It seems that a major rivalry is emerging in the technology field between two magnates who have become household names in American business.
One of them is Elon Musk, whose SpaceX business has been commonly associated with space exploration for over a decade, and involved in recent public launches solidifying the company’s established extra-terrestrial bona fides.
The other is Jeff Bezos, who recently retired from a retail kingdom that has dominated the delivery of online purchases.
Both of them have set their sights on plans to provide more robust satellite communications from space – and recent Twitter sniping by Musk shows some of the contours of this epic challenge.
SpaceX’s Starlink system is widely known, and has negotiated directly with NASA on its operations.
Bezos’ outfit, Blue Origin, on the other hand, is something many people have never heard of. Although it was started in 2000, the firm’s plan to produce reusable punch vehicles has not gotten the kind of publicity that’s the hallmark of many Musk projects. Most people, in fact, still don’t know that Bezos has his sights on space at all.
Now, Ed Browne reports at Newsweek, Blue Origin is contending that Starlink is not FCC compliant.
“On Wednesday this week Amazon—also founded by Bezos—wrote to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging it to dismiss SpaceX’s current proposals for its second-generation Starlink satellite communications system, which would comprise 30,000 satellites, on the basis that SpaceX’s proposals were at odds with FCC rules,” Browne writes.
Blue Origin, it turns out, has its own “Project Kuiper” to rival the Starlink technology with its own nascent satellite system.
“Amazon’s Project Kuiper is all about taking on the digital divide,” writes Brittany McGhee at WhistleOut. “By putting together its own satellite constellation in low Earth orbit, Amazon will be able to beam satellite internet to places in the U.S. and around the world that either don’t have adequate internet access or don’t have any access at all. In particular, Amazon’s goal is to offer broadband service that is fast, reliable, and easy on consumers’ wallets. The traditional satellite internet providers in the U.S., HughesNet and Viasat, have geostationary satellites around 22,000 miles above Earth, which stay in place over a particular location by moving at the same speed as the planet rotates. LEO satellites, on the other hand, are much closer at only around 350 miles up. The LEO satellites orbit Earth, completing a lap approximately every 90-120 minutes, and form an interconnected transmission network that allows the satellites to send data amongst each other at much faster speeds.”
McGhee points out that the lunch date is still years away.
How will this play out? Will Bezos, in his retirement, have the clout to really rival an established space exploration giant? More on this later.
