Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OneWeb files for bankruptcy

oneweb.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 127 posts

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#51

Post by bryanlarsen »

nickik wrote: post #50
chtitux wrote: post #20

Ariane 6 first flight was planned to bring OneWeb satellites in space. If they can't launch them, I wonder what will be the payload of the first Ariane 6.

To be honest I really can't see what exactly the Ariane 6 does better then Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy. I can not see how it has any chance in a commercial market, they will have to get government launches, but there are not enough. Ariane 6 was a response to Falcon 9 first generation, and they designed it to compete with a Falcon 9 from 4 years ago, Falcon 9 is a different beast now. Even launching 2 huge satellites is no…

Ariane 6 only makes sense if you view launch capability as a matter of national security.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#52

Post by sm4rk0 »

TL;DR

"Since the beginning of the year, OneWeb had been engaged in advanced negotiations regarding investment that would fully fund the Company through its deployment and commercial launch. While the Company was close to obtaining financing, the process did not progress because of the financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19."

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#53

Post by Veen »

squarefoot wrote: post #36
JackPoach wrote: post #34

I think this is bad news for SpaceX as well. Investors are going to be very reluctant to give more money to Musk.

These days most investors would probably look only at developments in the medical field; Covid19 is affecting just about every business everywhere.

Telecoms businesses are doing quite well too.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#54

Post by m4rtink »

kilroy123 wrote: post #27
shantara wrote: post #16

I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.

Well I always thought they were insane not utilizing SpaceX for launching and bringing down costs. Iridium used SpaceX very successfully to get their entire new constellation up.

IIRC from an article that I read, there has been some personal antipathy between one of the OneWeb founders and SpaceX/Elon, that made them avoid SpaceX & go for much more expensive & less flexible "conventional" launch providers.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#55

Post by martinald »

irjustin wrote: post #25
RivieraKid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of people expect SpaceX to make a killing on Starlink What lots of people expect is kind of irrelevant... OneWeb going bankrupt suggests that profit margins will be low at best, negative at worst. Cheaper launch cost is not enough to change the business from to non-viable to hugely profitable. Who will be the customers of Starlink? Internet is a commodity for the average person, you can't make money in that ma…

> Internet is a commodity for the average person, you can't make money in that market. This assumes that razor thin margins are bad, which is usually a safe assumption but in the case of Starlink, I say it's not open minded enough. To boot Starlink online requires a minimum cost for service area (sats), but once you've got that area booted, onboarding new customers is trivial (vs laying fiber, cable, digging holes).…

Doesn't work like that. Each starlink satellite has capacity of 20gig/sec. Assume that only 1 or 2 of the sats will be over a major metro area at any one time - that's 40gig/sec total capacity. That's only ~5,000 HD netflix streams at once (even less for 4K).

It will soon become totally overloaded. A city like NYC probably has home/office bandwidth use of 40gig/sec per a few city blocks, nevermind the whole metro area.

It's not going to work as a home internet replacement if you already have fibre or cable service. Furthermore, fibre and cable can be upgraded easily by putting new equipment on each side (even cable internet has went from 40mbit/sec to 10gig/sec - fibre has even more capacity).

Elon himself has admitted that it won't work in cities for this reason.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#56

Post by jessriedel »

RivieraKid wrote: post #19
jessriedel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Iridium recently launched an entire new generation of satellites to replace their old one, and it is expected to be profitable. Likewise, lots of people expect SpaceX to make a killing on Starlink. There were good reasons to be skeptical of OneWeb, but "consumer satellite communication companies have gone bankrupt before" is not one of them.

> lots of people expect SpaceX to make a killing on Starlink What lots of people expect is kind of irrelevant... OneWeb going bankrupt suggests that profit margins will be low at best, negative at worst. Cheaper launch cost is not enough to change the business from to non-viable to hugely profitable. Who will be the customers of Starlink? Internet is a commodity for the average person, you can't make money in that ma…

> OneWeb going bankrupt suggests that profit margins will be low at best, negative at worst

It suggests that investors didn't think that OneWeb would have sufficient profits. The example I gave suggest that investors think that Starlink and the new Iridium satellites will be profitable.

The market for Starlink are the millions of people in rural and sparce suburban areas for whom internet connections are slow and expensive.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#57

Post by nickik »

RivieraKid wrote: post #19
jessriedel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Iridium recently launched an entire new generation of satellites to replace their old one, and it is expected to be profitable. Likewise, lots of people expect SpaceX to make a killing on Starlink. There were good reasons to be skeptical of OneWeb, but "consumer satellite communication companies have gone bankrupt before" is not one of them.

> lots of people expect SpaceX to make a killing on Starlink What lots of people expect is kind of irrelevant... OneWeb going bankrupt suggests that profit margins will be low at best, negative at worst. Cheaper launch cost is not enough to change the business from to non-viable to hugely profitable. Who will be the customers of Starlink? Internet is a commodity for the average person, you can't make money in that ma…

> What lots of people expect is kind of irrelevant... OneWeb going bankrupt suggests that profit margins will be low at best, negative at worst. Cheaper launch cost is not enough to change the business from to non-viable to hugely profitable.

Your comment here is pure speculation.

From everything we know, the problem for them was huge capital cost and massive required cashflow to buy launches. All that when your competition has the exact opposite situation totally vertically integrated from the rocket launch to the manufacturing of the whole satellite.

Starlink has so far always gotten tons of money when they asked for it, suggesting the exact opposite of what you stated. OneWeb was just unlikely to get there.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#58

Post by nickik »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51
nickik wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I really can't see what exactly the Ariane 6 does better then Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy. I can not see how it has any chance in a commercial market, they will have to get government launches, but there are not enough. Ariane 6 was a response to Falcon 9 first generation, and they designed it to compete with a Falcon 9 from 4 years ago, Falcon 9 is a different beast now. Even launching 2 huge satellites is no…

Ariane 6 only makes sense if you view launch capability as a matter of national security.

Given that most nations in Europe are happy to launch on US rockets (as the Germans did), that really basically means the national security of France.

Seems to me its more of a jobs program that claims 'national security' as a reason.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#59

Post by InTheArena »

shantara wrote: post #16

I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.

On the wrong side of reusable rockets. It’s as simple as that. All the other major players are backed by immense private wealth and reusable rockets, or government support, or they likewise would be going out of business (and some soon will).

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#60

Post by InTheArena »

shantara wrote: post #16

I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.

It’s worth noting that when the started, there was not reusable rockets, and Tesla was not in the satellite business.
Post reply on HN