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Rocketlab acquires Iridium

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

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Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#51

Post by ttul »

ryandvm wrote: post #49

I dunno. I would be surprised if a 30 year old telecommunications network is going to be technically competitive with a SpaceX's LEO network that is still launching satellites as we speak. How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

It’s not about Iridium. It’s about Iridium’s customers and partnerships. RocketLab hopes to launch their own satellites presumably and then can sell significantly improved services to them, without having to build a customer base from scratch.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#52

Post by [deleted] »

s0rce wrote: post #42
proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

[deleted]

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#53

Post by Joel_Mckay »

pelorat wrote: post #40

I like RocketLab. Looking forward to Neutron etc. But this is a bad investment, no other way to put it.

Uncertain what Iridium global RF band allocation holdings were worth.

If it is still pole-to-pole global monolithic coverage, than hardware/legacy-protocols are of secondary interest. Modern SDR transceivers with proper RF beam-steering front-ends could retrofit the business while slowly phasing out legacy hardware.

But I do agree, Iridium was too pricey for most consumer product markets, and there were several other satellite broadband services.

Additionally, Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#54

Post by TheJoeMan »

s0rce wrote: post #42
proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

At present, I don't believe there are industry standards / codes mandating minimization of reflectivity. My understanding is that SpaceX has engineered for this from their own internal requirements and "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback). As we anticipate a major scale-up of LEO in the future, it follows that "cost pressures" may (mal)incentivize players to skip this concern.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#55

Post by denotes »

ryandvm wrote: post #49

I dunno. I would be surprised if a 30 year old telecommunications network is going to be technically competitive with a SpaceX's LEO network that is still launching satellites as we speak. How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#57

Post by piltdownman »

amluto wrote: post #44
NetMageSCW wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A profitable satellite company with a lot of debt and satellites that target the previous model of bespoke terminals when the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

> the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones. I don’t think there a unified “market” here. The fixed rooftop terminals and fixed-ish roaming terminals use high (tens of GHz) frequencies with correspondingly wide bandwidth, have excellent beamforming capabilities and some degree of MIMO to improve spectrum reuse, and consume an amount of power that would be outrageous for a phone. Phones don’t have re…

//I don’t think there a unified “market” here.

You mean like the ASTS/Vodafone partnership that birthed the Satellite Connect Europe?

https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/satellite-...

https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/vodafone-a...

Or like the US JV where they provide the infra for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513491108/en/AST...

//Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

And they appear to have circumvented that, although ease of scaling remains to be seen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASTSpaceMobile/comments/1k6whtf/rak...

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#58

Post by kilroy123 »

ryandvm wrote: post #49

I dunno. I would be surprised if a 30 year old telecommunications network is going to be technically competitive with a SpaceX's LEO network that is still launching satellites as we speak. How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

You realize they have a new network of satellites, right? It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech.

A lot of remote IOT devices use Iridium, as well as the US government or DoD.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#60

Post by taneq »

proee wrote: post #41

We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky? Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.…

It’s already starting to be like that. If you get far enough out into the bush away from light pollution and watch the stars for a bit, you can see the grid of satellites orbiting. It’s kind of cool but also kind of depressing.
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