8 ms·

Amazon's Kuiper responds to SpaceX on FCC request

gnzoidberg 6y ago
The bottom line is that Spacex f**d up the design, wanna change it now, and Amazon is like "haha too late suckers..."
Jonanin 6y ago
This line says it all: Goldman highlighted that Amazon representatives have had “30 meetings to oppose SpaceX” but “no meetings to authorize its own system,” which he interpreted as an attempt to stifle competition.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  That’s unverified and coming from the SpaceX guy. I’m not sure it says it all.
tectonic 6y ago
Project Kuiper is so far behind Starlink at this point that this kind of regulatory maneuvering is pretty laughable. (As compared to regulating the brightness of LEO satellites, which is very much needed. In this regard, allowing SpaceX to lower the orbit of these satellites is actually good for astronomy. We talk about this stuff pretty frequently in Orbital Index [https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com].)
- gnzoidberg 6y ago
  Amazon is not Blue Origin. The amount of ignorance in these threads is baffling.
  - tectonic 6y ago
    Where did I say that it was?
- ABeeSea 6y ago
  The head of Kuiper and most of the senior team led Starlink until Musk allegedly fired them for moving too slow and being too cautious. So Amazon being operationally behind isn't exactly surprising. >Musk had fired at least seven members of the program's senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites, according to the two SpaceX employees with direct knowledge of the situation. https://www.businessinsider.com/r-musk-shakes-up-spacex-in-race-to-make-satellite-launch-window-sources-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/r-musk-shakes-up-spacex-in-r...
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    Gotta move at Musk speed, makes sense.
    - meibo 6y ago
      If anything, it seems to work out for him at SpaceX. Speed and latency measured with the Starlink beta/GA are unparalleled at the moment, yet to see if they worsen with an increase of userbase.
      - brianwawok 6y ago
        And at Tesla. Unclear why my statement was controversial but hey...
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    Could also be SpaceX trying to put a different spin on the story? Bezos might have poached them from right under Musk's nose for all we know.
    - NortySpock 6y ago
      Maybe, but my sense as an outsider was that Starlink was moving at a snail's pace and was essentially PR vaporware prior to these firings. Granted, there's a lot of engineering going on behind the scenes, but the timing is perhaps suggestive... Look at the timeline: Jan 2015 -- announce plans Jan 2017 -- Starlink trademarked Feb 2018 - test flight of two satellites May 2019 - Launch 60 of the v0.9 model June 2019 - fire 7 people Oct 2019 - this article Nov 2019 - Launch 60 of the v1.0 model 7 Jan 2020 - 60 satellites launched 29 Jan 2020 - 60 satellites launched 17 Feb 2020 - 60 satellites launched 18 Mar 2020 - 60 satellites launched 22 Apr 2020 - 60 satellites launched 04 Jun 2020 - 60 satellites launched etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
- gamblor956 6y ago
  You have it exactly backwards. Starlink is attempting to block competition by moving into orbits not assigned to it but which have been targeted by competitors. Starlink had the option of using the lower orbit when it designed its system, and chose not to even consider that orbit until Kuiper was announced. Every other company in the space is opposed to this move, because Starlink's unilateral reconfiguration would interfere with nearly every other company's operations. Part of the FCC's mandate is to prevent that from occurring, and SpaceX absolutely deserves to be slapped down for its anticompetitive behavior.
  - m463 6y ago
    Come on, starlink already has 1000 satellites in the lower orbit.
- cozzyd 6y ago
  I'm sure Starlink could try to purchase the regulatory allotments from Kuiper/Kepler/etc. if they so wanted.
tpmx 6y ago
Not exactly sure about the RF details here (probably very few people are), but, as a theoretical exercise, should we really allow the first mover to just grab what's available? Why?
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  Why would we want to have 3-5 competitors for same thing tho? That would just make 10x more expensive for everyone. Same with cellular networks. There's some theoretical sharing, but in practice we're covering same area 3x times at 3x slower total bandwidth... Some governments are starting to realise this is huge ripoff and start their own networks with MVNO's, similar how copper/fibre telco's and power companies are have been sorted for decades. Unsure why space should be different. Sat tech is reasonably simple, it's just launch cost where competition is at. Same way the only competitior between cell network operators is tower installation (third party) and support (abhorrent).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Yes, let's all revert to a planned economy with a single government-owned provider. That always worked out so well in the past.
    - dzhiurgis 6y ago
      Fair distribution of limited resources works perfectly in countries with best quality of life. Land, space and radio spectrum is a limited resource. Starlink wouldn't even exist if USA would regulated telco's same as power companies.
- nickik 6y ago
  Nobody is preventing anything. Starlink went threw all the process to get regulated and now wants to slightly lower in the range they can operate in. It does not inherently prevent anybody else from operating. In every orbit their are many different sats and sat providers operating. Amazon claims are entirely based on their inability to run their theoretical system when SpaceX is there. If their system is that fragile, then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to launch it in the first place. SpaceX could have equally claimed the planned Amazon system was interfering with them, but they didn't.
Jabbles 6y ago
How is Amazon planning to launch their satellites? Using Blue Origin?
- gnzoidberg 6y ago
  Not necessarily Blue Origin
drummer 6y ago
Typical Bezos tactics of trying to fuck the competition. Only this time, he has a formidable opponent and is going to crash and burn.
danpalmer 6y ago
SpaceX have demonstrated an orbital launch capability, satellite operation capability, satellite de-orbit capability, and scheduled launches in the near term. Amazon have none of these capabilities and barely even a plan to get there by the deadline in 6 years time. I'm sure both sides are as bad as each other on the competition aspect, after all it's Elon Musk and Amazon/Bezos, I can't imagine two worse people for that. But it does seem a little unfair that Amazon have barely any proven track record and could prevent SpaceX from furthering their very proven track record. Edit: as much as Blue Origin may play into the plans for this, they have not reached orbit, and do not have an operational rocket suitable for this (yet). Maybe Amazon have signed a deal for launches, but otherwise just being owned by the same eccentric billionaire shouldn't really suggest the ability for the company to pull it off.
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  > eccentric billionaire Looking at richest people of the world right now, none of them strike as eccentric. Average plumber or musician is order of magnitude more eccentric or radical.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Genuine question, related but not by a lot. How likely is it that Starlink and whatever amazon is planning will end up polluting space with satellite garbage that will make future missions difficult/impossible due to high velocity collisions?
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    My answer as an interested layman but not an expert: Yes this is a huge concern, which is why attention is being paid to how these satellites will de-orbit. Up to maybe 10 years ago satellites were just put up there and at best would move out of the way a bit when they reached end of life, but most would just stay. Plus lots of things were just discarded from mission, or lost accidentally, creating more junk. All of this made space junk a big and growing concern... However, now everyone is very aware, so satellites have de-orbiting built in (and I think this might be a legal requirement now), orbits may be chosen with ease of de-orbiting in mind, more care is taken to letting junk accumulate, several companies are working on clearup mechanisms, etc. All this may mean that the worst-case scenario doesn't ever actually play out, and it's not that big a deal in the long run. We'll have to wait and see, but there will be a lot of money behind making this as little of an issue as possible so that the space industry can really take off.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
Regardless of these quarrels among competitors, Starlink is doing impressive things. From the website[1]: Starlink is now delivering initial beta service both domestically and internationally, and will continue expansion to near global coverage of the populated world in 2021. They're also going to minimize their contribution to space junk: At end of life, the satellites will utilize their on-board propulsion system to deorbit over the course of a few months. In the unlikely event the propulsion system becomes inoperable, the satellites will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere within 1-5 years, significantly less than the hundreds or thousands of years required at higher altitudes. Also interesting is that they're using "ion thrusters powered by krypton" and claim this is the first spacecraft to use this propulsion method. If they can boost data transfer speed from 40-60Mb/s currently to N gigabits/second, perhaps will provide stiff competition to conventional cell carriers. These are exciting times. 1. https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/
- cozzyd 6y ago
  The satellites are much farther away than cell towers and operating at a much higher frequency, meaning your link budget tens of dB worse. So short answer, is no, it's impractical for cell phones.
- mdasen 6y ago
  It probably won't provide competition to cell carriers for a few reasons. Starlink's equipment is large and needs a direct view of the sky. Their app needs to take photos of where you're positioning the receiver/transmitter to make sure there are no obstructions. The fact that they're using satellites means that they can get very broad coverage, but between the fact that it's satellite and the fact that they're using very high frequency spectrum means that it requires line-of-sight. From what I can see, Starlink is using a lot more power to transmit than cell phones are really capable of given the battery constraints. I think the more likely possibility is Starlink offering backhaul for rural cell sites where it might be cost prohibitive to run fiber. However, I'm not sure it would be more cost effective to use satellite backhaul than terrestrial microwave or fiber. Satellites aren't cheap, but who knows. In terms of boosting the data transfer speed, that won't be simple. Terrestrial wireless (like cell carriers) can offer good speeds because each cell tower is covering a very limited area. If you're 20 miles away from me, we'll be connecting to different cell towers and therefore can use the same radio spectrum without interfering with each other. With satellites, a lot more people will be sharing the same radio spectrum. Now, I'm sure Starlink is operating under the idea that they can launch lots of satellites and get decent spectrum re-use. However, cell carriers have around 80,000 cell sites each. Starlink is only planning on launching 10,000-15,000 and hoping to get permission to get up to 30,000. That still means a lot more sharing of the same spectrum. You can get higher speed by using more spectrum. However, that spectrum needs to be licensed, it isn't always cheap, and other people want to license it too. The way that the gigabit speeds from wireless carriers work is by using many hundreds of MHz of spectrum that can't go very far (because it gets disrupted by things like buildings, trees, etc.). Lower frequency spectrum can go further (since it penetrates objects better), but there's a pretty limited amount of it and most of it is already spoken for (whether that's TV, FM radio, current wireless service, etc.). I think Starlink will provide a good option for many people who don't live in areas well-served by current internet options. It's a huge jump to believe that it will offer competition to cell carriers. It just isn't that type of technology and you run into limits that you can't really get around. That's not to say that Starlink isn't important. It is important for many people who don't have access to good internet in the US and around the world, but it isn't going to provide competition for your cell phone provider.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jhowell 6y ago
Anyone know how obsolescence won't create space debris in this emerging competition.

The bottom line is that Spacex f**d up the design, wanna change it now, and Amazon is like "haha too late suckers..."

This line says it all: Goldman highlighted that Amazon representatives have had “30 meetings to oppose SpaceX” but “no meetings to authorize its own system,” which he interpreted as an attempt to stifle competition.

alphabettsy 6y ago
That’s unverified and coming from the SpaceX guy. I’m not sure it says it all.

tectonic 6y ago

Project Kuiper is so far behind Starlink at this point that this kind of regulatory maneuvering is pretty laughable. (As compared to regulating the brightness of LEO satellites, which is very much needed. In this regard, allowing SpaceX to lower the orbit of these satellites is actually good for astronomy. We talk about this stuff pretty frequently in Orbital Index [https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com].)

gnzoidberg 6y ago
Amazon is not Blue Origin. The amount of ignorance in these threads is baffling.
- tectonic 6y ago
  Where did I say that it was?
ABeeSea 6y ago
The head of Kuiper and most of the senior team led Starlink until Musk allegedly fired them for moving too slow and being too cautious. So Amazon being operationally behind isn't exactly surprising. >Musk had fired at least seven members of the program's senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites, according to the two SpaceX employees with direct knowledge of the situation. https://www.businessinsider.com/r-musk-shakes-up-spacex-in-race-to-make-satellite-launch-window-sources-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/r-musk-shakes-up-spacex-in-r...
- brianwawok 6y ago
  Gotta move at Musk speed, makes sense.
  - meibo 6y ago
    If anything, it seems to work out for him at SpaceX. Speed and latency measured with the Starlink beta/GA are unparalleled at the moment, yet to see if they worsen with an increase of userbase.
    - brianwawok 6y ago
      And at Tesla. Unclear why my statement was controversial but hey...
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Could also be SpaceX trying to put a different spin on the story? Bezos might have poached them from right under Musk's nose for all we know.
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    Maybe, but my sense as an outsider was that Starlink was moving at a snail's pace and was essentially PR vaporware prior to these firings. Granted, there's a lot of engineering going on behind the scenes, but the timing is perhaps suggestive... Look at the timeline: Jan 2015 -- announce plans Jan 2017 -- Starlink trademarked Feb 2018 - test flight of two satellites May 2019 - Launch 60 of the v0.9 model June 2019 - fire 7 people Oct 2019 - this article Nov 2019 - Launch 60 of the v1.0 model 7 Jan 2020 - 60 satellites launched 29 Jan 2020 - 60 satellites launched 17 Feb 2020 - 60 satellites launched 18 Mar 2020 - 60 satellites launched 22 Apr 2020 - 60 satellites launched 04 Jun 2020 - 60 satellites launched etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
gamblor956 6y ago
You have it exactly backwards. Starlink is attempting to block competition by moving into orbits not assigned to it but which have been targeted by competitors. Starlink had the option of using the lower orbit when it designed its system, and chose not to even consider that orbit until Kuiper was announced. Every other company in the space is opposed to this move, because Starlink's unilateral reconfiguration would interfere with nearly every other company's operations. Part of the FCC's mandate is to prevent that from occurring, and SpaceX absolutely deserves to be slapped down for its anticompetitive behavior.
- m463 6y ago
  Come on, starlink already has 1000 satellites in the lower orbit.
cozzyd 6y ago
I'm sure Starlink could try to purchase the regulatory allotments from Kuiper/Kepler/etc. if they so wanted.

tpmx 6y ago

Not exactly sure about the RF details here (probably very few people are), but, as a theoretical exercise, should we really allow the first mover to just grab what's available? Why?

dzhiurgis 6y ago
Why would we want to have 3-5 competitors for same thing tho? That would just make 10x more expensive for everyone. Same with cellular networks. There's some theoretical sharing, but in practice we're covering same area 3x times at 3x slower total bandwidth... Some governments are starting to realise this is huge ripoff and start their own networks with MVNO's, similar how copper/fibre telco's and power companies are have been sorted for decades. Unsure why space should be different. Sat tech is reasonably simple, it's just launch cost where competition is at. Same way the only competitior between cell network operators is tower installation (third party) and support (abhorrent).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tpmx 6y ago
  Yes, let's all revert to a planned economy with a single government-owned provider. That always worked out so well in the past.
  - dzhiurgis 6y ago
    Fair distribution of limited resources works perfectly in countries with best quality of life. Land, space and radio spectrum is a limited resource. Starlink wouldn't even exist if USA would regulated telco's same as power companies.
nickik 6y ago
Nobody is preventing anything. Starlink went threw all the process to get regulated and now wants to slightly lower in the range they can operate in. It does not inherently prevent anybody else from operating. In every orbit their are many different sats and sat providers operating. Amazon claims are entirely based on their inability to run their theoretical system when SpaceX is there. If their system is that fragile, then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to launch it in the first place. SpaceX could have equally claimed the planned Amazon system was interfering with them, but they didn't.

Jabbles 6y ago

How is Amazon planning to launch their satellites? Using Blue Origin?

gnzoidberg 6y ago
Not necessarily Blue Origin

drummer 6y ago

Typical Bezos tactics of trying to fuck the competition. Only this time, he has a formidable opponent and is going to crash and burn.

danpalmer 6y ago

SpaceX have demonstrated an orbital launch capability, satellite operation capability, satellite de-orbit capability, and scheduled launches in the near term. Amazon have none of these capabilities and barely even a plan to get there by the deadline in 6 years time. I'm sure both sides are as bad as each other on the competition aspect, after all it's Elon Musk and Amazon/Bezos, I can't imagine two worse people for that. But it does seem a little unfair that Amazon have barely any proven track record and could prevent SpaceX from furthering their very proven track record. Edit: as much as Blue Origin may play into the plans for this, they have not reached orbit, and do not have an operational rocket suitable for this (yet). Maybe Amazon have signed a deal for launches, but otherwise just being owned by the same eccentric billionaire shouldn't really suggest the ability for the company to pull it off.

dzhiurgis 6y ago
> eccentric billionaire Looking at richest people of the world right now, none of them strike as eccentric. Average plumber or musician is order of magnitude more eccentric or radical.
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Genuine question, related but not by a lot. How likely is it that Starlink and whatever amazon is planning will end up polluting space with satellite garbage that will make future missions difficult/impossible due to high velocity collisions?
- danpalmer 6y ago
  My answer as an interested layman but not an expert: Yes this is a huge concern, which is why attention is being paid to how these satellites will de-orbit. Up to maybe 10 years ago satellites were just put up there and at best would move out of the way a bit when they reached end of life, but most would just stay. Plus lots of things were just discarded from mission, or lost accidentally, creating more junk. All of this made space junk a big and growing concern... However, now everyone is very aware, so satellites have de-orbiting built in (and I think this might be a legal requirement now), orbits may be chosen with ease of de-orbiting in mind, more care is taken to letting junk accumulate, several companies are working on clearup mechanisms, etc. All this may mean that the worst-case scenario doesn't ever actually play out, and it's not that big a deal in the long run. We'll have to wait and see, but there will be a lot of money behind making this as little of an issue as possible so that the space industry can really take off.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

Regardless of these quarrels among competitors, Starlink is doing impressive things. From the website[1]: Starlink is now delivering initial beta service both domestically and internationally, and will continue expansion to near global coverage of the populated world in 2021. They're also going to minimize their contribution to space junk: At end of life, the satellites will utilize their on-board propulsion system to deorbit over the course of a few months. In the unlikely event the propulsion system becomes inoperable, the satellites will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere within 1-5 years, significantly less than the hundreds or thousands of years required at higher altitudes. Also interesting is that they're using "ion thrusters powered by krypton" and claim this is the first spacecraft to use this propulsion method. If they can boost data transfer speed from 40-60Mb/s currently to N gigabits/second, perhaps will provide stiff competition to conventional cell carriers. These are exciting times. 1. https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/

cozzyd 6y ago
The satellites are much farther away than cell towers and operating at a much higher frequency, meaning your link budget tens of dB worse. So short answer, is no, it's impractical for cell phones.
mdasen 6y ago
It probably won't provide competition to cell carriers for a few reasons. Starlink's equipment is large and needs a direct view of the sky. Their app needs to take photos of where you're positioning the receiver/transmitter to make sure there are no obstructions. The fact that they're using satellites means that they can get very broad coverage, but between the fact that it's satellite and the fact that they're using very high frequency spectrum means that it requires line-of-sight. From what I can see, Starlink is using a lot more power to transmit than cell phones are really capable of given the battery constraints. I think the more likely possibility is Starlink offering backhaul for rural cell sites where it might be cost prohibitive to run fiber. However, I'm not sure it would be more cost effective to use satellite backhaul than terrestrial microwave or fiber. Satellites aren't cheap, but who knows. In terms of boosting the data transfer speed, that won't be simple. Terrestrial wireless (like cell carriers) can offer good speeds because each cell tower is covering a very limited area. If you're 20 miles away from me, we'll be connecting to different cell towers and therefore can use the same radio spectrum without interfering with each other. With satellites, a lot more people will be sharing the same radio spectrum. Now, I'm sure Starlink is operating under the idea that they can launch lots of satellites and get decent spectrum re-use. However, cell carriers have around 80,000 cell sites each. Starlink is only planning on launching 10,000-15,000 and hoping to get permission to get up to 30,000. That still means a lot more sharing of the same spectrum. You can get higher speed by using more spectrum. However, that spectrum needs to be licensed, it isn't always cheap, and other people want to license it too. The way that the gigabit speeds from wireless carriers work is by using many hundreds of MHz of spectrum that can't go very far (because it gets disrupted by things like buildings, trees, etc.). Lower frequency spectrum can go further (since it penetrates objects better), but there's a pretty limited amount of it and most of it is already spoken for (whether that's TV, FM radio, current wireless service, etc.). I think Starlink will provide a good option for many people who don't live in areas well-served by current internet options. It's a huge jump to believe that it will offer competition to cell carriers. It just isn't that type of technology and you run into limits that you can't really get around. That's not to say that Starlink isn't important. It is important for many people who don't have access to good internet in the US and around the world, but it isn't going to provide competition for your cell phone provider.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jhowell 6y ago

Anyone know how obsolescence won't create space debris in this emerging competition.