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I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of

I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.

kilroy123 7y ago
Well I always thought they were insane not utilizing SpaceX for launching and bringing down costs. Iridium used SpaceX very successfully to get their entire new constellation up.
- jagged-chisel 7y ago
  I was initially confused because I missed “new” - Iridium’s new constellation is Iridium NEXT.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  IIRC from an article that I read, there has been some personal antipathy between one of the OneWeb founders and SpaceX/Elon, that made them avoid SpaceX & go for much more expensive & less flexible "conventional" launch providers.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    SpaceX and OneWeb were actually once partners. OneWeb didn't like SpaceX's more ambitious plans (or SpaceX wasn't satisfied with OneWeb's less ambitious plans), so they split.
phkahler 7y ago
>> The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. As Elon recently said, they have ALL gone under. The goal of Starlink is to not go bankrupt. Well, it's actually to fund the Mars mission, but a first step is to not go bankrupt like everyone else did.
davisr 7y ago
And that goes to show that our capitalist economy is an abject failure, partly due to a government that doesn't enforce anti-trust law, so monopolies become favored. There is no way for anyone to compete.
- nickik 7y ago
  This is so incredibly wrong that it blows my mind. SpaceX within 10 years make launch prices 5-10x cheaper, maybe that deserves them having a great position in the market for a while. This is exactly prove that in a capitalist system major gains in productivity can happen even to high capital industries. If anything this is just another example of capitalist greatness, an immigrant who literally sleeped in his office and showered at the gym 20 years ago is transforming Spaceflight. People are so incredibly short sighted, a successful company, 4 years after people stop saying 'they will go bankrupt soon' its 'omg this company will literally control the WHOLE EARTH. The predictions of Karl Marx were correct, capital is inherently centralizing is correct, here comes SpaceX like the harbinger of materialism inherent truth.' We have been threw this cycle so many times and it never makes much sense, but there never seem to be a shortage of people that will talk about anti-trust and breaking up any company that is successful. Go and to some historical research on Anti-Trust, if anything it was a political tool the Progressive Party to go after successful business. And by absolutely no definition what so ever is SpaceX a monopoly in literally anything.
- InTheArena 7y ago
  ULA, Boeing and Lockheed didn’t kill them. SpaceX did.
InTheArena 7y ago
On the wrong side of reusable rockets. It’s as simple as that. All the other major players are backed by immense private wealth and reusable rockets, or government support, or they likewise would be going out of business (and some soon will).
InTheArena 7y ago
It’s worth noting that when the started, there was not reusable rockets, and Tesla was not in the satellite business.
- gpm 7y ago
  It looks like Oneweb first received funding in January 2015. It looks like they had started working on the idea in 2014. (Per Wikipedia) SpaceX's first propulsive landing attempt was September 2013, by the end of 2014 they had twice succeeded at controlled descents over the ocean. Their first landing on a solid surface (i.e. actual recovery of the booster) was late 2015. So yes, there weren't yet reusable rockets, but the writing was very clearly on the wall. Tesla still isn't in the satellite business unless you count the roadster that SpaceX launched, Starlink is part of SpaceX. It was announced at roughly the same time as Oneweb receiving funding (January 2015). My understanding is that Oneweb and SpaceX had been in talks that broke down, so they knew it was coming.
  - fragmede 7y ago
    > the writing was very clearly on the wall. With the gift of hindsight that's true, but I disagree, it wasn't clear back then. Keep in mind that the concept of reusable rockets has been around ever since the first rocket launch around the 1960's, and we (humanity) threw away the entire thing. It took SpaceX to make reusable rockets real, but not for lack of trying on the part of Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (in the US). SpaceX had only a very small (single digits) number of test launches they could do before running out of money. A couple more grid fin unknowns causing failures and SpaceX would have gone bankrupt so it wasn't clear back then. Also keep in mind that back in 2015, it wasn't clear that Tesla was necessarily going to be successful either. The Model 3 was still a couple years away so nothing was really proven, publicly. What would have happened if SpaceX had run out of money, we'll never know, but in the interim 5 years, the reusability of SpaceX's rockets has become clear. Despite all the shorts betting against Tesla, Elon Musk succeeded and smart money has learned not to bet against him, whether it be SpaceX or Tesla.
    - 7y ago
brandmeyer 7y ago
Many companies pass through a time where the current business is marginal, but sustainable growth is just around the corner. COVID-19's worldwide supply and transport disruption coming at just the wrong time can absolutely sink a business that was skirting too close to the edge.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  And this includes Elon Musk's Tesla who was once a week from bankruptcy and wouldn't have made it through a crisis like this one.
  - mrarg 7y ago
    Though that was actually during the last crisis like this one (financial crisis of 2008). https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-2018-8?r=US&IR=T#2009-the-great-recession-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-201...
- ghaff 7y ago
  Or they could be one of the many companies that were all spooled up and had spent a wad of cash to launch at one of the many events of the late winter and spring that were cancelled. Sure, they'll do what they can but a lot of money and effort pretty much went down the drain and a lot of startups don't have that kind of margin.
Robotbeat 7y ago
ALL companies who attempted to launch massive satellite constellations ran out of money, often pushed by financial markets around the dotcom bubble bursting. Many of them ended up being salvaged afterward and many are still operating today (some at a profit) after going through bankruptcy: ORBCOMM, Iridium, Globalstar. All three have launched second generation satellite constellations. Bankruptcy doesn't have to mean society loses their value. I'm as big of a SpaceX fan as anyone, but I hope we manage to salvage OneWeb out of bankruptcy and get at least the minimal constellation up somehow. Maybe they'll be able to switch to cheaper reusable launch providers like SpaceX or New Glenn as part of the bankruptcy.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  OneWeb is more likely to end up like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic -- not much value has been created yet, just a partially launched constellation with costs still rising.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    Unfortunately.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail Not necessarily. SpaceX has an advantage in owning the rails. It isn’t, however, decisive. OneWeb failed to bring any advantages of its own to the table. It compounded its launch and first mover disadvantages by launching with ArianeSpace. It gave away any satellite advantages by using Airbus to make the birds. There simply wasn’t any strategic ground for OneWeb to stand on.
- csboyer 7y ago
  It seems that they outsourced almost everything to different companies rather than taking expertise in house. SpaceX seems to be doing everything themselves. Amazon seems to be doing a lot but will likely outsource launching of the birds. Wouldn't be surprised if they fly on SpaceX rockets in part....
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    The default assumption is that Amazon's Project Kuiper would launch on Bezos' Blue Origin rockets.
- galacticaactual 7y ago
  > It isn’t, however, decisive. It would seem that in this case, it was.
fludlight 7y ago
Almost all bankruptcies in the next two years are going to blame COVID-19. "It wasn't us, it was the $external_factor" is a way for management to avoid blame. In some cases (restaurants especially) the health crisis has wrecked businesses that have been profitable for many years and the external factor is legitimately the main cause. In other instances, the company was already headed toward bankruptcy and the virus is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
- Amygaz 7y ago
  This is highly opinionated, since I don't know Greg Wyler at all, but I do remember his Terracom broadband satellite effort in Rwanda, which looked noble at first, but was more a pretext to pay himself a generous salary, than doing anything. So when he started OneWeb and then Ob3 (or vice-versa) I was skeptical. Now, reading about OW, and how it was mostly a middleman, I would say I am not surprised at all that he would pull this one and blame a virus. With chapter 11 he gets to protect his equity and compensation I expect him to rebound, with even better compensation.
  - nujabe 7y ago
    I've know and seen Wyler's work in Rwanda first hand and seen the impact it has had on my villages and schools around the country, having lived there for a time in the mid 2000s. I have no knowledge of the financials of Terracom or the success of it's business model but I'm curious to know more about what exactly made you say that this was all a pretext to enrich himself?
- chewz 7y ago
  Most companies keep some skeletons in the closet and times like this are opportunity for CFOs to get rid of them hidden in quarterly report. This is one in 10 years chance to reprice failed aqusitions, investments went bad, mismanaged opportunities etc. And blame unpredictable, external circumstances. If we are to show loss on a quarterly report let it be large one-time figure. Heck we can even qualify for some bailout money.

kilroy123 7y ago

Well I always thought they were insane not utilizing SpaceX for launching and bringing down costs. Iridium used SpaceX very successfully to get their entire new constellation up.

jagged-chisel 7y ago
I was initially confused because I missed “new” - Iridium’s new constellation is Iridium NEXT.
m4rtink 7y ago
IIRC from an article that I read, there has been some personal antipathy between one of the OneWeb founders and SpaceX/Elon, that made them avoid SpaceX & go for much more expensive & less flexible "conventional" launch providers.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  SpaceX and OneWeb were actually once partners. OneWeb didn't like SpaceX's more ambitious plans (or SpaceX wasn't satisfied with OneWeb's less ambitious plans), so they split.

phkahler 7y ago

>> The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. As Elon recently said, they have ALL gone under. The goal of Starlink is to not go bankrupt. Well, it's actually to fund the Mars mission, but a first step is to not go bankrupt like everyone else did.

davisr 7y ago

And that goes to show that our capitalist economy is an abject failure, partly due to a government that doesn't enforce anti-trust law, so monopolies become favored. There is no way for anyone to compete.

nickik 7y ago
This is so incredibly wrong that it blows my mind. SpaceX within 10 years make launch prices 5-10x cheaper, maybe that deserves them having a great position in the market for a while. This is exactly prove that in a capitalist system major gains in productivity can happen even to high capital industries. If anything this is just another example of capitalist greatness, an immigrant who literally sleeped in his office and showered at the gym 20 years ago is transforming Spaceflight. People are so incredibly short sighted, a successful company, 4 years after people stop saying 'they will go bankrupt soon' its 'omg this company will literally control the WHOLE EARTH. The predictions of Karl Marx were correct, capital is inherently centralizing is correct, here comes SpaceX like the harbinger of materialism inherent truth.' We have been threw this cycle so many times and it never makes much sense, but there never seem to be a shortage of people that will talk about anti-trust and breaking up any company that is successful. Go and to some historical research on Anti-Trust, if anything it was a political tool the Progressive Party to go after successful business. And by absolutely no definition what so ever is SpaceX a monopoly in literally anything.
InTheArena 7y ago
ULA, Boeing and Lockheed didn’t kill them. SpaceX did.

InTheArena 7y ago

On the wrong side of reusable rockets. It’s as simple as that. All the other major players are backed by immense private wealth and reusable rockets, or government support, or they likewise would be going out of business (and some soon will).

InTheArena 7y ago

It’s worth noting that when the started, there was not reusable rockets, and Tesla was not in the satellite business.

gpm 7y ago
It looks like Oneweb first received funding in January 2015. It looks like they had started working on the idea in 2014. (Per Wikipedia) SpaceX's first propulsive landing attempt was September 2013, by the end of 2014 they had twice succeeded at controlled descents over the ocean. Their first landing on a solid surface (i.e. actual recovery of the booster) was late 2015. So yes, there weren't yet reusable rockets, but the writing was very clearly on the wall. Tesla still isn't in the satellite business unless you count the roadster that SpaceX launched, Starlink is part of SpaceX. It was announced at roughly the same time as Oneweb receiving funding (January 2015). My understanding is that Oneweb and SpaceX had been in talks that broke down, so they knew it was coming.
- fragmede 7y ago
  > the writing was very clearly on the wall. With the gift of hindsight that's true, but I disagree, it wasn't clear back then. Keep in mind that the concept of reusable rockets has been around ever since the first rocket launch around the 1960's, and we (humanity) threw away the entire thing. It took SpaceX to make reusable rockets real, but not for lack of trying on the part of Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (in the US). SpaceX had only a very small (single digits) number of test launches they could do before running out of money. A couple more grid fin unknowns causing failures and SpaceX would have gone bankrupt so it wasn't clear back then. Also keep in mind that back in 2015, it wasn't clear that Tesla was necessarily going to be successful either. The Model 3 was still a couple years away so nothing was really proven, publicly. What would have happened if SpaceX had run out of money, we'll never know, but in the interim 5 years, the reusability of SpaceX's rockets has become clear. Despite all the shorts betting against Tesla, Elon Musk succeeded and smart money has learned not to bet against him, whether it be SpaceX or Tesla.
  - 7y ago

brandmeyer 7y ago

Many companies pass through a time where the current business is marginal, but sustainable growth is just around the corner. COVID-19's worldwide supply and transport disruption coming at just the wrong time can absolutely sink a business that was skirting too close to the edge.

lonelappde 7y ago
And this includes Elon Musk's Tesla who was once a week from bankruptcy and wouldn't have made it through a crisis like this one.
- mrarg 7y ago
  Though that was actually during the last crisis like this one (financial crisis of 2008). https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-2018-8?r=US&IR=T#2009-the-great-recession-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-201...
ghaff 7y ago
Or they could be one of the many companies that were all spooled up and had spent a wad of cash to launch at one of the many events of the late winter and spring that were cancelled. Sure, they'll do what they can but a lot of money and effort pretty much went down the drain and a lot of startups don't have that kind of margin.

Robotbeat 7y ago

ALL companies who attempted to launch massive satellite constellations ran out of money, often pushed by financial markets around the dotcom bubble bursting. Many of them ended up being salvaged afterward and many are still operating today (some at a profit) after going through bankruptcy: ORBCOMM, Iridium, Globalstar. All three have launched second generation satellite constellations. Bankruptcy doesn't have to mean society loses their value. I'm as big of a SpaceX fan as anyone, but I hope we manage to salvage OneWeb out of bankruptcy and get at least the minimal constellation up somehow. Maybe they'll be able to switch to cheaper reusable launch providers like SpaceX or New Glenn as part of the bankruptcy.

greglindahl 7y ago
OneWeb is more likely to end up like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic -- not much value has been created yet, just a partially launched constellation with costs still rising.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Unfortunately.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail Not necessarily. SpaceX has an advantage in owning the rails. It isn’t, however, decisive. OneWeb failed to bring any advantages of its own to the table. It compounded its launch and first mover disadvantages by launching with ArianeSpace. It gave away any satellite advantages by using Airbus to make the birds. There simply wasn’t any strategic ground for OneWeb to stand on.

csboyer 7y ago
It seems that they outsourced almost everything to different companies rather than taking expertise in house. SpaceX seems to be doing everything themselves. Amazon seems to be doing a lot but will likely outsource launching of the birds. Wouldn't be surprised if they fly on SpaceX rockets in part....
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  The default assumption is that Amazon's Project Kuiper would launch on Bezos' Blue Origin rockets.
galacticaactual 7y ago
> It isn’t, however, decisive. It would seem that in this case, it was.

fludlight 7y ago

Almost all bankruptcies in the next two years are going to blame COVID-19. "It wasn't us, it was the $external_factor" is a way for management to avoid blame. In some cases (restaurants especially) the health crisis has wrecked businesses that have been profitable for many years and the external factor is legitimately the main cause. In other instances, the company was already headed toward bankruptcy and the virus is just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Amygaz 7y ago
This is highly opinionated, since I don't know Greg Wyler at all, but I do remember his Terracom broadband satellite effort in Rwanda, which looked noble at first, but was more a pretext to pay himself a generous salary, than doing anything. So when he started OneWeb and then Ob3 (or vice-versa) I was skeptical. Now, reading about OW, and how it was mostly a middleman, I would say I am not surprised at all that he would pull this one and blame a virus. With chapter 11 he gets to protect his equity and compensation I expect him to rebound, with even better compensation.
- nujabe 7y ago
  I've know and seen Wyler's work in Rwanda first hand and seen the impact it has had on my villages and schools around the country, having lived there for a time in the mid 2000s. I have no knowledge of the financials of Terracom or the success of it's business model but I'm curious to know more about what exactly made you say that this was all a pretext to enrich himself?
chewz 7y ago
Most companies keep some skeletons in the closet and times like this are opportunity for CFOs to get rid of them hidden in quarterly report. This is one in 10 years chance to reprice failed aqusitions, investments went bad, mismanaged opportunities etc. And blame unpredictable, external circumstances. If we are to show loss on a quarterly report let it be large one-time figure. Heck we can even qualify for some bailout money.