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I don't get how this helps. For startups/individuals, AWS eliminated all capex expenditures except for a single user's computer, which can be had for orders of
by akiselev 7y ago
I don't get how this helps. For startups/individuals, AWS eliminated all capex expenditures except for a single user's computer, which can be had for orders of magnitude cheaper than server hardware, literally. The cost of a cheap but powerful enough laptop or tablet plus keyboard is under $200 now.
Unless you literally do everything by hand (which is a niche, but a tiny one), the cubesat is still going to cost at least 10-50k and the launch 100-400k. In the grand scheme of things, it's not the huge improvement that the rest of AWS infrastructure was.
I think this could be a huge deal for students and academics though. It's not uncommon for companies to give away free secondary/tertiary slots (at least in my experience pre-SpaceX) because the logistics infrastructure is expensive to keep around and they can write off costs that they normally would have to eat. Even if this only shaves 10% off the cost of a sat project, that's a lot of extra money for aerospace clusters like LA, Cal Poly, MIT, etc. and might be enough to start hitting more economies of scale leading to a snowball of development.
Between university machine shops and subsidized labor, Ground Station, and low cost launches once SpaceX volume increases, it might become feasible for student groups to pull off launches for $50-100k total which would be well within the realm of rotary clubs, small-to-medium educational grants, and university budgets.
- d_silin 7y agoYou can get your code on the satellite, effectively getting it for your own use for as little as $0. Right now. This is what ESA OPS-SAT mission is all about.
- wongarsu 7y ago> AWS eliminated all capex expenditures You were always able to just rent servers running in someone else's data center. AWS as we know it launched in 2006, [1] is Hetzner's homepage from 2001 offering dedicated servers for $125/month + $125 setup fee. By 2005 [2] you can get a AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with 1 GB RAM and 350GB traffic for 39€/month. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20010813053224/http://www.hetzner.de/dedi_server.htm#dedi_server.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010813053224/http://www.hetzne... 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20050507034045/http://www.hetzner.de/entry.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050507034045/http://www.hetzne...
- closeparen 7y agoHetzner's pricing is a reflection of the generally lower price level in Europe. Dedicated server providers with US datacenters do exist, but their pricing is much closer to Amazon's.
- namibj 7y agoWhy are they so expensive? German electricity is ~2x as expensive as the cheaper US regions.
- moooo99 7y agoA lot of the cheap Hetzner boxes are using consumer hardware. The EX line starting at 40€/month are using 6th generation i7 CPUs. The AX line is using 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs. If you want actual server-grade hardware, you'll end up with around 90€/month, other hosters are more expensive. I'd assume this would explain some of the price difference
- namibj 7y agoMaybe. But honestly AMD server HW is <50% more expensive than their non-server hardware. Also their consumer chips do offer ECC support, and you don't need anything else really for those applications.
- dexcs 7y agoThey use consumer hardware, that's why they are so cheap.