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How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? If you're relying on your competitor to enable your busines

How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. > In March 2022, AST SpaceMobile announced a multi-launch contract with SpaceX to launch its first BlueBird operational satellite.[35][36] AST SpaceMobile states that it will be able to produce up to six BlueBird satellites per month at two manufacturing sites in Midland, Texas.[37][38] The company has attributed delays in the deployment schedule of its operational satellites to supply chain issues and price increases.[39] In March 2023, AST SpaceMobile stated that it expects to launch the first five Block 1 BlueBird satellites in early 2024.[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST_SpaceMobile#Deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST_SpaceMobile#Deployment AST SpaceMobile does not seem like they are operating a viable business model. They have been publicly traded for several years and the market seems to agree.

awesomeMilou 3y ago
> How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? Because SpaceX is subject to the same antitrust measures as any other company.
- adventured 3y ago
  And it's a fair bet that SpaceX won't be the only option for putting something like Starlink into orbit over time, so SpaceX might as well take their money and keep it from funding other launch competitors (whether they eventually use Blue Origin & Co, or China, or Arianespace / EU).
- xedrac 3y ago
  Would that compel them to launch their competitors' products into space? Seems like they could just say "build your own rockets".
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Yes—same way railroads were forced to carry their competitors' freight, at fair rates. (That when US railroad monopolies were acquiring the companies making use of their railways, so that they could kill off those company's competitors and leverage their rail monopolies into new monopolies, in different fields. These are old tricks).
    - xedrac 3y ago
      Except railways occupy land that may physically exclude competitors from being able to build their own (mountain passes etc...). No such limitation exists for launching a rocket.
      - perihelions 3y ago
        Antitrust isn't solely limited to natural monopolies. (Also most of the time, what you describe wasn't quite the case—there's many places were there's two, useless railways running parallel for each other for stretch, not for any technically useful reason—just an economic cooperation failure. You can call the monopolist's bluff and build a redundant (n+1)th rail line or an (n+1)th orbital launch company—it's just devastatingly expensive).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
kiba 3y ago
How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? As opposed to the alternative of not using SpaceX? If they aren't using SpaceX to launch their satellites, it's their loss.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  Starlink has this market cornered until another company develops sufficiently reusable rockets. If AST SpaceMobile's bet is to try and work out the kinks in their hardware while waiting for an alternative launch provider to come online then OK, I can't fault that mindset. IMO, if they get anywhere close to being competition then SpaceX will just change the contract terms going forward to neuter their viability. And why go public so early? AST SpaceMobile has been public for 5 years and is getting destroyed by the market. They just sold off majority ownership of their satellite manufacturing capabilities. Doesn't their strategy just invite pressure to monetize early at the cost of being able to experiment with R&D?
  - kiba 3y ago
    Starlink has this market cornered until another company develops sufficiently reusable rockets. That's inaccurate. SpaceX developed Starlink to take advantage of their growing launch capabilities.Other companies could launch on SpaceX's rocket, but not to the scale of Starlink. Doesn't their strategy just invite pressure to monetize early at the cost of being able to experiment with R&D? You have other competitors who also have a lot of money.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > IMO, if they get anywhere close to being competition then SpaceX will just change the contract terms going forward to neuter their viability. If they were going to do this then why would they wait? They don't need to. The launch contract is where the profit is. Starlink is already competing with AT&T's ground network and has to maintain competitive pricing there regardless of whether there is a competing satellite network. AT&T benefits because they can stop maintaining ground infrastructure in rural locations and still compete for customers who care about it, and expand coverage to other countries, much of which will come at the expense of local carriers in those countries rather than Starlink. Starlink themselves might lose a few customers to AT&T but not as much as the profit on the launch contract, so why do they want to stop it?
laluser 3y ago
This is similar to Netflix running on AWS and Amazon being a direct competitor. It could work.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  Okay, I see your point, but the scenario here is the inverse of Netflix/AWS, right? Netflix takes the world by storm, grows quickly, and becomes reliant on AWS. Amazon enters the video streaming market as a much weaker competitor and builds upon their own tooling. In this scenario, I presume Amazon is making more money from Netflix using their service than they are from running their own streaming service. Their first goal is to not disrupt the money they make from Netflix and their second goal is to create a competitor. Later, if the math says that hardening their contracts to the detriment of Netflix would allow them to capture such market share as to recoup the investment with their own streaming service, they would do so, but as they're late to the party that is not the case. In the Starlink scenario, it's the other way around. Starlink is already dominating the market using their own, SpaceX tooling. The incumbent, AST SpaceMobile, is allowed to use SpaceX rockets. It's not hard for SpaceX to disrupt AST SpaceMobile's operations without hurting SpaceX's bottom line as there's a backlog of launch demand to replace AST SpaceMobile. If the math says that AST SpaceMobile is likely to begin encroaching on Starlink then they deny a contract, replace it with the next person in line, and don't bat an eye. The order in which things occurred between the companies means there aren't these deeply entangled, mutual benefits that allow competitors to coexist.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > If the math says that AST SpaceMobile is likely to begin encroaching on Starlink then they deny a contract, replace it with the next person in line, and don't bat an eye. This is where the Netflix/AWS analogy is a good one. The critical point is: AWS makes more money from people not-Netflix than Amazon Video makes. Consequently, AWS screwing with Netflix for the benefit of Amazon Video risks the entire not-Netflix AWS customer base, who would no longer consider Amazon as neutral of a party and thus trim their AWS spend. And these optics last for decades. Which is why most companies in these scenarios have serious firewalls between those parts of the conglomerate. No sense killing the golden goose because some VP wants a bonus. If AST (or Amazon Video in the analogy) can compete with Starlink (or Netflix) on even terms, then more power to them. If not? Then that's their problem: rest of the company isn't going to bail them out.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. Brave relies on Google. DuckDuckGo relies on other search engines, etc. And they are in the same market. Orbital launch systems and satellites are not in the same market. SpaceX would do themselves a disservice if they weren't willing to launch anything other than their own satellites.
- thedangler 3y ago
  Because they can take the profits from the launch towards launching more Starlinks.... I see this as an absolute win.
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    It would be interesting if some of these launches happened to have an accident xD
    - g-b-r 3y ago
      I'm not sure I understand the downvotes, I guess it's easy to misinterpret the comment; I meant that it wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility if Musk sabotaged some on purpose (and I wouldn't be happy about it).
      - manuelabeledo 3y ago
        I don't know anything about orbital launch economics, but it wouldn't be ludicrous to say that SpaceX and satellite operators cannot eat the rising costs of launch insurance, if SpaceX was deemed too unreliable. In other words, it wouldn't be a good move for SpaceX to "sabotage" their own launches, because it will raise costs and undermine trust in the near future.
        g-b-r 3y ago
        You're right it might well be true. Although Musk doesn't really always act rationally :p
whynotminot 3y ago
Spotify competes fine with Apple Music on iOS (even if they’re not thrilled about it).
akira2501 3y ago
> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. They're not though, they're using a contracted service from a company that wholly owns a subsidiary that may have some competing business with your system. They can switch to any other capable provider at any time and once the satellites are in orbit, there's no continuing business relationship with the launch company required to operate them.
- dkasper 3y ago
  Are there any other capable providers that are in the same ballpark in terms of cost?
  - akira2501 3y ago
    That's close to the right question. I'd suggest "are there about to be any other capable providers in the same ballpark?" In which case, probably, in Ariane 6. Outside of the US and EU governments this has not been a large market. The fact that another launch client is entering the space should suggest what the overall trajectory here is going to be. Finally, with a lifetime of 5 to 10 years for each launched satellite, and SpaceX not being required for operation of the satellites, I'd suggest they're not nearly as dependent on a "competitor" as the OP implies.
  - eagerpace 3y ago
    Not yet, but there will/should be in the near future. And that’s how most businesses work. Have to make some assumptions and calculated risk.
chrisjc 3y ago
The points about antitrust and similar situations like Netflix/Amazon have already been made by others... So it's interesting to note that other Satellite Internet companies/startups/etc are already using SpaceX to put their gear into orbit including Amazon (Project Kuiper?) and OneWeb. But you're probably right in that anyone doing so, should consider the theoretical risk. However, a lot of what SpaceX is trying to achieve revolves around reducing the cost to lift mass into orbit. So theoretically, the more demand there is to put mass into orbit and the more SpaceX does it, the cheaper and easier it becomes. Then again maybe Google or ATT could avoid this risk by just starting their own LEO freight companies? ;P But seriously, if it is such a concern, perhaps they should look into funding a potential SpaceX competitor. And there are a few startups trying to be just that.
- manmal 3y ago
  It’s exciting that there finally is demand for lifting things to orbit that outweighs the initial cost to do so, which in turn fuels innovation around the lifting, and ideally starting a virtuous cycle of innovation > cost reduction > increased demand > innovation. This reminds me of the steam engine, which likely only became viable because its abysmal initial efficiency was outweighed by the need to pump water out of coal mines.
deleted 3y ago
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AshamedCaptain 3y ago
You make it sound as if the rocket science here is more critical than the chip science, or whatever. But it isn't really proven true. AST also seems to be favoring a different strategy, having a smaller number of satellites each capable of serving a larger number of users vs Starlink's thousands of satellites serving a couple of users each. IMHO AST's approach sounds more sensible and manageable (albeit both approaches manage to equally annoy astronomers). Whether they will be able to really serve a large enough number of users or not also depends on the chip science (rather than the rocket one).
- zachmu 3y ago
  Even if Starlink's approach isn't a proven advantage yet, a competitor's ability to deploy new tech at will, at cost, when you are at their mercy to do so on their schedule and at their price, is not a great signal
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    How dependent are they on SpaceX, really though? There are competitors that are capable of launching satellites into LEO, some them are getting closer to SpaceX pricing. There may be some design hurdles to make everything work, but I don't think SpaceX could really completely block them.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - inemesitaffia 3y ago
      SpaceX won't block them. No one is getting to SpaceX pricing to LEO
    - HeadsUpHigh 3y ago
      Nobody is getting at spacex pricing any time soon. New Glenn is the only comparable vehicle and as far as we can tell it's not going to be launching in the forseeable future.
- 3y ago
sangnoir 3y ago
> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. This is not true, and there are multitudes of counter-examples: store-brand products sharing shelves with competitors, EVs delivered by ICE vehicles, AOL CDs being sent by mail, etc.
- dmoy 3y ago
  Or more pointedly for phone service - the entire existence of MVNO carriers (though less extreme than the space launch area, where SpaceX is so much cheaper).
TMWNN 3y ago
>If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. The 6502 was one of the two dominant 8-bit computer CPUs ... and was manufactured by Commodore, which was happy to sell CPUs to Apple, Atari, Acorn, and anyone else. Specifically in telecom, in the US there are many MVNOs that resell mobile phone service from the big three carriers. Somehow both the MVNOs and the national carriers make money.
- rstupek 3y ago
  Wasn't the 6502 manufactured by Motorola who sold to all of those companies?
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    No. MOS, formed by ex-Motorola employees, developed the 6502. Commodore bought MOS in 1976.
- toast0 3y ago
  > Somehow both the MVNOs and the national carriers make money. The history of MVNOs seems to indicate otherwise. Not a lot of them survive as independent entities; I think because there's not a lot of profit to be had, and most MVNOs are setup where the business is captive to a given operator. You'd need to reissue SIM cards to each customer in order to switch to a new operator, and that's expensive; not to mention some customers have operator locked phones that wouldn't be able to switch, so you've got to develop a plan for them as well.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    SIMs can technically be remotely reprogrammed through SMS messages: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/01/sim-card-flaw-cellphone-hackers-karsten-nohl https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/01/sim-card-...
    - toast0 3y ago
      I don't think you can change the IMSI remotely, or at least, you're not supposed to be able to. Most US MVNOs use IMSIs assigned to the operating carrier, which makes it hard to switch the operating carrier. Some do use their own IMSI, which you could then conceivably change network agreements and use a different network, but with today's networks, your users might have phones band optimized for the old carrier, and not have good reception with the new one.
arcticbull 3y ago
> How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? They're competing with Starlink not in the launch market. How the satellite gets into LEO is a different thing - and its own global market. [edit] There's many ways into space. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_launch_service_providers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_launch_service_provide...
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#2010-2020s:_Competition_and_pricing_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio... If you only consider US-allied launches, SpaceX represents a staggering 92% of market share. There are lots of space companies. They are not price competitive. At all. It costs $2720/kg to launch payload with Falcon 9. The next closest, US-allied launch vehicle costs $9,167/kg. Falcon Heavy will extend the lead to $1500/kg. You're not going to compete in building a constellation of satellites using launches that cost 3.5-6.1x the price (depending on when they get to launching vs readiness of Heavy) The AST SpaceMobile BlueWalker 3 weighs 1500kg. They want to launch 243 satellites. The price difference between using Falcon 9 and Ariane 5G is $2.4B. AST SpaceMobile's market cap is $675M.
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    There's opportunity to differentiate on commsat technologies like switching and antennas, on offering different targets for latency/bandwidth vs price, planet-side downlink stations, and coverage at different latitudes: In particular, satellite-to-smartphone links, specifically optimized for lower-bandwidth, higher-latency, lower-power, lower-cost long-tail coverage. Fly a little higher, so you don't have to refuel as often, customers just trying to send a text can tolerate a little latency. The Starlink terminal is great for grid-tied residential/RV/ship-sized home internet. It runs in the Ku and Ka bands at something like 65 watts. It's astonishing that they can get some functionality with their T-mobile partnership, but for the most part, it's not optimized for that. What fraction of Starlink (or, hypothetically, AST SpaceMobile) expenditures is satellite launch cost per kg? The ATT market cap is $120B, if they can partner with/aquihire a $675M satellite company to stay competitive then even a $2.4B extra expense is not a huge deal. Sure, Starlink could do the same, but ATT has a lot of inertia. SpaceX won't knock them out of the market just by flying another set of satellites a little higher with some lower-bandwidth antennas. If I could get voice and text anywhere on the planet (namely, in the woods in northern Michigan, population density ~1 person per square mile, or offshore on Lake Michigan, population density ~0 per square mile), that would be a game changer. Specifically, everyone knows that the cell networks lie about their coverage maps, this would let them genuinely say they have coverage everywhere. I'm currently using Garmin InReach for off-grid connectivity, not sure I'd dump that hardware and network for an esoteric feature that runs on my less-reliable glass slab, but a lot more people have glass slabs than InReach.
demondemidi 3y ago
That's a great argument for the government to seize both SpaceX and StarLink.
pokstad 3y ago
Doesn’t AWS do that for a lot of ecommerce companies?
gerash 3y ago
Did you know that Samsung makes the displays for iPhones ?
bastawhiz 3y ago
That's like saying you can't build an e-commerce website on AWS because you're competing with Amazon retail. SpaceX might lose starlink customers in the near-term, but they still profit handsomely from the launch services. Hell, Tesla has supplied batteries to Mercedes and Toyota in the past. If you're a lemon farmer who makes lemonade and a lemonade company wants to buy your copious lemons, you sell them lemons. It's worth pointing out that it may not even be feasible for AT&T/Google to pursue this venture _without SpaceX_, which means they're making money that they probably wouldn't otherwise make regardless.
amm 3y ago
>AST SpaceMobile does not seem like they are operating a viable business model. They have been publicly traded for several years and the market seems to agree. Why would the stock price for a pre-revenue company with massive capex needs and high execution risk do great in a challenging macro environment?

awesomeMilou 3y ago

> How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? Because SpaceX is subject to the same antitrust measures as any other company.

adventured 3y ago
And it's a fair bet that SpaceX won't be the only option for putting something like Starlink into orbit over time, so SpaceX might as well take their money and keep it from funding other launch competitors (whether they eventually use Blue Origin & Co, or China, or Arianespace / EU).
xedrac 3y ago
Would that compel them to launch their competitors' products into space? Seems like they could just say "build your own rockets".
- perihelions 3y ago
  Yes—same way railroads were forced to carry their competitors' freight, at fair rates. (That when US railroad monopolies were acquiring the companies making use of their railways, so that they could kill off those company's competitors and leverage their rail monopolies into new monopolies, in different fields. These are old tricks).
  - xedrac 3y ago
    Except railways occupy land that may physically exclude competitors from being able to build their own (mountain passes etc...). No such limitation exists for launching a rocket.
    - perihelions 3y ago
      Antitrust isn't solely limited to natural monopolies. (Also most of the time, what you describe wasn't quite the case—there's many places were there's two, useless railways running parallel for each other for stretch, not for any technically useful reason—just an economic cooperation failure. You can call the monopolist's bluff and build a redundant (n+1)th rail line or an (n+1)th orbital launch company—it's just devastatingly expensive).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

kiba 3y ago

How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? As opposed to the alternative of not using SpaceX? If they aren't using SpaceX to launch their satellites, it's their loss.

SeanAnderson 3y ago
Starlink has this market cornered until another company develops sufficiently reusable rockets. If AST SpaceMobile's bet is to try and work out the kinks in their hardware while waiting for an alternative launch provider to come online then OK, I can't fault that mindset. IMO, if they get anywhere close to being competition then SpaceX will just change the contract terms going forward to neuter their viability. And why go public so early? AST SpaceMobile has been public for 5 years and is getting destroyed by the market. They just sold off majority ownership of their satellite manufacturing capabilities. Doesn't their strategy just invite pressure to monetize early at the cost of being able to experiment with R&D?
- kiba 3y ago
  Starlink has this market cornered until another company develops sufficiently reusable rockets. That's inaccurate. SpaceX developed Starlink to take advantage of their growing launch capabilities.Other companies could launch on SpaceX's rocket, but not to the scale of Starlink. Doesn't their strategy just invite pressure to monetize early at the cost of being able to experiment with R&D? You have other competitors who also have a lot of money.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > IMO, if they get anywhere close to being competition then SpaceX will just change the contract terms going forward to neuter their viability. If they were going to do this then why would they wait? They don't need to. The launch contract is where the profit is. Starlink is already competing with AT&T's ground network and has to maintain competitive pricing there regardless of whether there is a competing satellite network. AT&T benefits because they can stop maintaining ground infrastructure in rural locations and still compete for customers who care about it, and expand coverage to other countries, much of which will come at the expense of local carriers in those countries rather than Starlink. Starlink themselves might lose a few customers to AT&T but not as much as the profit on the launch contract, so why do they want to stop it?

laluser 3y ago

This is similar to Netflix running on AWS and Amazon being a direct competitor. It could work.

SeanAnderson 3y ago
Okay, I see your point, but the scenario here is the inverse of Netflix/AWS, right? Netflix takes the world by storm, grows quickly, and becomes reliant on AWS. Amazon enters the video streaming market as a much weaker competitor and builds upon their own tooling. In this scenario, I presume Amazon is making more money from Netflix using their service than they are from running their own streaming service. Their first goal is to not disrupt the money they make from Netflix and their second goal is to create a competitor. Later, if the math says that hardening their contracts to the detriment of Netflix would allow them to capture such market share as to recoup the investment with their own streaming service, they would do so, but as they're late to the party that is not the case. In the Starlink scenario, it's the other way around. Starlink is already dominating the market using their own, SpaceX tooling. The incumbent, AST SpaceMobile, is allowed to use SpaceX rockets. It's not hard for SpaceX to disrupt AST SpaceMobile's operations without hurting SpaceX's bottom line as there's a backlog of launch demand to replace AST SpaceMobile. If the math says that AST SpaceMobile is likely to begin encroaching on Starlink then they deny a contract, replace it with the next person in line, and don't bat an eye. The order in which things occurred between the companies means there aren't these deeply entangled, mutual benefits that allow competitors to coexist.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > If the math says that AST SpaceMobile is likely to begin encroaching on Starlink then they deny a contract, replace it with the next person in line, and don't bat an eye. This is where the Netflix/AWS analogy is a good one. The critical point is: AWS makes more money from people not-Netflix than Amazon Video makes. Consequently, AWS screwing with Netflix for the benefit of Amazon Video risks the entire not-Netflix AWS customer base, who would no longer consider Amazon as neutral of a party and thus trim their AWS spend. And these optics last for decades. Which is why most companies in these scenarios have serious firewalls between those parts of the conglomerate. No sense killing the golden goose because some VP wants a bonus. If AST (or Amazon Video in the analogy) can compete with Starlink (or Netflix) on even terms, then more power to them. If not? Then that's their problem: rest of the company isn't going to bail them out.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. Brave relies on Google. DuckDuckGo relies on other search engines, etc. And they are in the same market. Orbital launch systems and satellites are not in the same market. SpaceX would do themselves a disservice if they weren't willing to launch anything other than their own satellites.

thedangler 3y ago
Because they can take the profits from the launch towards launching more Starlinks.... I see this as an absolute win.
- g-b-r 3y ago
  It would be interesting if some of these launches happened to have an accident xD
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    I'm not sure I understand the downvotes, I guess it's easy to misinterpret the comment; I meant that it wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility if Musk sabotaged some on purpose (and I wouldn't be happy about it).
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      I don't know anything about orbital launch economics, but it wouldn't be ludicrous to say that SpaceX and satellite operators cannot eat the rising costs of launch insurance, if SpaceX was deemed too unreliable. In other words, it wouldn't be a good move for SpaceX to "sabotage" their own launches, because it will raise costs and undermine trust in the near future.
      - g-b-r 3y ago
        You're right it might well be true. Although Musk doesn't really always act rationally :p

whynotminot 3y ago

Spotify competes fine with Apple Music on iOS (even if they’re not thrilled about it).

akira2501 3y ago

> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. They're not though, they're using a contracted service from a company that wholly owns a subsidiary that may have some competing business with your system. They can switch to any other capable provider at any time and once the satellites are in orbit, there's no continuing business relationship with the launch company required to operate them.

dkasper 3y ago
Are there any other capable providers that are in the same ballpark in terms of cost?
- akira2501 3y ago
  That's close to the right question. I'd suggest "are there about to be any other capable providers in the same ballpark?" In which case, probably, in Ariane 6. Outside of the US and EU governments this has not been a large market. The fact that another launch client is entering the space should suggest what the overall trajectory here is going to be. Finally, with a lifetime of 5 to 10 years for each launched satellite, and SpaceX not being required for operation of the satellites, I'd suggest they're not nearly as dependent on a "competitor" as the OP implies.
- eagerpace 3y ago
  Not yet, but there will/should be in the near future. And that’s how most businesses work. Have to make some assumptions and calculated risk.

chrisjc 3y ago

The points about antitrust and similar situations like Netflix/Amazon have already been made by others... So it's interesting to note that other Satellite Internet companies/startups/etc are already using SpaceX to put their gear into orbit including Amazon (Project Kuiper?) and OneWeb. But you're probably right in that anyone doing so, should consider the theoretical risk. However, a lot of what SpaceX is trying to achieve revolves around reducing the cost to lift mass into orbit. So theoretically, the more demand there is to put mass into orbit and the more SpaceX does it, the cheaper and easier it becomes. Then again maybe Google or ATT could avoid this risk by just starting their own LEO freight companies? ;P But seriously, if it is such a concern, perhaps they should look into funding a potential SpaceX competitor. And there are a few startups trying to be just that.

manmal 3y ago
It’s exciting that there finally is demand for lifting things to orbit that outweighs the initial cost to do so, which in turn fuels innovation around the lifting, and ideally starting a virtuous cycle of innovation > cost reduction > increased demand > innovation. This reminds me of the steam engine, which likely only became viable because its abysmal initial efficiency was outweighed by the need to pump water out of coal mines.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

You make it sound as if the rocket science here is more critical than the chip science, or whatever. But it isn't really proven true. AST also seems to be favoring a different strategy, having a smaller number of satellites each capable of serving a larger number of users vs Starlink's thousands of satellites serving a couple of users each. IMHO AST's approach sounds more sensible and manageable (albeit both approaches manage to equally annoy astronomers). Whether they will be able to really serve a large enough number of users or not also depends on the chip science (rather than the rocket one).

zachmu 3y ago
Even if Starlink's approach isn't a proven advantage yet, a competitor's ability to deploy new tech at will, at cost, when you are at their mercy to do so on their schedule and at their price, is not a great signal
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  How dependent are they on SpaceX, really though? There are competitors that are capable of launching satellites into LEO, some them are getting closer to SpaceX pricing. There may be some design hurdles to make everything work, but I don't think SpaceX could really completely block them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - inemesitaffia 3y ago
    SpaceX won't block them. No one is getting to SpaceX pricing to LEO
  - HeadsUpHigh 3y ago
    Nobody is getting at spacex pricing any time soon. New Glenn is the only comparable vehicle and as far as we can tell it's not going to be launching in the forseeable future.
3y ago

sangnoir 3y ago

> If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. This is not true, and there are multitudes of counter-examples: store-brand products sharing shelves with competitors, EVs delivered by ICE vehicles, AOL CDs being sent by mail, etc.

dmoy 3y ago
Or more pointedly for phone service - the entire existence of MVNO carriers (though less extreme than the space launch area, where SpaceX is so much cheaper).

TMWNN 3y ago

>If you're relying on your competitor to enable your business model then you're not competing with them. The 6502 was one of the two dominant 8-bit computer CPUs ... and was manufactured by Commodore, which was happy to sell CPUs to Apple, Atari, Acorn, and anyone else. Specifically in telecom, in the US there are many MVNOs that resell mobile phone service from the big three carriers. Somehow both the MVNOs and the national carriers make money.

rstupek 3y ago
Wasn't the 6502 manufactured by Motorola who sold to all of those companies?
- TMWNN 3y ago
  No. MOS, formed by ex-Motorola employees, developed the 6502. Commodore bought MOS in 1976.
toast0 3y ago
> Somehow both the MVNOs and the national carriers make money. The history of MVNOs seems to indicate otherwise. Not a lot of them survive as independent entities; I think because there's not a lot of profit to be had, and most MVNOs are setup where the business is captive to a given operator. You'd need to reissue SIM cards to each customer in order to switch to a new operator, and that's expensive; not to mention some customers have operator locked phones that wouldn't be able to switch, so you've got to develop a plan for them as well.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  SIMs can technically be remotely reprogrammed through SMS messages: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/01/sim-card-flaw-cellphone-hackers-karsten-nohl https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/01/sim-card-...
  - toast0 3y ago
    I don't think you can change the IMSI remotely, or at least, you're not supposed to be able to. Most US MVNOs use IMSIs assigned to the operating carrier, which makes it hard to switch the operating carrier. Some do use their own IMSI, which you could then conceivably change network agreements and use a different network, but with today's networks, your users might have phones band optimized for the old carrier, and not have good reception with the new one.

arcticbull 3y ago

> How can any company be considered a competitor to Starlink while relying on SpaceX to get into LEO? They're competing with Starlink not in the launch market. How the satellite gets into LEO is a different thing - and its own global market. [edit] There's many ways into space. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_launch_service_providers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_launch_service_provide...

SeanAnderson 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#2010-2020s:_Competition_and_pricing_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio... If you only consider US-allied launches, SpaceX represents a staggering 92% of market share. There are lots of space companies. They are not price competitive. At all. It costs $2720/kg to launch payload with Falcon 9. The next closest, US-allied launch vehicle costs $9,167/kg. Falcon Heavy will extend the lead to $1500/kg. You're not going to compete in building a constellation of satellites using launches that cost 3.5-6.1x the price (depending on when they get to launching vs readiness of Heavy) The AST SpaceMobile BlueWalker 3 weighs 1500kg. They want to launch 243 satellites. The price difference between using Falcon 9 and Ariane 5G is $2.4B. AST SpaceMobile's market cap is $675M.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  There's opportunity to differentiate on commsat technologies like switching and antennas, on offering different targets for latency/bandwidth vs price, planet-side downlink stations, and coverage at different latitudes: In particular, satellite-to-smartphone links, specifically optimized for lower-bandwidth, higher-latency, lower-power, lower-cost long-tail coverage. Fly a little higher, so you don't have to refuel as often, customers just trying to send a text can tolerate a little latency. The Starlink terminal is great for grid-tied residential/RV/ship-sized home internet. It runs in the Ku and Ka bands at something like 65 watts. It's astonishing that they can get some functionality with their T-mobile partnership, but for the most part, it's not optimized for that. What fraction of Starlink (or, hypothetically, AST SpaceMobile) expenditures is satellite launch cost per kg? The ATT market cap is $120B, if they can partner with/aquihire a $675M satellite company to stay competitive then even a $2.4B extra expense is not a huge deal. Sure, Starlink could do the same, but ATT has a lot of inertia. SpaceX won't knock them out of the market just by flying another set of satellites a little higher with some lower-bandwidth antennas. If I could get voice and text anywhere on the planet (namely, in the woods in northern Michigan, population density ~1 person per square mile, or offshore on Lake Michigan, population density ~0 per square mile), that would be a game changer. Specifically, everyone knows that the cell networks lie about their coverage maps, this would let them genuinely say they have coverage everywhere. I'm currently using Garmin InReach for off-grid connectivity, not sure I'd dump that hardware and network for an esoteric feature that runs on my less-reliable glass slab, but a lot more people have glass slabs than InReach.

demondemidi 3y ago

That's a great argument for the government to seize both SpaceX and StarLink.

pokstad 3y ago

Doesn’t AWS do that for a lot of ecommerce companies?

gerash 3y ago

Did you know that Samsung makes the displays for iPhones ?

bastawhiz 3y ago

That's like saying you can't build an e-commerce website on AWS because you're competing with Amazon retail. SpaceX might lose starlink customers in the near-term, but they still profit handsomely from the launch services. Hell, Tesla has supplied batteries to Mercedes and Toyota in the past. If you're a lemon farmer who makes lemonade and a lemonade company wants to buy your copious lemons, you sell them lemons. It's worth pointing out that it may not even be feasible for AT&T/Google to pursue this venture _without SpaceX_, which means they're making money that they probably wouldn't otherwise make regardless.

amm 3y ago

>AST SpaceMobile does not seem like they are operating a viable business model. They have been publicly traded for several years and the market seems to agree. Why would the stock price for a pre-revenue company with massive capex needs and high execution risk do great in a challenging macro environment?