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

Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 275 posts

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#121

Post by ineedasername »

koboll wrote: post #109
mataug wrote: post #49

Amazon always claims to focus on its customers, and ignore its competitors, this is supposed to be an important facet of the "Its always Day 1" philosophy. These actions, along with Amazon's complaints about Jedi contract seem to imply that amazon has now entered day 2. PS: I understand that the circumstances around the Jedi contract are different. I'm just trying to make a point that Amazon is now focussing more on…

Here is the actual ex parte filing: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Amazo... It is quite short and basically alleges SpaceX failed to fulfill various requirements when filing its amendment. Mainly, it alleges SpaceX submitted two different configuration options and the Commission's rules require them to settle on a single configuration option to submit. Are those legitimate allegations? I have…

But it seems kind of misleading to call that "because it can't compete" when the filing says something completely different.

Well, it's not like Amazon is going to say "we're 3 years behind SpaceX so we need you to slow them down"

It's also not a good look for Amazon when it has has significantly more contact with the FCC over SpaceX than in providing its own details in response to FCC questions

But this is just SpaceX's side of things, so I'll take it with a grain of salt. Also Amazon may fully expect the FCC to reject their request and simply wants that precedent set for when it needs/wants to submit a similarly flexible plan for their own deployment.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#122

Post by manquer »

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #12

I can't guess why Bezos does what he does but have to give him credit for not going the Soros route...WP aside of course. If I were him, I'd avoid anything Musk (who sucks all the air out of the room) is involved in. Build the worlds biggest telescope, work on advanced propulsion technology for launch or interplanetary spacecraft, there's a lot of cool things out there. I doubt that the first investor in anything rea…

In the space launch and satellite industries there is natural monopoly characteristics. Amazon loves this kind of businesses, be it AWS or delivery they like to use their size in that sector as competitive advantage.

They are not trying to be cool, for Bezos this is just another enormous money making play.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#123

Post by chaostheory »

mataug wrote: post #49

Amazon always claims to focus on its customers, and ignore its competitors, this is supposed to be an important facet of the "Its always Day 1" philosophy. These actions, along with Amazon's complaints about Jedi contract seem to imply that amazon has now entered day 2. PS: I understand that the circumstances around the Jedi contract are different. I'm just trying to make a point that Amazon is now focussing more on…

Amazon entered Day 2 as while back. Its customer service has been a shadow of its former self for years now. It also took them years to resolve the problems stemming from commingling their inventory with 3rd parties.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#124

Post by panick21 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #24
jjoonathan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally hate the idea of holding back rural connectivity, mapping, and the general advancement of space-based science and industry in order to preserve the sacrosanct emptiness of certain orbits. Why should your desire for empty orbits outweigh other peoples' desire to put those orbits to productive use?

For the same reason that we generally believe that my right to clean drinking water outweighs your right to dump toxic waste in a river, even if it is useful to you. Some doors are very difficult to un-open, and caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible (increasing…

What you demand is not clean drinking water, rather that nobody is allowed to use the river at all because you like to see the water flow.

You are basically saying 'nobody is allowed to put a boat on this river because I like nature'.

> caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible

And that why FCC exists and they have mostly agree that this is not actually a problem.

Nobody has a larger intensive not to make future spaceflight harder then SpaceX.

And the idea that all ground-based space research is impossible is equally nonsense that has often been disproven.

Even in your dystopian nightmare, the reality is that within a few years the orbits SpaceX used would be clean again or that based on government order SpaceX could de-orbit 99.9% of all sats in a week.

So how about we allow boats onto the river and figure out if its really the end of civilization to do so.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#125

Post by cranesnakecode »

knubie wrote: post #92

This is slightly off-topic but it always seemed to me that FAANG has a vested interest in making internet access as fast, cheap, and highly available as possible (commoditize your compliment). So I wonder why they went in together on some kind of consortium to make that happen. Google tried their hand a few years ago and didn't get very far, and now it seems like it's Amazon's turn. It would make more sense to me if…

They don't want to just satisfy their interests, that want to be the ones who profit the most from satisfying their interest. It's about getting a bigger share of the pie, and they're fine taking longer to get their slice if they can keep everyone else from having some and take their shares instead.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#126

Post by BenjiWiebe »

chihuahua wrote: post #86
MauranKilom wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before they get pulled back into the atmosphere by gravity. Irrelevant to the point, but: It's more that they get pulled further down into atmosphere by... atmosphere. With just gravity alone, they'd stay perfectly in orbit.

I think they get pulled down by the combination of atmosphere and gravity. As you pointed out, gravity alone is not sufficient. But also, if there's only an atmosphere but no gravity, they don't get pulled down.

If there's no gravity, they don't orbit. If they orbit with gravity but with no atmosphere, they stay orbiting indefinitely.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#127

Post by WoahNoun »

z3ncyberpunk wrote: post #21
marricks wrote: post #11

I disdain the owners of both but Bezos (fairly) seems to get a bit more ire here. The Verge’s piece elaborated that SpaceX hasn’t decided between two configurations and want approval for both even though they will only choose one, so everyone else has to plan around two different configurations. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure but it does seem a bit unfair to add double work for everyone else.

I'll take the eccentric billionaire actually tackling real issues and making actual headway. People here are too narrow minded and have quarter to quarter short term memory disorder, seeming to forget that Musk and Tesla are the sole reason we have had the progress and momentum towards actually greener technologies, not simply greenwashed corporate nonsense that was churned out year after year without any was actual…

Amazon has invested 10's of billions into wind farms, solar farms, hydrogen fuel cells, electric/hydrogen vehicles, etc.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#128

Post by ajford »

nine_k wrote: post #75
ajford wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does have material impact on others. The Starlink constellations in this proposal are large, and any future development by others will have to account for the orbits of these potential constellations. That's 30k new objects to plan for, and with two configurations at play, that means accounting for essentially 60k objects in motion, effectively doubling the work someone would have to do to plan their deploymen…

It's like, well, land — if somebody builds on it, nobody else would be able to. They'd need to build nearby, or elsewhere. It's not like Starlink is,going to exhaust all viable orbits.

Buildings on land don't move. You don't have to plan for the scenario where your neighbor's house shifts it's location a few degrees and runs into your house, or where your neighbor's house will be in 2 years.

These constellations aren't stationary, they move based on their orbital parameters, and to properly predict their orbits, you'll have to account for their future movement for the next while (depending on expected lifetime and how close they come to your intended orbit).

Saying this is like buying a plot of land is missing the level of work and complexity that goes into orbital mechanics.

If you need to illuminate the same area of the earth, which would make sense if you're also looking to serve the same populations, then you'll need to either be at a different altitude or have neighboring or intersecting orbits, which will need to handle the orbits of all other objects. That's why the level of complexity increases a fair bit when you need to plan for two large-scale configurations.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#129

Post by BenjiWiebe »

dylan604 wrote: post #83
logicx24 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing, we now have sky NIMBYs complaining about satellites hindering views.

just because you live in a place where you can't even see the night sky doesn't mean other people should be robbed of their view.

I'd be in favor of requiring all city lights to be turned off after 7pm so I could see the night sky better in my rural location. (/sorta s)

A small city 40 miles away hurts the view far more then the Starlink satellites do.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#130

Post by lhorie »

polote wrote: post #91
zdragnar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, Walmart seems the obvious comparison, at least for retail. Much of what you'll find on Amazon, you can find there, including fast, free shipping.

Can you buy things like high end bike parts on Walmart? Or addidas running shoes? Honest question

If you know exactly what you want, you're better off going directly to the company's website or a retailer specialized in that category. Pretty much every such company has e-commerce these days and the risk of getting scammed is basically zero.
Post reply on HN