Bezos beams up batch two as Project Kuiper plays catch-up with Starlink

The second batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband satellites has launched, but Team Bezos has a long way to go to match the coverage of Elon Musk's Starlink. After a scrub and rollback for repairs from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V lifted off on June …

[Oneman2Many]

Zero chance the FAA will pull their licence.

And expect aside from Ariana that they will be making regular launches soon enough though won't make FAA requirements.

[DS999]

I hope they've taken some measures

To avoid the light pollution and radio pollution that Starlink's fleet is imposing on optical and radio astronomers, or things are gonna get even worse for them!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I hope they've taken some measures

...and not forgetting the approx. 30,000 Chinese ones planned across at least 4 Chinese companies, some of which have started launching. On the other hand, I've seen it suggested they don't yet have the launch capability for that many sats. But there are two or three Chinese companies on the road to Falcon 8-like re-usable launch vehicles. Either way, despite the size of LEO, it's looking like it may be a bit crowded up there in the coming years.

[werdsmith]

I need a Kuiper enabled Kindle so I can download free self-published self-help e-books from an improvised raft afloat in the middle of the Atlantic.

[Gary Stewart]

Bezos beams up batch two as Project Kuiper plays catch-up with Starlink

Some fun math:

Project Kuiper has launched 54 satellites launched in 56 days

56/54 = 1.037 days per satellite, or 0.96432 satellites per day

There are 7,556 working Starlink satellites in orbit out of 7,578 total in orbit. Since the difference is 22 satellites I believe that the "non-working" satellites were recently launched and have not reached their working orbit. I also believe that there are a few completely non-functional satellites in orbit apparently not accounted for in those numbers so I'll just go with the working ones.

1.037 days per satellite x 7556 Project Kuiper satellites = 7835.852 days (21.468 years) to launch 7556 satellites and "catch up" with the current number of Starlink satellites. This of course does not take into account that the cadence of Project Kuiper satellite launches will almost certainly increase as will the number of satellites per launch (currently 27 satellites per launch) when New Glen becomes fully operational.

However, SpaceX is currently launching over 250 Starlink V2 satellites per month or approximately 8.333 satellites per day with the Falcon 9 putting 20 - 23 satellites in orbit per launch. And the number of these launches per year has been increasing over the last several years. The Starship will (hopefully) put 54 V3 Starlink satellites in orbit per launch, after they figure out how to keep "Ship" from going BOOM!, and eventually (hopefully) match and then exceed the launch cadence of the Falcon 9.

As I understand it SpaceX wants to put a total of ~ 30,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. If and when they reach that goal it will provide Project Kuiper Cooper the only chance they have of catching up and it will probably take several years after that to do so.

Just to be clear I like the idea of competition and wish the best of luck to both. I do lament that the number of these satellites in orbit will cause serious problems for Earth bound astronomical telescopes just as some of the largest, most powerful, and technically sophisticated next gen telescopes come on line.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bezos beams up batch two as Project Kuiper plays catch-up with Starlink

They should have just acquired OneWeb when it was in financial distress and gained several years.