3 ms·
Starlink primarily exists because Falcon 9 has so much launch capacity they have exceeded current market demand and need to find a way to monetize it themselves
by philwelch 3y ago
Starlink primarily exists because Falcon 9 has so much launch capacity they have exceeded current market demand and need to find a way to monetize it themselves. SpaceX’s primary industry is launch services and they have no incentive to do a bad job at it.
Furthermore, this totally misses the question of why Amazon is entering this market in the first place, other than as a mechanism for Jeff Bezos to move large sums of money from Amazon to Blue Origin. If the less risky version of your business plan actually entails relying on a company that has never reached orbit and still struggles to make suborbital hops after a longer development period than SpaceX has existed as a company, you could just stay out of that business.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago> relying on a company that has never reached orbit and still struggles to make suborbital hops This is sadly far too common in most rocketry endeavours. spacex (any maybe some of the "private" chinese companies) are really outliers in this industry. The timelines are absurdly ambitious, and by the time you're doing regular flights the company you want to contract may have merged/split/been hit by sanctions three or four times.