Amazon’s Project Kuiper is more than the company’s response to SpaceX

Post by versteegen » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

liability wrote: post #84

bryanlarsen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's certainly slow. Slow compared to what? Compared to SpaceX they're slow, but compared to everybody else? NASA/Boeing's SLS program started in 2005 as Constellation. It's still over a year away from it's first test launch and several years away from fully operational status. China's Long March 5 started in 2007 and it can be argued that it wasn't fully operational until this year. ULA's Vulcan, started in 2014 i…

Slow compared to Rocket Lab; 11 years to orbit, compared to Blue Origin's 20+ and counting. Slow compared to Orbital Sciences, who took 8 years in the 1980s.

Post by cma » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #126

cma wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can start replacing long-haul passenger planes with rockets that soon, I feel that BO can launch the sats or Amazon can pay someone else to launch them. Unless there is something going on edging into magical that is going to put SpaceX that far ahead that there would be people taking rockets for regularly commercial flight, not thrill seeking space tourism, price-competitive with commercial flight and reliable.

There are a lot of steps remaining for SpaceX to start a long haul point to point passenger service on Earth. First, Starship has to meet its safety and performance aspirations, that’s at least a decades worth of work. The first passengers won’t be for a couple years, and they will only be astronauts and explorers for at least a decade, until Raptor has a long history of trustworthy flights. Then there is the governm…