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I don't think this argument holds up to analysis. According to the OneWeb and Starlink Wikipedia pages:

1. May 2014: OneWeb (formerly 'WorldVu') receives its initial $500 million in funding [1]

2. January 2015: SpaceX's satellite constellation is announced. [2]

3. December 2016: OneWeb receives an extra $1.2 billion from SoftBank and existing investors [3]

4. March 2017: Blue Origin signs OneWeb as a customer [4]

If SpaceX was a neutral transport provider, there's little reason that OneWeb would have chosen Blue Origin over SpaceX. Blue Origin is probably offering very low prices, but SpaceX arguably could match them.

[1] https://spacenews.com/40736google-backed-global-broadband-ve...

[2] http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/20254807...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/12/19/softbank-oneweb/

[4] https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-gets-oneweb-as-second-new-...



I meant - no reason not to get that market share in the small-comsat market.

As to why do it themselves as opposed to just be a provider to OneWeb, I think this is a sneaky way to do some price discrimination - SpaceX, like everyone else, may have some spare launch capacity, so having an internal (hopefully-profitable) project to soak up that demand rather than cratering launch prices may be worth it.




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