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Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says
- uncoder0 7y agoSo we'll be at ~20,000 satellites in orbit with this and Starlink. That's four times as many as are currently in orbit.
- thrower123 7y agoWell, if we want to generate the efficiencies of scale that would ever allow us to get off this rock, we've got to start with something. There is a lot of money kicking around not doing a whole lot right now, and building rockets is more likely to get us going in the right direction than acqu-hiring another Uber for Cats whizzbang startup for grossly more than it is worth.
- irjustin 7y agoThe question is what is the limit of LEO such that it causes problems for 1) astronomy such they even with knowledge of passing objects it still causes disruptions in images and 2) that we begin the slippery slope of trapping ourselves
- zaroth 7y agoI assume there are a finite number of these swarms that we can deploy in LEO, both in economic terms as well as dedicating space and spectrum? I’ve heard of three companies now that want to achieve this. I’m not sure if there’s anything particularly distinctive about one versus the other, other than SpaceX is the only one with the proven launch capacity to bring that much mass to orbit. I have a lot less faith in Bezos pulling this off, but mostly it seems a waste to start an ISP just to earn Amazon shareholders a larger dividend.
- aaronblohowiak 7y agoDedicating space? We have three deminsions to work with, but even if it were two, space around earth is bigger than surface of earth. The earth is very big and these constellations are small. The satellites are small too. At this low an orbit, not worried about long lasting junk due to atmos drag iiuc
- plotteddancer16 7y agoAmazon shareholders do not earn a dividend. SpaceX is not public, but rather would enrich a much smaller set of investors (and particularly Musk). What’s your point?
- mft_ 7y agoAren't SpaceX creating Starlink to generate funds to support other projects; in particular, their plans to create the rockets and infrastructure to ultimately colonise Mars? i.e. not (primarily) to "enrich a much smaller set of investors (and particularly Musk)"?
- slfnflctd 7y agoYeah, that was silly and disingenuous. We're talking about a guy who could have retired in lavish luxury 15+ years ago if 'riches' were all he wanted. He is Mars or bust and looks like he's put together a company with the chops to pull it off.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- falcon2_0 7y agoFidelity has a biyearly traded SpaceX fund.
- internet_user 7y agoIsn't it just a small slice of many things held in a mutual fund? or there is actually pure spaceX fund/vehicle?
- zaroth 7y agoMy point was that when companies look for literal moonshots to keep finding decent uses for their money, it’s usually not long after that the dividends start be paid out. That is to say, by the time their Starlink-esque network would be generating revenue, odds are good AMZN is paying a dividend.
- aerophilic 7y agoYes, there is a finite limit, but the number is much higher than you would suppose. First, in terms of spectrum, realistically all the satellites in a constellation can (and should) share a small number of relatively narrow frequencies. You can almost imagine it ma be the equivalent of one more cell tower in your area per constellation (at worse). In terms of space, astronomy aside, the actual space these satellites are flying in are “huge”. As a perspective if you hold your thumb up to the sky, the distance “covered up” by your thumb (if I did my math right) is approximately 480 miles [1] Yes things travel very quickly at those orbits, but the point is that even if we throw a ton of satellites up, they will remain fairly sparse. That said, possible reflection and how noticeable they will be, that is a whole other question. [1] assuming orbits of 366 miles up, higher orbits would be even farther apart
- Eyes 7y ago> As a perspective if you hold your thumb up to the sky, the distance “covered up” by your thumb (if I did my math right) is approximately 480 miles What distance? The distance immediately behind my thumb is about an inch. The distance way back at the edge of the universe is millions of light years
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vatueil 7y agoThe parent comment says in a footnote: > [1] assuming orbits of 366 miles up, higher orbits would be even farther apart
- dvdbloc 7y agoI’m confused on why it would be a waste to make shareholders better off, regardless of the fact that Amazon does not pay a dividend. Isn’t this the point of investing? It would be great to make shareholders better off and even better if we could improve internet access while we are at it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m463 7y ago> mostly it seems a waste to start an ISP I sort of see an analogy with airplane or helicopter pilots. One of the most important things pilots need when they start out is flying time. And flying time costs money. They can be easily talked into things to defray their costs. I suspect that launching an ISP is defraying costs of developing and launching rockets. $100 LEO hamburgers.
- mrnobody_67 7y agoGotta give it to them, Amazon is the only big tech company with a vision - the rest are just sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and no good ideas against which to deploy all those funds.
- skybrian 7y agoGoogle invested $900 million in SpaceX back in 2015 [1]. Not sure if that counts as "vision", but it seems like it was a smart way to get into this market early. [1] https://spacenews.com/google-spacex-investment-is-900-million/ https://spacenews.com/google-spacex-investment-is-900-millio...
- CamelCaseName 7y agoGoogle attempted something similar with loon[0] and FB with internet.org[1] (IIRC, FB also had a few other initiatives) [0] https://loon.com/ https://loon.com/ [1] https://www.wired.com/story/what-happened-to-facebooks-grand-plan-to-wire-the-world/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-happened-to-facebooks-grand... And with regards to Amazon being the only big tech company with a vision -- I hear Apple just redesigned the monitor stand. Visionary.
- ehsankia 7y agoIt's detailed more in your second link, but Facebook was planning to launch their first batch back in 2016, which ended up blowing up due to the failed SpaceX launch. So if it wasn't for that mishap, they may have had something operational by now.
- ehsankia 7y agoAs pointed out by others, Google has had visionary projects for over a decade. Just take a look at their X projects [0]. Here's a few: - Verily is looking into improving medical tech - Malta is looking at more efficient energy storage - Makani is looking at innovative wind energy gathering - Loon is looking at connectivity for rural/remote communities - Foghorn is looking at creating clean energy from sea water And of course, let's not forget about Waymo which started 10 years ago, way ahead of its time. Google also invests heavily in many industries. They fund multiple fusion energy projects [1][2][3], they had a million dollar prize to encourage people to get to the moon [4], and as pointed out above they are big investors in SpaceX too. Meanwhile, other than Bezos' Blue Origin, I think this is basically a first for Amazon, and honestly even this feels much more of a business move than a "visionary project", considering there's literally 3-4 other companies trying to do the exact same thing (SpaceX, OneWeb, Facebook, Telesat). [0] https://x.company/projects/ https://x.company/projects/ [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/news/a27484/google-fusion-energy-company-improve-plasma-reactor-ai/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/news/a27... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18201220/nuclear-fusion-energy-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-tae-google https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18201220/nuclear-fusion-e... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/05/21/the-new-nuclear-how-a-600-million-fusion-energy-unicorn-plans-to-beat-solar/#46f6fe23629e https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/05/21/th... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize
- ricardobeat 7y agoDo we have the capability to manage the traffic with these 3k Amazon satellites + Starlink's 12k + OneWeb's 650 + all the stuff that's already up there? Starlink is the only one that mentions collision avoidance during operations.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoOneWeb says plenty about collision avoidance if you look at their FCC filings and press statements. Amazon hasn't really gone into detail for what they're doing, but the FCC won't clear them unless they explain how they'll comply with deorbiting guidelines (and it looks like the FCC expects operators of these megaconstellations to do much more than the bare minimum).
- sytelus 7y agoI thought sats in LEO have fundamental issue that they can’t stay up too long. In rather short time, their fuel would run out and they will burn off in atmosphere. Does this mean you have to keep replishining them at regular intervals like less than a year or two?
- eljimmy 7y agoPretty much - I think Starlink satellites will have an estimated lifespan of 5 years, not bad.
- martythemaniak 7y agoThis used to be a huge issue when satellites had to be very big and expensive to launch. But today satellites can be much smaller (several hundred kg) and are much cheaper to launch, making this approach viable.
- savrajsingh 7y agoIt’s a “feature” — things self dispose and you don’t end up with lots of junk in orbit
- BurningFrog 7y agoYou can see how this is very attractive if you have a lot of launch capacity to sell :)
- onedognight 7y agoThis is a business that Apple should get into as well. They have the capital and Phones+internet would have great vertical synergy.
- martythemaniak 7y agoWhat they don't have is the rockets. SpaceX has cheap reusable Falcon 9s. Blue Origin is aiming to have a cheap reusable New Glenn in 2021. Apple would have to go with much more expensive traditional launchers.
- waiseristy 7y agoWhy would Apple not be able to buy Falcon 9 launches? SpaceX is in the business of selling rocket launches.
- kjksf 7y agoThey could but I'm guessing SpaceX margins on rocket launches are ~50% (to make it economical in the face of risk of blowing up billion-dollar payloads). Which means that if Apple pays $60 million for a single launch, it costs SpaceX $30 million to do it. Or to put it differently: if Apple was competing with SpaceX, then every Apple launch would sponsor one SpaceX launch. With those economics, it would be hard for Apple (or anyone else) to compete with SpaceX in this business. All else being equal, their cost to create the satellite network would be substantially bigger which means they would have to charge more or have much lower margins and profits than SpaceX.
- BurningFrog 7y agoRight. This seems a lot like a strategy to use/monetize spare launch capacity.
- pinewurst 7y agoRemember though that Blue Origin is a completely separate corporation from Amazon. That makes me wonder if a Amazon-Blue Origin tie up would be consider self-dealing which is strongly frowned upon.
- falcon2_0 7y agoIf you think this is anything other than post-capitalist market capture disguised as philanthropy, I have some bad news for you.
- staticautomatic 7y agoWhat's "post-" about it?
- falcon2_0 7y agoCapitalism is free markets, but that quickly devolves into regulatory capture and such, as per Adam Smith, Karl Marx, et. al.
- staticautomatic 7y agoIf only!
- falcon2_0 7y agoThey all want to go to space because guillotines need gravity to work.
- irjustin 7y agoHow is this disguised as philanthropy? He literally is quoted as "a very good business for Amazon"
- nsx147 7y agoIt would be great if Amazon Prime included internet access. One time fee for the dish, works with all their in-home stuff. Didn't FB try do this and scrapped the project?
- captn3m0 7y agoThat was balloons
- jcims 7y agoGoogle was (ba)loons, FB was solar powered high altitude drones.
- notyourwork 7y agoAs I recall Facebook tried to commandeer the “internet” for Indian citizens by provided a subset of the real internet.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoSo... Was the subset just all of Facebook and nothing else?
- nyolfen 7y agoa few dozen websites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Available_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org#Available_website...
- mNovak 7y agoWould have liked a more substantive article on the subject...
- bamboozled 7y agoSeriously, let’s spend billions in renewable investment and government lobbying to fix the climate crisis. Wow, this is getting silly. Broadband internet is just not a fundamental human need, a habitable planet is.
- dragosmocrii 7y agoSadly, I think there's no incentive for doing well for the planet to get business value. Maybe when we'll run out of clean drinking water, or land, or clean air, then traditional businesses will invest in R&D and come up with ideas and products to sell you to alleviate the pain.. that's the the goal of a business. what we need is more philantropists. Jeff Bezos is not a philanthropist. Bill Gates on the other hand - more likely..
- staunch 7y agoThe goal of a business is approximately whatever the founders decide to make it. The view that there is something inherently exploitative about all corporations is just naive. Tesla is selling billions worth of cars while doing good for the planet. They have also triggered a technological revolution that will do more than any government or the UN could ever do with regulations. If Bezos successfully ushers in an era where toxic industrial work is moved to space that could do more for the planet than almost anything imaginable. And that is his goal with Blue Origin. These are the good actors. The bad actors are the Koch Brothers, coal plants, Walmart, the old car companies, etc.
- walrus01 7y agoBringing several Mbps internet to the farthest most unreachable corners of the earth, economically enough for low income people to use, is a net social good. you would understand if you had ever worked in geostationary satellite based internet access and seen how costly it is.
- bamboozled 7y agoI'm not disagreeing with that, but let's talk about priorities. If you're living in some of the farthest most unreachable corners of the earth, you;re life is probably more and more in-danger from the threats of climate change through drought, fires etc. Yet another plan to launch thousands of satellites into orbit so it's easier to order more junk from Amazon is a low priority for those people I'm afraid.