On April 5, Forbes released the 2022 Global Billionaires List. Among them, Musk's wealth ranked first, surpassing Bezos for the first time in 4 years. The contest between the world's richest men has traveled from Earth to outer space, and in order to compete with Musk's Starlink project, on the same day, Bezos also announced the latest progress of his Project Kuiper.
Amazon is scheduled for 83 launches in 5 years
Amazon called it one of the largest commercial launch deals ever, with all contracts totaling up to 83 launches to be completed in batches over about five years. While amazon's planned rockets for launch missions are not yet operational, mission progress is expected to be reached later this year, no later than 2023.
Amazon signed 38 Vulcan Centaur rocket launches with ULA, 18 Ariane 6 rocket launches with Ariane Space, and 12 New Glenn rocket launches with Blue Origin, with which Amazon could choose to purchase 15 additional launches from Blue Origin in the future.
The target is the global market
It is reported that the Internet satellite launch protocol is called Project Kuiper, amazon has said to invest more than $10 billion to build this system, is to build a network of 3236 satellites in low Earth orbit, to provide high-speed Internet for anywhere in the world.
In the race to offer the Internet of Space, SpaceX has taken a considerable lead over Amazon, having launched about 2,000 Starlink satellites to date, serving about 250,000 users.
But Amazon is betting on its global footprint to close that gap. The company said Project Kuiper will leverage Amazon's global logistics and operational footprint, as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS) network and infrastructure.
Satellite Internet refers to the provision of Internet access services to the world through satellites, with wide coverage, low latency, low cost and other advantages. Data show that at present, more than 70% of the world's geographic space, involving 3 billion people, has failed to achieve Internet coverage, and the development of satellite Internet will effectively solve this problem.
The satellite Internet track is quite competitive
The Kuiper Program has been working to sign agreements for its planned services. Last year's agreement with Verizon Communications included the provision of satellite links intended to expand the coverage of Verizon's network to cover both rural and remote areas of the United States. Space Exploration Technologies' "Starlink" system has signed a similar agreement with a Japanese telecommunications vendor.
Chris Quilty, a satellite industry analyst at Quilty Analytics in the United States, believes that StarLink has a first-mover advantage over the Kuiper Plan, but the advantage of the latter is that it can watch the challenges encountered by market leaders.
Mr. Limp said there is room for more than one satellite broadband winner, in part because there are still many people around the world who are not yet connected to the Internet or have adequate Internet service.
As of now, the satellite Internet track has poured into a number of companies, and the competition is quite fierce. Some other companies that have launched satellite Internet plans include the United States First Network Corporation, The Canadian Communications Satellite Corporation, etc., and the investors include SoftBank, International Communications Satellite, Coca-Cola, Qualcomm, Airbus, Virgin Galactic and other large enterprises.
For commercial companies to deploy a large number of satellites in space, some experts worry that this may create "space congestion" or "space junk", while the astronomical community is worried that astronomical observations will be affected.
There are also analysts who believe that opening up the market will be a thorny issue. After all, cities have popularized fiber optic and cable access to Internet services, and remote areas that are most suitable for satellite Internet may not be able to be realized into markets.
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