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Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says
- hourislate 5y agoOne guy is in it to change the world. The other guy is in it to enslave it. I understand Bozo's MO. He wants access to 100's of billions of Tax Payer money over the decades for himself and his cohorts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gpt5 5y agoThis seems on par with the process - SpaceX submits a proposal that is open for public scrutiny, and Amazon, which has the incentives to do so, submits feedback on that proposal. Whether the feedback/concerns from Amazon are warranted, that’s up to the FCC to decide. If they decide incorrectly, that’s when I’d start to bring the torches.
- literallyaduck 5y agoThis seems on par with the process - Amazon submits feedback and the general public who are sick of Amazon's practices submit feedback via pitchforks and torches. We are within our rights to call out Amazon before, after and during FCC review.
- kjksf 5y agoYou fail to make a distinction between following a process and abusing a process. Amazon is clearly abusing the process. It's clear to everyone and their mothers that Amazon is abusing the process. Find me one comment that says "yeah, Amazon is totally right about that and SpaceX should not get the permits they are asking for". Abusing a process warrants a bit different response than "oh well, the rules can be abused so it's just fine for Amazon to abuse them". What makes it even worse is that Bezos publicly complained that this kind of abuse of process is delaying progress in space. It's on tape. You can watch it. To me this is evil: knowing that some things are bad and doing them anyway when it benefits you.
- lostlogin 5y agoAnother way of looking at this - if you can defend against the most motivated detractor, it seems unlikely there are holes in your plan.
- bpodgursky 5y agoExcept by current Blue Origin precedent, the next step is to sue the FCC as soon as the FCC rules against them. Litigators with deep pockets can absolutely abuse the system.
- tw04 5y agoBeing able to defend against them doesn't really matter when their end goal is to tie you up in court long enough for them to be able to actually provide a tangible alternative. Oh, you've got first-mover advantage? How about I force you into court for the next 6 years while I build a competing product?
- amelius 5y agoYeah, seeking the limits of the law. When a human does it, we typically call them an asshole. However, when a company does it, it's totally fine.
- blamestross 5y agoIt is almost like the primary value provided by a company is of being a social obfuscation layer to avoid moral responsibilities that would be obvious if it was replaced with an individual.
- stefan_ 5y agoIs there a comment you wanted to make? Because yes, the process is perfectly well understood. This is about the merits.
- relativ575 5y agoThis isn't on par with the process. Amazon don't want Spacex's application to even reach the public's commenting phase. From the article: > Amazon's request would prevent the commission from seeking public comment on SpaceX's application, SpaceX said. "The commission should recognize this gambit for the obstructionist tactic that it is, reject Amazon's request, and quickly put the amendment out for public comment," SpaceX said. The public-comment process will allow "any issues [to] be fully vetted," SpaceX said.
- mc32 5y agoAnd they are establishing a pattern with this and previously JEDI. At some point, someone has to call their nonsense and blacklist them from gov't procurement for their bad-faith approach.
- staunch 5y agoA good friend of Bezos' (like his brother maybe) needs to pull him aside and tell him how pathetic and sad this tactic is making him look. He's ruining his reputation among people he needs to recruit, like engineers, who might not otherwise fall for the false Bezos-is-mustache-twirling-capitalist narrative. Bezos actually seems to be a fairly good person with good motivations in general. But he's also extremely competitive and willing to hit below the belt like Bill Gates was famous for doing. Elon Musk is doing the Steve Jobs thing, where he out-competes his rivals by creating better products. Bezos should switch over to this approach ASAP, for the good of himself and everyone else.
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- Rebelgecko 5y agoHonestly, I think the main difference between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is their PR. Elon Musk portrays himself as an affable nerd who posts memes on Twitter, whereas Bezos has forgone a hair transplant and embraced the Lex Luthor look. In the early days of SpaceX, they filed a lawsuit asking the government to dismantle the company that was their main competitor for EELV[1] and no one blinked an eye. I don't think it hurt their recruiting at all. If you eventually[2] get good results from your product, it seems like people are willing to overlook litigiousness. [1]: http://images.spaceref.com/news/2005/spacex.summons.and.complaint.pdf http://images.spaceref.com/news/2005/spacex.summons.and.comp... [2]: Emphasis on eventually. Blue Origin hasn't put a payload in orbit yet, but OTOH when SpaceX tried to dissolve ULA neither had they.
- CamperBob2 5y agoThe SpaceX lawsuit against Kistler was nothing like the Blue Origin efforts to kneecap SpaceX. They were fighting for survival in a biased competitive environment against a lazy, unproductive, but politically-connected rival. See https://qz.com/emails/space-business/2049413/ https://qz.com/emails/space-business/2049413/ . Blue Origin is just rolling rocks downhill on the enemy camp, hoping to get lucky. Because hey, it's easier than putting payloads into orbit, right? They need to lead, follow, or GTFO the way.
- echelon 5y agoEven with his billions, Jeff Bezos is such a sore loser. This is just like him whining and moaning about losing JEDI to Microsoft. A contract literally written for Amazon to win. Elon Musk is trying to push the boundaries of what humans do, yet he's got this remarkable jealous space cowboy as a thorn in his side. A hundred problems and now this. I can't imagine the weight on his shoulders. What a sick joke. Amazon has its hands in too many pies anyway and needs to be split up. It's doing real damage to small business and consolidating too much leverage under the hands of the esteemed powerful few. Bezos is a power player and he's dangerous. He's rubbing shoulders with politicians, has a snazzy place near DC to wine and dine them, and has a media outlet to publish hit pieces on his enemies. Total menace.
- r00fus 5y agoAmazon is also very connected in Washington. Hell, Bezos owns the Washington Post. Witness the litigation they got the government to investigate Apple for ebook and got a settlement, when Amazon was the elephant in the room.
- Raineer 5y agoYeah this was truly an abomination. Everything Apple got in trouble for was undeniably illegal and the verdict was justified - but I'd argue the outcome wasn't. Even as an Apple customer, I'll state the "iBooks experience" is clearly shit in almost every way compared to Amazon - yet they get slapped down and Amazon doesn't. The 800-pound gorilla became the 8000-pound now.
- betwixthewires 5y agoI'm not really a bezos or amazon hater, but fact is that amazon uses an anticompetitive business model in almost every endeavor they engage in and this needs to be stopped. I generally like amazon. They've made so many of our lives so much easier. But when they ban sellers from having lower prices on their own sites, wield regulatory agencies against competitors frivolously and things like this, it is unacceptable and this behavior needs to be strongly disincentivized. Also, this anticompetitive stuff is counterproductive, there's a reason they've only ever sent their owner to space while spacex has sent astronauts and is working on their second gen vehicle already.
- marricks 5y agoI disdain the owners of both but Bezos (fairly) seems to get a bit more ire here. The Verge’s piece elaborated that SpaceX hasn’t decided between two configurations and want approval for both even though they will only choose one, so everyone else has to plan around two different configurations. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure but it does seem a bit unfair to add double work for everyone else.
- bpodgursky 5y agoIt's a bit of a stretch to say they haven't decided; one depends on Starship being approved for launch (and working) in the right timeframe, and the other just uses Falcon 9s. I don't think regulators should force companies to be conservative in unrelated technical development when it doesn't have any material impact on others.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ajford 5y agoBut it does have material impact on others. The Starlink constellations in this proposal are large, and any future development by others will have to account for the orbits of these potential constellations. That's 30k new objects to plan for, and with two configurations at play, that means accounting for essentially 60k objects in motion, effectively doubling the work someone would have to do to plan their deployments.
- marricks 5y agoAnd the Falcon rockets are already approved and working now right? So they have a viable way to launch them anyways, it's not like their hands are tied.
- Seanambers 5y agoIf there is limited space, why shouldn't it be first come first serve? Anyways, it is my impression that space is kinda big..
- OneEyedRobot 5y agoI can't guess why Bezos does what he does but have to give him credit for not going the Soros route...WP aside of course. If I were him, I'd avoid anything Musk (who sucks all the air out of the room) is involved in. Build the worlds biggest telescope, work on advanced propulsion technology for launch or interplanetary spacecraft, there's a lot of cool things out there. I doubt that the first investor in anything really cutting edge is going to make a profit, so look for the wow factor.
- travisporter 5y agoThis is Eric Berger's take as well - for example, second stage propulsion, in-space manufacturing for his Dyson cylinders vision, lunar habs would be so much cooler.
- manquer 5y agoIn the space launch and satellite industries there is natural monopoly characteristics. Amazon loves this kind of businesses, be it AWS or delivery they like to use their size in that sector as competitive advantage. They are not trying to be cool, for Bezos this is just another enormous money making play.
- ROARosen 5y agoWithout getting too spaced-out with the the Bezos-Musk dynamics, I personally hate the idea of having private companies getting on the SpaceX bandwagon and clogging up outer space with thousands of satellites.
- hnaccy 5y agoWhy? My impression was that the low orbits used by Starlink and similar are the best place for this since it will all naturally deorbit on short timescales. It's just space who cares if we clog it up some with more useful things.
- verdverm 5y ago"clog" is relative here and space (including LEO) is huge
- toxik 5y agoWe once said the ocean is huge too.
- verdverm 5y agospace >>>> air >> ocean > land It is worth considering the ocean is ~2d while air and space are 3d.
- pdq 5y agoThe ocean is most certainly 3D. The surface is 2D.
- verdverm 5y ago~2d was intended to imply effectively 2d for human activities, even airspace is probably closer to a layered 2d cake than true 3d like deeper space. LEO may be closer to an extension of airspace due to orbits and gravity. Still, due to the exponential growth with respect to the radius, there is significant room in LEO compared to anything terrestrial.
- KorematsuFred 5y agoThese are precisely the areas where government has a role to play but more often than not, this is precisely where FTC, FCC and rest of the alphabet soup seems to fail.
- baron816 5y agoI hope the war between Musk and Bezos eventually gets adopted into a poorly conceived movie or TV mini series.
- teachrdan 5y agoI think Hollywood already made the Musk vs. Bezos movie: "Alien vs. Predator"
- peter303 5y agoOr Dumb and Dumber
- mrinterweb 5y agoAs long as the final battle takes place on Mars, I'd watch that.
- dylan604 5y agoYou're giving Bezos a lot of credit on actually being able to get there.
- manquer 5y agoPerhaps he can take out of page of Netflix using AWS and use spaceX to get there. However going by how projects like Amazon Fire went, they are likely to exit the space once they no longer make headway they want
- panick21 5y agoIts mostly a Musk trying to do things and Bezos trying to stop him. A war would consider them attacking each other. I have not seen a single lawsuit or complaint filed by SpaceX against BlueOrigin or Amazon. The certainty point out in their defense that Amazon is full of shit, but to my knowledge they have not issued complaints about Kupiter.
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- mataug 5y agoAmazon always claims to focus on its customers, and ignore its competitors, this is supposed to be an important facet of the "Its always Day 1" philosophy. These actions, along with Amazon's complaints about Jedi contract seem to imply that amazon has now entered day 2. PS: I understand that the circumstances around the Jedi contract are different. I'm just trying to make a point that Amazon is now focussing more on its competitors rather than its customers.
- polote 5y agoYou can't focus on your competitors when you don't have competitors. Has Amazon, the website, any competitors? They have an unique proposition, like Apple
- zdragnar 5y agoYup, Walmart seems the obvious comparison, at least for retail. Much of what you'll find on Amazon, you can find there, including fast, free shipping.
- polote 5y agoCan you buy things like high end bike parts on Walmart? Or addidas running shoes? Honest question
- saddlerustle 5y agoWalmart.com has third-party sellers, same as Amazon. Both those things are available.
- travoc 5y agoDoes Walmart commingle goods from counterfeit sellers with that of reputable sellers for optimized delivery? Amazon does.
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- knubie 5y agoThis is slightly off-topic but it always seemed to me that FAANG has a vested interest in making internet access as fast, cheap, and highly available as possible (commoditize your compliment). So I wonder why they went in together on some kind of consortium to make that happen. Google tried their hand a few years ago and didn't get very far, and now it seems like it's Amazon's turn. It would make more sense to me if they pooled their resources together, but I guess that's easier said than done.
- gpm 5y agoNote that Google has invested in SpaceX around the time when Starlink was starting out, and that they're putting starlink ground stations at Google data centers.
- judge2020 5y agoAlso, Starlink continues to show up as AS36492 (One of Google's AS).
- yosito 5y agoAS?
- gpm 5y agoAutonomous System, it has to do with internet traffic routing. Some real networking person might come and give a better definition than this, but my understanding is basically that where the "internet" is a series of connections between networks and protocols for routing traffic between them, one AS is (as bgp, the routing protocol, views it) one of those networks.
- protomolecule 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)
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- rambambram 5y agoThis is pretty dirty from SpaceX. They make this about Amazon by saying Kuiper ("Amazon"). Just because SpaceX calls them "Amazon" in their press release does not make this about Amazon. Or am I missing something and is this really an Amazon endeavor?
- Diederich 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems "Kuiper Systems LLC is a subsidiary of Amazon that was set up in 2019 to deploy a large broadband satellite internet constellation to provide broadband internet connectivity."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- arthurcolle 5y agoIt's literally a fully-owned subsidiary of $AMZN. I'm not even a Musk fanboy but clearly this is 100% appropriate.
- rambambram 5y agoThey could have just said Kuiper ("Kuiper") or Amazon ("Amazon"). The parentheses imply that they choose themselves how they call it from then on, which they are indeed free to do. But it's clear the thing officially is called Kuiper, but they choose to refer to it as Amazon. Which is understandable from a PR point of view, but I still think it's a little dirty. I mean, get that whole Amazon webshop 'down' also, while we're at it.
- Diederich 5y agoRecall that Blue Origin patented landing rockets on sea platforms: https://www.geekwire.com/2015/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-dealt-setback-in-patent-dispute-with-spacex-over-rocket-landings/ https://www.geekwire.com/2015/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-dealt-s... After various legal proceedings, that patent was invalidated.
- varelse 5y agoBezos whines about Musk. Musk whines about Huang. Huang whines about???
- fnord77 5y agoif you can't win, bring out the lawyers
- morpheos137 5y agohard to compete with a money losing boondogle. https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/06/29/spacexs-starlink-internet-service-69420-users https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/06/29/spacexs... I mean spending a dollar to make 38 cents is one hell of a business.
- caconym_ 5y agoAre you under the impression that Starlink's business model starts and ends with selling (early model) ground terminals?
- aqrre 5y agoI haven't bought anything from Amazon in a few months and I am proud of it...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoI am thinking that when the first humans go to Mars, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk should both be on board and both locked in the same room together for the duration of the voyage. I bet you could make a fortune doing pay-per-view streaming from that room.
- r00tanon 5y agoLawsuits are an ineffective way to improve your tech.
- ngcc_hk 5y agoLet us create competition and help them. But not to stop progress. As long as the plan does not preclude another one … crazy to stop it.
- deviation 5y agoI could care less about the attitude or acumen of Jeff or Elon personally. From a business perspective though, it's absolutely bonkers to see Amazon wasting such an immense amount of resources in an attempt to slow the competition down, rather than speed their own up. It's like watching a child flip the monopoly board after realising they can't buy any more properties and remain on top.
- sumedh 5y agoIts not bonkers if you have a ruthless win at all costs strategy. You dont become the richest man in the world by being nice.
- wiz21c 5y agoErgo being not nice is necessary to success. What a wonderful world.
- fwsgonzo 5y agoIndeed, as we can see with the Sackler family getting away with murdering millions of Americans.
- masklinn 5y ago> Ergo being not nice is necessary to success. It’s not necessary, but it probably helps. It’s also a great american tradition (though by no means unique to american), and so is calling for the state to help you not being nice (and then people wonder why US unions are antagonistic…)
- 88 5y agoWealth ≠ success
- jason0597 5y agoPlease. The only people who say that are making cushy salaries. Head on over to a place like /r/povertyfinance and tell the people there with a straight face that "Wealth ≠ success"
- enygmata 5y agoWait. Since when does the FCC regulate the planet's atmosphere?