Amazon’s first 27 Kuiper broadband sats make it into orbit on an Atlas V

Amazon’s first attempt to hoist production versions of its Project Kuiper broadband-beaming satellites appears to have succeeded. Jeff Bezos’ flying telco used an United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to send 27 of its satellites skywards and at 7:01PM Monday, Eastern Time, the craft left Cape Canaveral Space Force Station …

[Geoff Campbell]

Launch cost

It's difficult to see how Kuiper can compete with Starlink while they are paying for other company's disposable rockets. I assume their business model is based on getting New Glenn running and properly reusable before too much longer, to directly compete with the costs of the Starlink plus either Falcon 9 or Starship combination.

GJC

[NoCoffee]

Re: Launch cost

Kuiper is a better product, Starlink suffers from very high Jitter when it exchanges birds, every 13 minutes AWS say they solved this problem with next-generation tech. If the AWS ground terminal is better, its going to be win-win. Launch cost are Tax deductible as R&D investment, which Mr Trump has kindly bought back in

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Launch cost

I used Starlink for three years without any noticeable jitter of significant magnitude, including in some long-term network monitoring tools. Got a reference for that claim?

We'll see how the services fare. It's a bit of an irrelevance to me now, as I won't do business with either of them, but I'm still interested to see how the services work out.

GJC

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Re: Launch cost

Right here on this site, from last year...

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service "represents an unusually hostile link environment" to the TCP protocol, according to Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Center.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/22/starlink_tcp_performance_evaluation/

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Launch cost

Oh, yes, I remember being puzzled by that at the time it was published.

All I can say is that three years of real-world usage of the system including a whole bunch of video conferences and voice calls didn't show up any problems at all.

GJC

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Re: Launch cost

Downvotes for answering a question.

Elmo's fanbois are terribly thin skinned...

[tony72]

Re: Launch cost

SpaceX's 2024 revenue was around $8 billion, and profit (EBIDTA) around $3.8 billion. If you assume Kuiper can also earn a few billion profit per year after a few years operation, it doesn't take that many years to recoup the estimated $20 billion launch costs. But as the article states, the costs are relatively small beer for Amazon, and they're probably a lot less bothered about it being profitable (in terms of recovering the initial costs) than they are about becoming a major player in the LEO satellite internet market. I assume like Starlink, the satellites will have a lifespan of just a few years, but as you say, New Glenn will be reusable eventually, so the costs of maintaining the constellation could eventually be comparable to SpaceX.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: Launch cost

I don't think that's a very valid comparison. Only some of SpaceX's profit comes from Starlink, they also make money from selling launch services and from longer-term government projects.

GJC

[ChrisElvidge]

Satellite numbers

If we get enough satellites into orbit, will it reduce global warming by blocking sunlight?

[xyz]

Hard to see how a kuiper terminal...

Is easier to set up than starlink... Stick dish on ground, connect cable to router and turn on.

TBH, after 2 years of use, not noticed "jitter" on Starlink either, mind you I'm only using it for teams and zoom.

Elon Musk is still a grade A twat though.

[DS999]

Re: Hard to see how a kuiper terminal...

Elon Musk is still a grade A twat though

And that's the business proposition for competing with Starlink, even if you had a slightly inferior product. There are many people who now will refuse to do anything that puts a single penny in Musk's pocket. Not that Bezos is a whole lot better, but if I was forced to choose between the two I'd pick the one who isn't a nazi.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need another US option, we need an EU one.

Like Starlink these satellites can be turned on and off or share metadata at the whim of the Trump regime.

That's probably great if you're american but the rest of us would like alternatives not more of the same.