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Everyone's talking about the FCC and whether the launch should have been allowed; what I'm curious about is how the Swarm people thought they could get away wit

Everyone's talking about the FCC and whether the launch should have been allowed; what I'm curious about is how the Swarm people thought they could get away with this. They obviously know that the satellites will be tracked; did they really think the FCC would just say, "Oh, well, since you already did it, I guess it's ok..." It doesn't make any sense.

yohui 9y ago
Yeah, that's the real question. Especially since, according to the article, Swarm was already planning to make their future satellites larger after the smaller design was rejected. Why jeopardize that by launching the previously rejected units?
olympus 9y ago
It's possible that they have nobody on their team with any government experience nor space experience. This is a fairly common way that startups fail, they think they have a great idea but are unfamiliar with the regulatory environment they must operate in (banking and medical startups are particularly vulnerable). Consider that a cubesat launch costs about $40k, add in $10k for the satellite cost, you're looking at just $200k to launch these satellites. Add in a spare system or three, multiply by a generous margin of error, and you're still under half a million bucks. That's basically the same as hiring a couple employees. To further realize that they could be doing this on the cheap, these are apparently 0.25U sized cubesats, which are even cheaper to launch than the "standard" 1U size: http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee.htm They don't necessarily need to be a huge team with a bunch of experienced industry insiders to pull this off. They could just as easily be a couple of recent grads with some of Grandma's inheritance from selling her house in Palo Alto.
- tempestn 9y ago
  But it sounds like the co-founders both do have significant space industry experience. Maybe not directly with the regulatory aspects, but a little bit of common sense...
  - olympus 9y ago
    I would argue that their actions indicate they don't have the experience they would like people to believe- not that I blame them for that part, every founder should try to make themselves look better to investors. They could be padding their resume or even outright lying, but anyone who says "it's no big deal if our license got denied, we'll launch without addressing any of the issues and try to work it out later" is not an industry veteran. Trying to keep to a timeline by going around the established process isn't what professionals do. Even Elon Musk plays ball with government regulators while pushing his ideas. Edit: the article describes them as an engineer that developed a satellite concept for Google and the other sold his previous company to Apple. Neither of them have experience in this regulatory environment. Neither Google nor Apple are space companies. These founders are going in on the tech aspect of distributed computing in space, I doubt either has launched a satellite before.
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > "it's no big deal if our license got denied, we'll launch without addressing any of the issues and try to work it out later" is not an industry veteran. Uber did that, in a different industry, and has had success. I'm appalled by the behavior, but perhaps others are following their model.
      - b098hsadfpojn 9y ago
        What's the worst case scenario for Uber? Economic destruction of taxi medallions, company gets shut down. What's the worst case scenario for Swarm? It takes out a satellite, causes economic destruction, and gets the military-industrial complex all mad at you.

yohui 9y ago

Yeah, that's the real question. Especially since, according to the article, Swarm was already planning to make their future satellites larger after the smaller design was rejected. Why jeopardize that by launching the previously rejected units?

olympus 9y ago

It's possible that they have nobody on their team with any government experience nor space experience. This is a fairly common way that startups fail, they think they have a great idea but are unfamiliar with the regulatory environment they must operate in (banking and medical startups are particularly vulnerable). Consider that a cubesat launch costs about $40k, add in $10k for the satellite cost, you're looking at just $200k to launch these satellites. Add in a spare system or three, multiply by a generous margin of error, and you're still under half a million bucks. That's basically the same as hiring a couple employees. To further realize that they could be doing this on the cheap, these are apparently 0.25U sized cubesats, which are even cheaper to launch than the "standard" 1U size: http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee.htm They don't necessarily need to be a huge team with a bunch of experienced industry insiders to pull this off. They could just as easily be a couple of recent grads with some of Grandma's inheritance from selling her house in Palo Alto.

tempestn 9y ago
But it sounds like the co-founders both do have significant space industry experience. Maybe not directly with the regulatory aspects, but a little bit of common sense...
- olympus 9y ago
  I would argue that their actions indicate they don't have the experience they would like people to believe- not that I blame them for that part, every founder should try to make themselves look better to investors. They could be padding their resume or even outright lying, but anyone who says "it's no big deal if our license got denied, we'll launch without addressing any of the issues and try to work it out later" is not an industry veteran. Trying to keep to a timeline by going around the established process isn't what professionals do. Even Elon Musk plays ball with government regulators while pushing his ideas. Edit: the article describes them as an engineer that developed a satellite concept for Google and the other sold his previous company to Apple. Neither of them have experience in this regulatory environment. Neither Google nor Apple are space companies. These founders are going in on the tech aspect of distributed computing in space, I doubt either has launched a satellite before.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > "it's no big deal if our license got denied, we'll launch without addressing any of the issues and try to work it out later" is not an industry veteran. Uber did that, in a different industry, and has had success. I'm appalled by the behavior, but perhaps others are following their model.
    - b098hsadfpojn 9y ago
      What's the worst case scenario for Uber? Economic destruction of taxi medallions, company gets shut down. What's the worst case scenario for Swarm? It takes out a satellite, causes economic destruction, and gets the military-industrial complex all mad at you.