Amazon has become a late player in the world of internet by satellite, having just run a small number of experiments. This morning, word broke that Amazon had chosen "everybody except SpaceX" to launch "the majority" of their 3,236-satellite Project Kuiper constellation. Twitter link: to Thomas Burghardt of NASASpaceflight.com.
This is in addition to nine ULA Atlas V and two RS1 launches from startup ABL that have already been contracted for.
The thing about that announcement that jumps out at me is that four out of the five launch vehicles named there don't exist yet. The only one that has actual history is the Atlas V - and is being discontinued. The Vulcan Centaur won't fly until Blue Origin delivers the BE-4 engines that ULA needs for it, and Blue Origin's New Glenn needs the same engines. I can find nothing on the status of ABL's RS1 other than being in development. Strictly by what the companies are saying, Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur could fly before the end of '22, although next year is more likely. New Glenn is unlikely to fly before 2024. Eric Ralph at Teslarati doesn't see how even the first tiny, ineffective pieces of the Kuiper constellation will launch this year.
Per Amazon’s Project Kuiper FCC constellation license, the company will need to launch half of its constellation – 1618 satellites – by July 2026. It’s not actually clear if Arianespace, ULA, and Blue Origin will be able to collectively complete the roughly 36 launches that will require over the next four years. In the last four years, Arianespace’s Ariane 5 and ULA’s Atlas and Delta rockets have collectively launched 38 times. The first Kuiper satellite prototype is scheduled to launch no earlier than late 2022, meaning that operational launches are unlikely to begin before Q1 2023.
If there's one thing the Internet age has taught us (IMO, of course), the
company that's "firstest with the mostest" wins. Amazon is looking to be
behind OneWeb, so firmly in third place. It seems hard to imagine that
with a constellation of 3,236 satellites that performance could be on a par
with the 12,000 satellites that Starlink has authorization for. The pace of launches required to put up those satellites and the availability of the launch vehicles paints a discouraging picture of how quickly they'll be able to get their service online.
Image from Teslarati, not credited there.
Sounds like Bezos is trying to pump his "credibility" up a notch or two....
ReplyDeleteOut of spite towards Elon, no doubt. You know he's an African American, right?
ReplyDeleteWhat you said. Vaporware and pipe dreams are all the launch vehicles available to Amazon.
ReplyDeleteUnless something special happens, I don't see the BE4 being flight certified till 2024 with the way things are going. That is if it ever gets flight certified.
"if" amazon gets a network up it will be selectively targeted to areas of the highest prime utilization. average consumers will go with the amazon one stop for everything concept
ReplyDeleteUnless Amazon pulls its collective heads out of their posteriors, their satellite constellation won't go anywhere.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Starship will be deploying Starlink satellites in bulk !
Think Elon will sell a few Starship flights to 'em??
Thanks for the chuckle, Graybeard!
And now the other shoe drops. France has officially detuned Starlink in France, and pushing the Scamazon network. Because, of course, France owns the ESA and Arianne and Airbus and a chunk of the people making the Kuiper sats.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for this to blow up in France's face. I feel sorry for the real French, the ones that don't live in the big cities that need Starlink and use Starlink because there is no real internet in the country sections of France.
But, but, but... the Kuiper network doesn't even exist. As far as I can tell, they haven't even put up one single experimental satellite.
DeleteWhere did you see that?
Looking for a linky on that, Beans. The only way to "detune" a Starlink is to shut off the ground stations, because for right now the signal goes to the satellite, then immediately back down to a Starlink Ground Station. It gets routed normally on the Interwebbies at that point.
DeleteFor Version 2 birds, though, the signal can go over to another Starlink bird, and another, until it gets to a bird that has a ground station near the destination. This way, you can get signal in/out of commiecrat nations without any fuss... and the Fwench can go pound sand.
Here's a link from Space Daily: https://www.spacedaily.com/afp/220405172401.ss9g18mx.html
DeleteThe Reuters News is behind a paywall, so screw them.
Remember, this is France. Who built a national telephone system and then because people found they could do the same over the internet, forced people off the internet in order to make people use the videophone system.
And it's not provincial France, it's the city dwelling leftist twits, you know, the ones that provide most of the typical French politicians, the classic 'sneeringly looking down their noses at lesser folk' (only people worse at looking-down-nose-at-lesser-folk are the Han Chinese who think that they are still the middle kingdom and all us other folk are just various animal-human crossbreeds - and, no, that's what they actually believe, I am not making it up.)
Thanks for that, Beans. I don't know how it can work except that it seems to say satellites would have to stop transmitting while over France. I wonder if the system design even can do that. A satellite is going in the vicinity of 18,000 mph and I'm guessing it would need to know its position pretty precisely.
DeleteIt's a decision with big red letters reading "STUPID" all over it to me because it seems to be based on the idea that these radio bands are uniquely dangerous. The signals at the surface can't possibly be dangerous. It can't even be a nanowatt at the surface after the path loss from orbit. The uplinks from antennas on the ground would be billions of times stronger, but considering they're pointing generally upward, hard to figure how they could do much.
And thus the many reasons for Starlink2.0, which is a much more robust and space-based relay system, rather than the current system which does rely on some ground stations. Shut down the ground system, shut down Starlink in the area.
DeleteJust look at what happened in the Ukraine. Starlink wasn't available, then was being blocked and now after some workarounds and reprogramming, it is the only available system for data transmission in that blighted country.
As to France and "STUPID", well...