Here's why:
Mega Constellations
Mega Satellite constellations are coming. Satellite constellations aim to provide high-speed broadband service to consumers around the world at affordable prices.
By the end of 2020, SpaceX plans to launch about 1,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation, increasing the number of active satellites in orbit by half. OneWeb, intends to launch more than 400 satellites of its own in the same period. Other companies have similar plans for additional large constellations in the near future. If these companies are successful, they could help transport three billion people who are currently offline by providing an Internet connection for essentially every human on Earth.
Amazon Kuiper
Amazon is joining the race to provide high-speed broadband from low Earth orbit using large numbers of satellites. Amazon announced on July 30 that The Federal Communications commission approved Amazon’s request to operate a constellation of roughly 3,200 internet satellites in low Earth orbit. The FCC said Amazon has until July 30, 2026, to launch at least 50% of its satellites in order to maintain its authorization, and until July 30, 2029, to orbit the full constellation.
“There are still too many places where broadband access is unreliable or where it doesn’t exist at all,” Limp said. “Kuiper will change that. Our $10 billion investment will create jobs and infrastructure around the United States that will help us close this gap.”
Amazon will invest $10 billion in Kuiper — the same amount SpaceX has estimated it will need to invest in Starlink, which already has more than 500 small broadband satellites in orbit. Amazon has not outlined a launch plan for Kuiper, and told the FCC its constellation is still being designed. It’s unclear how Amazon will build and launch the satellites as Kuiper has not filed any paperwork with the FCC to test hardware yet. However, Amazon has extremely deep pockets and it seems nothing is out of reach for them in terms of funding and getting Kuiper to an operational level in the future. They also have access to Blue origin, though Blue Origin has said it will have to compete for Kuiper launch contracts. By the time Blue Origin gets their satellite-launching New Glenn rocket operational, SpaceX may already have much of their constellation in the sky.
Blue Origin has several commercial orders for its satellite-launching New Glenn rocket, first flight planned 2021, which should give them an advantage over other companies like OneWeb that plan to launch constellations on third party vendors. They should also be decently competitive on price with other providers like Starlink, given their investment into reusability. And if Amazon is ready with sat production by that time, they should be able to catch up to Starlink fairly quick. But again, BO has said it will have to compete to get the constellation launch contracts and until then nothing is certain.
Rajeev Badyal the VP of technology at Project Kuiper, who was the former head of SpaceX's Starlink division, was fired by Elon Musk in mid 2018 because Badyal wanted three more iterations of test satellites before going into mass production and deployment. 7 months after Badyal was fired, SpaceX launched its first batch of 60 v0.9 Starlink satellites and rapidly iterated from there. And a couple of months later Badyal was hired by Bezos for Kuiper. If Badyal learned nothing from why Elon fired him, it will not bode well for Amazon Kuiper meeting the deadlines imposed by the FCC.
"We are doing an incredible amount of invention to deliver fast, reliable broadband at a price that makes sense for customers," said Rajeev Badyal , VP of technology at Project Kuiper - a feat experts say hinges on the availability of cheap, mass-produced flat-panel antennas that don’t yet exist.
Achieving this goal requires some heavy lifting. SpaceX already has permission to launch at least 12,000 satellites, with the possibility of lofting up to 30,000 additional starlink satellites based on recent filings from the company. Amazon is planning for more than 3,000 satellites in its amazon Kuiper constellation. Other companies , including China, also have their eye on developing similar constellations, with rough estimates suggesting there could be more than 50,000 satellites in total added to Earth orbit in the coming decades.
Competition is always good for the industry in general and for consumers in particular.
Regulations and Debris management
How do we manage this massive outpouring of satellites remains an unanswered question. There are currently roughly 2,000 active spacecrafts orbiting Earth that have to dodge each other, as well as defunct satellites, and smaller pieces of space debris. The advent of mega constellations will require a huge increase in collision avoidance maneuvers. Such maneuvers could surge from a current average of three a day to about eight an hour.
This graph from a USSTRATCOM presentation in Feb 2017 shows the history of collision avoidance maneuvers done as a result of their close approach warnings: ( picture on my blog if you're interested: https://jouri.substack.com/p/constellations )
There are currently no strict international rules or regulations that dictate how a company operates such constellations in orbit, and regulators have struggled to cope with the rapid development of mega constellations. The point is that the FCC regulations and debris management are nowhere near equipped to deal with this scale up of satellites. We need regulations that will certify reliability and end of life deorbit. Satellite operators need to be legally liable for dead satellites and debris on orbit, including bearing the cost for capture and deorbit operations which would create an open market for satellite and debris clean up companies to serve the mega-constellation companies.
The FCC does require companies to provide both collision risk analyses and proposals to safely remove their satellites from orbit. SpaceX, in one of its FCC filings, noted that its active Starlink satellites collision risk is considered to be zero or 0.000000303 percent with any objects larger than 10 centimeters if one of them failed immediately after launching into an initial orbital altitude of about 350 kilometers. And in its own filing with the FCC, Amazon was asked to project the potential collision risk of its Project Kuiper constellation if up to 15 percent of its satellites failed, a high but not unfathomable number.
Can Jio compete?
Jio, assuming you haven’t heard of its fundraising in the news, is an Indian telecom company which is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. Jio Managed to raise approximately $20 billion from investors In a matter of four months, in the middle of a pandemic.
But What does that have to do with Mega constellations in space you may ask?
Well, Jio is aiming to make internet accessible and affordable to consumers in all parts of India and is prepping to expand worldwide. "Jio will significantly up the quantity, quality and coverage of broadband internet while lowering the cost to the user.” As stated on their website.
Starlink, OneWeb, Telesat and now Kuiper. What will Jio do? They all plan to provide high speed internet through satellite globally. Jio’s main competition is going to come from starlink which is aiming to deploy 1,584 of spacecraft to provide near-global service at low cost by late 2021 or 2022.
Starlink is Going to make Jio’s $36b+ capex spend in building its network useless by 2022.
Let’s have a final look at the competition:
We are mere observers in this race. But I think this might not be a technology battle, rather a lift capability one. The battle in my opinion is between three major competitors. Starlink, Kuiper, and OneWeb.
OneWeb's model is very different than their direct competition.
OneWeb outsource almost everything, their satellites and Earth stations are being built by a third party. Their launches are through third parties as well, Some of their launches will be through Blue Origin’s New Glenn which is still in the design stage.
On the other hand, SpaceX has very low cost to orbit with commercial prices. With their investment in reusability, cost will only go lower. They are vertically integrated and are able to adapt and adjust to any requirements that might arise further into Starlink constellation deployment. They have a proven launch record and cadence (30% of the commercial launches last year) and are already producing the first batch of satellites. Their track record shows that they are willing to iterate fast, and adapt as they go.
Amazon is also a very attractive competitor. Their funding is virtually unlimited, compared to OneWeb. They share the same founder as BO and will presumably have preferential treatment from BO. Once New Glen is operational they will be in a prime position to launch a lot of satellites in a short timespan. They are also leaders in cloud computing with a vast footprint and a lot of infrastructure world-wide. Again, vertical integration seems to have it's advantages. More bandwidth and shorter RTT can only help their business.
In conclusion: Competition is always good for the industry in general and for consumers in particular. In my opinion OneWeb could ultimately be faced with an uneven fight on two fronts - access to space with SpaceX and funding (+ access to space through Blue Origin) with Amazon. I highly doubt they will be able to fight these two competitors and it's much more likely that they will be bought out further down the line.
Submitted August 07, 2020 at 09:23PM by 11coffee https://ift.tt/3knnP3m via TikTokTikk
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