Amazon's Project Kuiper books up to 83 rockets to launch its internet-beaming satellites.

[usaf-vet]

The combined flights — up to 83 launches total — are set to take place over a five-year period and will allow Project Kuiper to launch the bulk of its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites. Amazon did not provide details on how much the launch contracts cost, but the company is investing billions of dollars across the three deals, according to James Watkins, a spokesperson for Project Kuiper. Amazon also claimed that the deal “is the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history.”

The concept is fairly similar to SpaceX’s ever-growing Starlink program — a planned constellation of tens of thousands of satellites also designed to provide broadband internet from low Earth orbit. However, Starlink is already quite a few years ahead of Project Kuiper. So far, SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 satellites into orbit and has begun limited service around the world, with 250,000 subscribers tapped into the system so far, according to SpaceX. Project Kuiper has yet to launch any of its satellites.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/5/23010245/amazon-project-kuiper-megaconstellation-arianespace-ula-blue-origin?fbclid=IwAR3ex22eI4OWZxVD4TiUyotG1U9MF2nAf9xxHQLy-H9W4DsdPNr6Z9jKpvk

[Aristus]

1. And Amazon can't pay union-level wages because?......

[Chainfire]

2. Before companies are allowed to put their hardware into space

they should be required to have a bonded plan on what to do with them when they are no longer useful. I would suggest the same for governments. We have trashed the earth and now we are making a junkyard of our near space. After all, we have to leave room for the Jewish space lasers.

[lagomorph777]

4. Space will very soon become completely inaccessible.

We need to get this fixed. It's literally insane to launch tens of thousands of satellites without a practical way to clean up the dead ones.

[Disaffected]

11. AFAIK the Starlink satellites

are programmed to self-deorbit when they reach their life expectancy or become defective. Even if the self-deorbit feature fails, they are in a sufficiently low orbit that they will necessarily deorbit within a few years due to atmospheric drag.

[Blues Heron]

3. Pretty soon we won't need streetlights - the night sky will be a solid milky glow of satellites

[lagomorph777]

5. Or satellite fragments.

[Chainfire]

7. What will happen, as usual, is that the business investors will squeeze all of the money

out of the program and then ask the taxpayers to pay to clean up their mess. We have seen it all before.

[7wo7rees]

9. Space debris in motion. Let's just wreck it all

[Emile]

6. Gee I wonder how much more a month for internet service the consumer

will end up paying?

[abqtommy]

8. It comes to mind that any company that can afford to do this can afford to invest in their

workers!

[Chainfire]

12. Isn't that the damn truth!

[Lucid Dreamer]

10. Space junk will halt global warming.

Artificial Orbiting Albedo Shield.

You heard it here first!