> The terms of their FCC license require them to have half their presently licensed constellation, roughly 1600 satellites, in orbit by July of 2026. They're almost certainly not going to make it, but I would be very surprised if the FCC doesn't grant them an extension if they can show they're making serious progress and aren't just squatting on that spectrum.

I agree.

> On the other hand, the FCC must know that they will be accused of being corrupt if they don't grant an extension.

Score:5, Funny

This is not discretionary for the FCC:

> A station authorization shall be automatically terminated in whole or in part without further notice to the licensee upon:

> …

> (d) The failure to maintain 50 percent of the maximum number of NGSO space stations authorized for service following the 9-year milestone period as functional space stations in authorized orbits, which failure will result in the termination of authority for the space stations not in orbit as of the date of noncompliance, but allow for technically identical replacements.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

_Congress_ can change this, but as written, Federal law compels the FCC to automatically terminate the authorization for failing to deploy half the satellites under 47 CFR § 25.161(d), just as they must automatically terminate the authorization when the license expires under 47 CFR § 25.161(b).

Do get the sentiment when looking at where Amazon's performance is going, but maybe mistargeted. There's definitely always something grey about what chairmen do, but given he doesn't run Amazon anymore (nothing grey when comparing to Zuckerberg/Meta) he can be free to work on things he wants to right?

I think Amazon (not Bezos) is relatively conservative in the space of "trying new things", but I'd argue when they have done it, they have a higher success rate than the other mega caps (excluding Apple I'd say). Somehow though, big tech can't seem to spend most of their cash doing it (insert that Thiel quote here).

In this case I think they want to own their backbone - much like owning fibre.

The difference is AWS is the backbone of the modern Internet and Amazon is a dominant force in retail, which gives him a cash-printing machine.

Zuck has one website that's been a has-been enshittified hellscape for going on almost 10 years now, another he very well might be forced to sell, and a pivot to a "metaverse" that's nothing but one big bonfire of cash. Meta may be R&Ding the shit out of VR/AR, but there's no guarantee they're going to be able to cash in.

What is Amazons core business these days? Is it the "everything store" or is it AWS? Because I think it's AWS and then being able to provide internet connectivity aligns sort of okay with pushing for more traffic to AWS.

Bezos has had aspirations in space for decades, this is nothing new. According to one version of the story which I know was being told to new Amazon employees at one point, Bezos founded Amazon to make money so that he could do space stuff. Not sure I believe it, but that narrative was being tossed around about 15 years ago.

Mega constellations are a new focus, obviously inspired by Starlink, but it's entirely rational given the context of Bezos already owning a rocket company. Operating a fleet of communication satellites has been proven as a working strategy for paying for a lot of rocket launches. At this point, any rocket company that doesn't have similar plans in the works is asking to be out of business.

Emerging markets with next to nill infrastructure and high practical barriers to terrestrial infrastructure due to no roads / legal protection or presence of easements / people will rip fiber right out of the ditch to sell for $0.10 -- I've seen people in developing nations spend their entire month's paycheck on a cell-phone top off.

They might do the same for satellite internet.

SpaceFront, the orbital CDN.

Being an ISP, CDN, Cloud Provider and Content Provider gives serious advantages. That's a great way to out competitors and get hefty fines at some point.

What about for cars and any other transport like ships, etc? If they have a simple system that makes integration as simple as AWS sdk while being cheaper and faster that would be cool.

> I also can't find any compelling synergies with AWS, which seems like the obvious place to look for an advantage if you are Amazon.

I think it's more like Bezos vs Musk. Musk has a launch capability and then satellite internet; now Bezos is getting a launch capability and so will want satellite internet.

> marketing Kuiper

Regarding this, I am dumbfounded why they keep calling it Project Kuiper.

The branding does not sound like something serious.

Space junk is real but much less of an issue at the low altitudes at which these newer constellations usually operate (very low in low Earth orbit). Without expending propellant to boost orbits, atmospheric drag causes them to naturally deorbit in months or a few years at most. Space junk and orbital debris are much bigger issues for higher altitudes where atmospheric drag is much weaker, but none of these satellites are that high.

If it is like Starlink then it is not really a problem because the orbit is so low that it de-orbits quickly should they become inactive and vaporizes in the atmosphere. It's preferrable for them to put them in very low orbits because they are cheaper to get to and the reduced altitude improves latency.

As I understand it, these constellations are all low enough in orbit that stuff deorbits from atmospheric drag relatively quickly. I think you get a few years at most for these sorts of satellites.

The "Kessler syndrome" worst case scenario - I'm just recalling stuff from Scott Manley videos here - I think is a 'really bad decade' where a cascade of collisions makes launching in to LEO impossible until everything settles down in 10ish years. Bad, yeah, terrible even, but possibly worth it in some sense? I mean, it makes about as much sense to me as growing subsidized corn for ethanol gas, I suppose. I'm sure someone is making money.

No. The problem is their development has been super slow and expensive (compared to Starlink) and also they picked fairly expensive launch providers compared to their main competitor (SpaceX).

Space junk is not in the top 5 reasons, and with better tracking and using low altitudes (like Starlink does, where debris deorbits very quickly), we can probably fit a factor of 100 times more satellites in LEO safely.

(People underestimate how much of a difference better tracking makes to this issue. Space is huge, and the real isn’t actual conjunctions, but the fact that the uncertainty range for objects is so large that you end up getting hundreds of times more false alarms and probably-unneeded avoidance maneuvers than you’d have if you had much better tracking.)

Starlink now has many laser crosslinks and no longer requires a base station to be in its line of sight.

What Blue Origin really has going for them is effectively infinite funding for as long as Bezos wants to keep at it. They've already slogged through most of New Glenn's development with hardly any revenue, and that's after skipping over small lift completely.

As for the market being saturated, I think Blue Origin could plenty of business in the "anybody but SpaceX" market. They're up against Rocket Lab (who is still stuck in small lift.)

> The US Government should nationalize Starlink and provide all Americans with internet service.

This is a repeated trope and more ridiculous each time I hear it. Starlink is a private company that is in the business of selling the US Government as well as consumers its services. You can't just "nationalize" it on a whim; after all, the US isn't Cuba.

GPS was always owned and operated by the US military so it's an apples and oranges comparison at best.

I’m not sure that comparision makes sense. The magic of GPS is that it is one way. The satelites send signals and the ground receivers receive them. There space and control segment doesn’t know and doesn’t care how many users there are. Their job remained the exact same even after GPS was allowed to be used for civilian applications.

In other words GPS scales very flat. Launching the constellation costs X, control activities cost Y per month. And those prices don’t change if there is only a single receiver, a thousand, or a billion. Basically allowing GPS to be used by civilians didn’t cost them any extra on top of what they were already paying to keep it operational for the military. Plus there is no natural limit on how many gps receivers there can be.

This is not the same for Starlink. There user stations have a two way connection with the satelites. The system have very real limits on how many users it can serve. And every new user cost something to the provider. Because of this the government would need to manage who can have access and how much they can use the constellation. That would be a nightmare to manage for a government and everyone would be unhappy with them. In short: not a good idea.

Is there really even a risk of orbit pollution from multiple GPS satellite companies?

GPS has only 31 satellites and they orbit at a far distance of like 12,550 miles from earth.

Starlink alone has over 7000 satellites and plans for 12,000 by 2026 and possibly 30,000 beyond that. And they orbit at a distance of 340-382 miles.

You could have thousands of GPS satellite companies before even matching the orbit pollution of Starlink alone.

I am not saying that satellite internet shouldn't be done by a singular governmental org. But to say the reason they did it was to prevent un-necessary orbit pollution doesn't seem like a very strong reason.

I think that it was done because it doesn't really cost anything to allow the GPS signals to be used by everyone, and because it costs a lot to launch satellites.

Internet satellites are a whole different story because they deal with signal bandwidth limits in both directions, so there is a cost per user added to use them.