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

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

jncraton wrote: post #25

caiobegotti wrote: post #4

"If Kuiper succeeds [...]" That's the biggest if clause you will ever see about this because in order for it to succeed at all BO needs to actually launch something to orbit at least once before we talk about success of a commercial product on top of their rockets. I follow up SpaceX quite closely, I admit, but any news about products that absolutely depend on the launch capability of BO is vaporware at most and most…

I don't fully understand the negativity around BO. They haven't gone to orbit yet, and they don't run everything they do as a PR campaign the way that SpaceX does, but getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days. We first achieved orbital flight over 50 years ago, and many different groups have achieved the same since then. Given Bezos' deep pockets, why would BO fail where so many other have succee…

Post by almost_usual » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59

paulsutter wrote: post #47

Bizarre claim. In what way would Starlink have any less access to AWS? Its... the internet > “If Kuiper succeeds, Amazon can not only offer global satellite broadband access—it can include that access as part of its Amazon Web Services (AWS), which already offers resources for cloud computing, machine learning, data analytics, and more”

> In what way would Starlink have any less access to AWS? It’s a distribution advantage. To sign up a new customer, Starlink has to...sign up a new customer. Contracts, configuration, payment details, integration. Kuiper, on the other hand, has to get them to click a button on a dashboard.

Post by baptou12 » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

nscalf wrote: post #55

jncraton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't fully understand the negativity around BO. They haven't gone to orbit yet, and they don't run everything they do as a PR campaign the way that SpaceX does, but getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days. We first achieved orbital flight over 50 years ago, and many different groups have achieved the same since then. Given Bezos' deep pockets, why would BO fail where so many other have succee…

The default state of space is failure. It's incredibly expensive, extremely error prone, and failure can have catastrophic results. There's a reason SpaceX was laughed out of room for years. Hell, the most basic problem is described as tyranny. Regardless of how rich Bezos is, can he bring the right type of talent together and get that talent to make no errors? How many hundreds of millions to billions of dollars is…

Post by almost_usual » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #27

newsclues wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they haven’t done “the hard thing” yet.

Sure, but there doesn't appear to be anything intrinsic to BO that lends itself a particular disadvantage to doing "the hard thing". They appear to have the requisite resources & staff, so predicting that they will never do "the hard thing" seems a bit like spiking the football after the first quarter.