problem, unless their main rival happens to wield undue influence on the current administration.
Re: (Score:3)
Mod parent funny, but I bet it gets tagged as insightful instead. This business should be a public service, but...
However this is fundamentally a situation where the government should be blocking competition and the useful service should not be managed in search of profit. Yeah, I know space is big, but the lust for profit is definitely infinite and if profit is the main criterion, then at some point there are going to be too many satellites floating around and they are going to start bumping into each othe
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent funny, but I bet it gets tagged as insightful instead. This business should be a public service, but...
However this is fundamentally a situation where the government should be blocking competition and the useful service should not be managed in search of profit. Yeah, I know space is big, but the lust for profit is definitely infinite and if profit is the main criterion, then at some point there are going to be too many satellites floating around and they are going to start bumping into each other. No one wants Kessler Syndrome.
I'm very curious what's going to happen in April, 2029, when Apophis will pass by Earth under geo-stationary orbit. Will it pass close enough to influence any orbital trajectories? Or do we get to wait for the next pass which may actually have an impact trajectory to see the fireworks start?
And that's just the one space traveling object we *know* will pass by closely. Could be an interesting time with as crowded as we're making LEO space if we get a speedy small object slashing through that particular area.
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"Crowded" is pretty relative in space. As is "close." Apophis is 450 m long and will pass within 32000 km of the surface. Starlink satellites orbit at 550 km. So there will be at least 7 continental United States's between it and any Starlink satellites.
You're wondering if a supertanker docking in New York will have an effect on a car driving in Australia. Except three times further away than Australia.
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"Crowded" is pretty relative in space. As is "close." Apophis is 450 m long and will pass within 32000 km of the surface. Starlink satellites orbit at 550 km. So there will be at least 7 continental United States's between it and any Starlink satellites.
You're wondering if a supertanker docking in New York will have an effect on a car driving in Australia. Except three times further away than Australia.
I'm more thinking about "dipping beneath geostationary" is it pertains to, well, geostationary, and if it tracks close enough to any of them to cause them to flip into LEO. I haven't studied it close enough to know if that's a concern at all, but the idea that we *see* something coming that far off, but it's pretty good sized, tells me there's at least a small chance there's other stuff out there whizzing by or even dipping atmosphere here or there that could smack these LEO and below satellites. I just th
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That's an Hallucination! (re:Government Extension) (Score:2)
Apophis’ flyby will have no practical impact on maintaining Starlink orbits, unlike the Moon, which requires routine station-keeping adjustments.
I had no idea the moon required station-keeping... What will happen if the Mooninites go on strike (Or are arrested in Boston and deported [theconversation.com]?
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passing GEO [Re:Government Extension] (Score:2)
I'm more thinking about "dipping beneath geostationary" is it pertains to, well, geostationary, and if it tracks close enough to any of them to cause them to flip into LEO.
Unless it happens to cross Earth's orbit at exactly the equatorial inclination, it won't actually cut through the (equatorial) geosynchronous satellite belt.
In any case, with the surface gravity of Apophis estimated at 0.0023 cm/s^2, its perturbation of any satellites it passes will be negligible-- probably not enough to measure, and nowhere near enough to drop them to LEO
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I'm very curious what's going to happen in April, 2029, when Apophis will pass by Earth under geo-stationary orbit.
I guess he'd launch Death Gliders and (try to) wipe us all out, but pretty sure SG-1 and the Replicators killed him [fandom.com]. :-)
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the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission.
Should be no problem, unless their main rival happens to wield undue influence on the current administration.
Sounds like that guy is going to be busier trying to correct the 71% Q1 earnings drop (compared to 2024 Q1) at Tesla -- 2025 Q1: $409M vs. 2024 Q1: $1.4B, though it's actually worse as profits were buoyed by $400 million in interest on cash and investments and $595 million selling emissions credits to other auto makers, meaning they would have otherwise lost about $600M. (And Trump has pledged to eliminate the emission regulations those credits are used for, so they'll probably go away at some point.)
Elo [seattletimes.com]
Re: Government Extension (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission.
Should be no problem, unless their main rival happens to wield undue influence on the current administration.
Especially when Bezos/Amazon has had numerous lawsuits and FCC complaints against Starlink to try and keep them from launching satellites. So Bezos has motivated Musk to retaliate and try to slow Kuiper. Not a smart series of moves Bozos.
Don't grant it (Score:1, Troll)
Our lordship must sustain the monopoly he attained by stealing WorldVu's idea fair and square when they came to him for launch services. Reference: https://spectrum.ieee.org/goog... [ieee.org]
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the monopoly he attained by stealing WorldVu's idea
Which they stole from Teledesic. Face it. The only person that seems to have his head wrapped around the whole problem properly is Musk. And I'll include NASA in that exclusive club of screw-ups.
SpaceX (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they can hire SpaceX to launch their satellites. Better than failing completely.
Leave politics out of this. Hate people on your own time. I'm looking for VIABLE options to get there. The other option is to cut losses before they just end up being space litter.
Re:SpaceX (Score:4, Informative)
They have.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/ne... [aboutamazon.com]
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What satellites? You're responding to an article that puts Amazon's inability to make the satellites in the first sentence. How are SpaceX launch services going to make a satellite for Amazon?
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What satellites? You're responding to an article that puts Amazon's inability to make the satellites in the first sentence. How are SpaceX launch services going to make a satellite for Amazon?
They could hire SpaceX to build them like they build their own Starlink satellites.
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I don't believe you can leave politics out of this. Musk absolutely uses his control over X to platform and de-platform accounts for political reasons. Running your data through Starlink is a risk to mitigate.
The problem is Bezos isn't a lesser risk, just a different one. What is required is more foreign competion, enough that anyone trying to control the flow of information can be routed around.
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Maybe they can hire SpaceX to launch their satellites. Better than failing completely.
Leave politics out of this. Hate people on your own time. I'm looking for VIABLE options to get there. The other option is to cut losses before they just end up being space litter.
First SpaceX Kuiper launch scheduled for June 2025. An Amazon shareholder lawsuit over Bezos not seeking a SpaceX bid (and his conflict of interest in awarding to BO and ULA) resulted in a few launches being allocated to SpaceX. More probably will as I doubt the other 3 suppliers can handle the total # of launches required. None are used to high launch rates and all have other customers.
45 Years (Score:2)
36 satellites in a year? At that rate, ol' Jeff will have his 1,600 in a mere 45 years. He can either make satellites faster, or get really good at asking for extensions.
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36 satellites in a year? At that rate, ol' Jeff will have his 1,600 in a mere 45 years. He can either make satellites faster, or get really good at asking for extensions.
At that rate he would never get them all up and active as they don't have 45 year life spans.
Extension seems likely (Score:2)
the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission
They will likely get it. Space is hard. The FCC understands that.
room for a lot (Score:2)
gosh, just shocking! (Score:2)
Whoever would have thought that a Bezos linked space operation wouldn't thrive and exceed expectations!
What next, gambling in the back room?