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It was an obvious market, that was visible years before the project was announced. I don't think any one was surprised, it was not like Apple launching iPod or
by manquer 11mo ago
It was an obvious market, that was visible years before the project was announced. I don't think any one was surprised, it was not like Apple launching iPod or the iPhone.
What was impressive is at that they solved a lot of hard problems like satellite manufacturing at scale, phased array dishes, or fleet management of thousands of satellites or laser interconnects between satellites, and so on, for basically a side project to increase their primary product demand enough to justify the reuse being a useful feature.
- ethbr1 11mo agoAbsolutely! The engineering delivery and pace of execution was super impressive. Especially avoiding the gold-plate-it tendency and remaining laser focused on economies of scale.
- computerdork 11mo agoHmm, don't know, easy to say it was obvious in hindsight. But over the years, Google project Loon and other similar attempts at increasing internet coverage (think Facebook tried too at one point) have not been nearly as successful. Yeah, still not convinced it was obviously going to be successful, but maybe am missing some aspect you're seeing.
- manquer 11mo agoMarket was obvious, solutions weren’t as you cite there were many tech failures, it was just a logical extension to their business that is not really hindsight. It was not the same kind of new market entry Apple did with the iPhone or even the iPod , or Amazon doing AWS, which if we claim today as obvious would be hindsight