Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#51

Post by kjksf » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

waiseristy wrote: post #29

martythemaniak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they don't have is the rockets. SpaceX has cheap reusable Falcon 9s. Blue Origin is aiming to have a cheap reusable New Glenn in 2021. Apple would have to go with much more expensive traditional launchers.

Why would Apple not be able to buy Falcon 9 launches? SpaceX is in the business of selling rocket launches.

They could but I'm guessing SpaceX margins on rocket launches are ~50% (to make it economical in the face of risk of blowing up billion-dollar payloads).

Which means that if Apple pays $60 million for a single launch, it costs SpaceX $30 million to do it.

Or to put it differently: if Apple was competing with SpaceX, then every Apple launch would sponsor one SpaceX launch.

With those economics, it would be hard for Apple (or anyone else) to compete with SpaceX in this business. All else being equal, their cost to create the satellite network would be substantially bigger which means they would have to charge more or have much lower margins and profits than SpaceX.

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#52

Post by mrpopo » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:32 AM UTC

vatueil wrote: post #50

bamboozled wrote: post #36

Seriously, let’s spend billions in renewable investment and government lobbying to fix the climate crisis. Wow, this is getting silly. Broadband internet is just not a fundamental human need, a habitable planet is.

It doesn't do any good to pick an unrelated endeavor and say the resources would be better spent on a worthier cause instead. Private spending on space, or public funding of arts and culture, or humanitarian aid, etc. is not blocking us from tackling global warming. If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for measures that would help, such as a carbon price and dividend, instead of attacki…

> If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for measures that would help, such as putting a carbon price and dividend, instead of attacking other causes and making unnecessary enemies.

Amazon is allegedly the biggest company in the world, and is still not publishing open carbon emissions data[1]. Is Amazon here an "unnecessary" enemy?

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-reluctan...

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#53

Post by vatueil » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

Eyes wrote: post #43

aerophilic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is a finite limit, but the number is much higher than you would suppose. First, in terms of spectrum, realistically all the satellites in a constellation can (and should) share a small number of relatively narrow frequencies. You can almost imagine it ma be the equivalent of one more cell tower in your area per constellation (at worse). In terms of space, astronomy aside, the actual space these satellites…

> As a perspective if you hold your thumb up to the sky, the distance “covered up” by your thumb (if I did my math right) is approximately 480 miles What distance? The distance immediately behind my thumb is about an inch. The distance way back at the edge of the universe is millions of light years

The parent comment says in a footnote:

> [1] assuming orbits of 366 miles up, higher orbits would be even farther apart

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#54

Post by ehsankia » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #6

Gotta give it to them, Amazon is the only big tech company with a vision - the rest are just sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and no good ideas against which to deploy all those funds.

As pointed out by others, Google has had visionary projects for over a decade. Just take a look at their X projects [0]. Here's a few:

- Verily is looking into improving medical tech

- Malta is looking at more efficient energy storage

- Makani is looking at innovative wind energy gathering

- Loon is looking at connectivity for rural/remote communities

- Foghorn is looking at creating clean energy from sea water

And of course, let's not forget about Waymo which started 10 years ago, way ahead of its time. Google also invests heavily in many industries. They fund multiple fusion energy projects [1][2][3], they had a million dollar prize to encourage people to get to the moon [4], and as pointed out above they are big investors in SpaceX too.

Meanwhile, other than Bezos' Blue Origin, I think this is basically a first for Amazon, and honestly even this feels much more of a business move than a "visionary project", considering there's literally 3-4 other companies trying to do the exact same thing (SpaceX, OneWeb, Facebook, Telesat).

[0] https://x.company/projects/

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/news/a27...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18201220/nuclear-fusion-e...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/05/21/th...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#55

Post by ehsankia » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:39 AM UTC

CamelCaseName wrote: post #31

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #6

Gotta give it to them, Amazon is the only big tech company with a vision - the rest are just sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and no good ideas against which to deploy all those funds.

Google attempted something similar with loon[0] and FB with internet.org[1] (IIRC, FB also had a few other initiatives) [0] https://loon.com/ [1] https://www.wired.com/story/what-happened-to-facebooks-grand... And with regards to Amazon being the only big tech company with a vision -- I hear Apple just redesigned the monitor stand. Visionary.

It's detailed more in your second link, but Facebook was planning to launch their first batch back in 2016, which ended up blowing up due to the failed SpaceX launch. So if it wasn't for that mishap, they may have had something operational by now.

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#56

Post by vatueil » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

mrpopo wrote: post #52

vatueil wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't do any good to pick an unrelated endeavor and say the resources would be better spent on a worthier cause instead. Private spending on space, or public funding of arts and culture, or humanitarian aid, etc. is not blocking us from tackling global warming. If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for measures that would help, such as a carbon price and dividend, instead of attacki…

> If anything, such tangential criticisms are a distraction. Advocate for measures that would help, such as putting a carbon price and dividend, instead of attacking other causes and making unnecessary enemies. Amazon is allegedly the biggest company in the world, and is still not publishing open carbon emissions data[1]. Is Amazon here an "unnecessary" enemy? [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-r…

That has nothing to do with plans for satellites. Especially not space or broadband in general, as the original comment decried.

Feel free to criticize other matters, but don't lump in separate projects.

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#57

Post by m463 » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #3

I assume there are a finite number of these swarms that we can deploy in LEO, both in economic terms as well as dedicating space and spectrum? I’ve heard of three companies now that want to achieve this. I’m not sure if there’s anything particularly distinctive about one versus the other, other than SpaceX is the only one with the proven launch capacity to bring that much mass to orbit. I have a lot less faith in Bez…

> mostly it seems a waste to start an ISP

I sort of see an analogy with airplane or helicopter pilots.

One of the most important things pilots need when they start out is flying time. And flying time costs money. They can be easily talked into things to defray their costs.

I suspect that launching an ISP is defraying costs of developing and launching rockets. $100 LEO hamburgers.

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#58

Post by bredren » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #6

Gotta give it to them, Amazon is the only big tech company with a vision - the rest are just sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and no good ideas against which to deploy all those funds.

Amazon also had press this week about drone delivery.

Quite a presumption that announcing specific developments today is a singular sign of a big tech company’s vision.

In a carefully oriented company, I think drips of vision are hidden in every executive interview and minor product release.

You only get major, obvious vision-level clarity once in a very long while.

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#59

Post by positr0n » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 4:02 AM UTC

onedognight wrote: post #11

This is a business that Apple should get into as well. They have the capital and Phones+internet would have great vertical synergy.

I don't think the frequencies these satellite ISPs are using is conducive to directly interacting with a phone. The antenna/receiver unit for Starlink will be the size of a pizza box according to SpaceX. Physics limits how much you can shrink the antenna (due to the wavelength).

Re: Amazon's Satellite Project Will Cost Billions, Jeff Bezos Says

#60

Post by bamboozled » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #44

bamboozled wrote: post #36

Seriously, let’s spend billions in renewable investment and government lobbying to fix the climate crisis. Wow, this is getting silly. Broadband internet is just not a fundamental human need, a habitable planet is.

Bringing several Mbps internet to the farthest most unreachable corners of the earth, economically enough for low income people to use, is a net social good. you would understand if you had ever worked in geostationary satellite based internet access and seen how costly it is.

I'm not disagreeing with that, but let's talk about priorities.

If you're living in some of the farthest most unreachable corners of the earth, you;re life is probably more and more in-danger from the threats of climate change through drought, fires etc.

Yet another plan to launch thousands of satellites into orbit so it's easier to order more junk from Amazon is a low priority for those people I'm afraid.