Interested in learning more about #amazonkuiper? Here's a video for you. Dave Limp Amazon SVP in charge of Kuiper talks with @wapodavenport. Spoiler alert: very little actual information is provided. Here's a summary. 1/
Amazon wants to target "tens of millions of customers", and will focus on lowering the user terminal price. The "bill of materials" alone is under 400$ he says. Admittedly the Kuiper Ka band satelllite & terminal are more complex than Starlink's Ku one. 2/
The target customer base is not well defined. Generalities about "hundreds of millions" and "affordability". Targets are consumers and businesses alike. 3/
Kuiper will also consider the military and NASA as future customers "technology should be used to support national security".
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How to close the business case (with a 10B$ investment)? Here Amazon's reply is super vague "we are focused on the business details", "executing with a high level of reliability and safety". I think Amazon has no idea on how to close the business case. 5/
About the production: "the traditional satellite industry is focused on building 1 to 3 birds every year (...) we are focused on building 1 to 3 satelltes every day" - like Oneweb, Starlink etc... nothing new here. 6/
The biggest benefit of the system for Amazon, beyond "more people having accessto broadband" is "the synergy with AWS" - would love to understand more about this... 7/
Kuiper enable Amazon to pose as a freedom fighter "access to information is the path to freedom"... 8/
More banalities when "light pollution" issues are raised: "we work with astronomers to understand their concerns" but "we will not be able to mitigate 100%". 9/
A funny moment (for me) when the "space economy" is brought in: "we have stalled for years in the commercialisation of space" but there will soon be an order of magnitude growth of the mass launched to orbit, Dave Limp is "bullish and optimistic".
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As per the FCC licence half the constellation must be deployed by July 2026 - Dave Limp is confident the deadline will be met "assuming success of our prototype satellites".
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