alt.hn

4/15/2026 at 5:54:29 AM

Amazon to acquire Globalstar and expand Amazon Leo satellite network

 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260414237496/en/Amazon-to-Acquire-Globalstar-and-Expand-Amazon-Leo-Satellite-Network

by homarp

4/15/2026 at 10:33:40 AM

I remain convinced that the main successful business model in the satellite communications industry is to wait for the first incarnation of the satellite company to fail / go bankrupt / flounder, and then be part of the 2nd round of financing or ownership that comes in to buy it out and operate it... I don't know why this is the pattern but it seems to have played out several times over the last 2 decades that I've casually watched this syndrome.

by supernova87a

4/15/2026 at 11:29:14 AM

If you haven't read Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story you should. The system was operational, but Motorola's dysfunction and impossible sales goals leading to disillusionment meant that Dan Colussy & team was able to pick it up for $25 million (development price: $5 billion)

by chiph

4/15/2026 at 12:17:18 PM

They were about $3 billion in the hole when they went through bankruptcy in 2002 and the new owners bought it for $43 million (from Wikipedia). In 2025 they earned a return of $-8 million on that investment (plus any other money raised since then, such as $1 billion from Apple). So even the second incarnation doesn't seem to be a good business model even with free satellites.

The business model that works seems to be spectrum gambling. Do the minimum amount of satellite investment for decades until someone with a real business plan comes along and has to go through you to get it.

by gangstead

4/15/2026 at 4:42:44 PM

> I don't know why this is the pattern but it seems to have played out several times over the last 2 decades that I've casually watched this syndrome.

This is a pretty common pattern in capital intensive businesses. It's often the case that revenue is inline with operating costs, but revenue can't really ever pay for the start up costs. That dooms the initial business, but after bankruptcy it can be viable.

Depending on circumatances, the very visible bankruptcy also helps deter other businesses from joining the market. But if the cost was high due to technology, doing the same business 10-20 years later can work out because the start up costs may be significantly less.

by toast0

4/15/2026 at 1:19:24 PM

The only real viable long-term business model for these constellations are for the military or other socialized use.

They are completely unprofitable otherwise. Eventually even Starlink will lose money, as more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.

by readitalready

4/15/2026 at 2:38:26 PM

>more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.

Ecuador has the highest rate of cell phone ownership in the world, because they never built landlines and just went straight to wireless.

Same with electricity in many African countries -no grid, straight to local solar.

When I see comments like this it’s obvious you’re talking about West Virginia or Nevada as “rural regions around the world”

Go spend time in the Canadian arctic, the Congo, Sudan, Bolivia, Mongolia, Remote Australia and dozens and dozens more if you want to see where starlink shines and is rapidly changing the world.

by testing22321

4/15/2026 at 7:44:53 PM

ok but that just makes Starlink even more unprofitable, as now you're limited by the number of customers.

The moment these people incorporate into a village, it becomes more profitable to build a fiber connection. Fiber will eventually get to Ecuador.

by readitalready

4/15/2026 at 9:40:07 PM

Starlink was never supposed to be for anyone that can have fibre.

There are billions of potential customers.

by testing22321

4/16/2026 at 2:59:11 AM

lol no. There are probably 50-100 million potential customers. The rural farmer in India isn't going to buy Starlink.

by readitalready

4/16/2026 at 3:19:49 AM

Every analyst ever said cell phones wouldn’t take off across Africa because there isn’t enough money.

They were all completely wrong.

by testing22321

4/19/2026 at 1:52:28 AM

Since we're talking about something completely different, what about food? Did every analyst predict people would want food?

by readitalready

4/15/2026 at 9:40:31 PM

A limited total addressable market doesn't necessarily have anything to do with profit potential.

by brandon272

4/15/2026 at 2:17:27 PM

I find this hard to imagine. There are so many rural customers where it is totally uneconomical to run fiber vs. just paying for Starlink.

by brandon272

4/15/2026 at 7:48:29 PM

There really aren't that many people around the world that would make Starlink profitable in the long run. Only about 1% of the global population are farmers, so that already limits your market. And the moment a village is formed, the economics favor fiber to that village over Starlink.

by readitalready

4/15/2026 at 6:02:43 PM

5G internet seems to be a decent compromise for that -- much simpler infra at least.

by pstuart

4/15/2026 at 7:20:05 PM

I might be biased because I live in an area where it is fairly easy to find locations that don't have cellular coverage and won't have cellular coverage anytime soon.

Globally, there's a lot of places that are sparsely inhabited but too remote to warrant strong cellular connectivity. There's also a lot of "nooks and crannies" geographically that are not well served by cellular. As an example, I have a property in an area with excellent 5G coverage but my specific property is in a valley removing line of sight between me and the local tower, meaning reception is virtually nil. I can't even make a phone call. Without Starlink my only option would be to rely on a local WISP to set up some kind of repeater system that would have far lower reliability/performance and significantly higher cost.

by brandon272

4/15/2026 at 7:53:30 PM

Yes, but the question is what fraction of the population is in these niches and does that provide enough subscription revenue to fund the constellation?

If many others find a cheaper and more reliable path, the customer base collapses.

by saltcured

4/15/2026 at 8:11:00 PM

Well, my point is that these niches are probably more commonplace than people who live in areas blanketed by multiple 5G providers probably assume. I'm sure there are Starlink customers using it as an option in some interim period while they wait for fiber to be rolled out to their neighbourhood or town, but anecdotally, I don't know any Starlink customers who are in that boat. We exist in locations that will not be served by cheaper, more reliable terrestrial options anytime soon.

Even "cheaper" is quickly becoming a question mark. Starlink is offering 100mbps plans for $50-$70/mo. which in my region makes it cheaper or on par with options from cellular providers (which are capped) or options from cable/fiber providers.

by brandon272

4/15/2026 at 12:34:38 PM

You see the same pattern with railroads from 1860 to 1900.

by AnimalMuppet

4/15/2026 at 12:29:26 PM

Iridium was first. It was a cautionary lesson. Listen to Patrick Boyle regarding Starlink. Not everyone was paying attention in class.

by Zigurd

4/15/2026 at 12:58:59 PM

> to fail / go bankrupt / flounder

This is exactly what "the Internet" said about spacex when they announced Starlink. Oh, it never worked. LEO constellations were tried in the 90s, ALL of them failed. Haha, it will never work. 14k satellites, that's insane, dreams, lies, hahaha.

... and yet, they are now at ~10k satellites launched, and are serving 9+mil customers, for some unknown billions/year in revenue (should become clear in a few months when they IPO).

by NitpickLawyer

4/15/2026 at 2:55:45 PM

> for some unknown billions/year in revenue

Read here on HN yday: they’ve $20B in revenue, but xAI is a drag.

by mandeepj

4/15/2026 at 11:30:02 AM

Or also owning a rocket company that launches your satellites at low cost.

by vjvjvjvjghv

4/15/2026 at 11:14:39 PM

It is of course what happened to Iridium. But not all of them go bankrupt.

by wolvoleo

4/15/2026 at 10:38:11 AM

Clayton M. Christensen (The innovator's dilemma) would agree.

by SMAAART

4/15/2026 at 12:07:22 PM

Naive question - let's assume this all becomes a really competitive market and 10+ companies are pumping satellites into orbit.

Are we going to run out of space?

At some point it probably makes the most sense for there to be one wholesaler of satellite connections and then many retailers right? The market skews towards being an international natural monopoly, right?

by crowcroft

4/15/2026 at 1:14:33 PM

It would be incredibly unlikely for there to be enough competition at a grand enough scale for it to become a problem. Space is just very big. Earth's surface is ~197 million sq miles. If you move up to a LEO shell at around 550 miles up, the surface area of that sphere is 34% larger than that.

If you were to distribute 100,000 satellites across that shell, each one would have 2,600 square miles to itself. That's like having a single car in the entire state of Delaware. Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane. You can now multiply your 265 million sq miles by 100x.

The issue isn't space, it's traffic management. Satellites zipping around at 17,000 MPH would make one hell of a debris field if even one pair of them collide. That's the Kessler Syndrome boogie man everyone is worried about.

by krisroadruck

4/15/2026 at 11:17:46 PM

> Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane. You can now multiply your 265 million sq miles by 100x.

Yes but don't forget that orbits decline and only satellites with onboard propulsion have the ability to boost them back up. Everything else like cubesats and random debris doesn't and thus doesn't "stay in their lane".

by wolvoleo

4/15/2026 at 1:52:12 PM

> Mind you, that's if we are only considering a 2-D sphere, but space isn't 2-D you can space your orbits between 550 and 650 miles, with each 1 mile vertical increment acting as a "floor" or passing lane.

Sure, but satellites in a higher plane will need to navigate satellites below them during de-orbit. Conversely, satellites in a lower plane will likely need to avoid non-functional satellites that are uncontrolled as their orbit decays.

by AshleyGrant

4/15/2026 at 2:56:05 PM

How much mental bandwidth do you put into not hitting a car that's in a different city? Even if all 100 layers collapsed to one, that's still only 100 satellites in 2600 square miles. NYC is ~300 sq miles. There are about 2.2 million cars there. I feel like you still aren't grasping how much space we are talking about.

by krisroadruck

4/15/2026 at 1:25:05 PM

But Starlink satellites are low enough that we don’t worry too much about Kessler Syndrome at that altitude, right?

by zwily

4/16/2026 at 12:59:13 AM

Orbital collisions are very energetic and definitely do launch debris into higher orbits with much longer decay times

by wolvoleo

4/15/2026 at 8:19:55 PM

But crashing in LEO is not as disastrous as GEO or higher. It's an unstable orbit so eventually everything will deorbit, crash, and burn. May take a while though.

by anvuong

4/15/2026 at 12:29:29 PM

>Are we going to run out of space?

In a certain sense, we do. Pumping thousands satellites to LEO increases probability of triggering the Kessler syndrome. Luckily, LEO orbits are also self-cleaning on reasonable time scales (decades), so I think that some day we will trigger it (potentially, with some "help" from anti-satellite weapons) after which some kind of international regulation will be introduced to prevent repeating it in future.

by newpavlov

4/15/2026 at 12:28:26 PM

I'd say there's plenty of room for competitors along multiple dimensions: Geopolitical security (this alone will probably preclude a single monopoly), price and lack of a moat (once a monopolist starts jacking up prices, there's an immediate incentive for an alternative), delivery profile (store-and-forward for IoT-like use cases vs. dumb pipe vs. in-space forwarding), frequency band (L- or S-band for direct to device vs. Ku/Ka band requiring directional terminals) etc.

The only thing that's actually scarce and that could be monopolized rather easily is frequency spectrum. In fact, I suspect this to be a frequency/operating license driven acquisition.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 1:23:03 PM

I disagree on some of those dimensions (esp. lack of a moat), but agree things like geopolitics and security would lead to multiple wholesale providers.

My concern is that globally international relations are an absolute MESS, but there really needs to be some level of coordination here.

by crowcroft

4/15/2026 at 7:21:28 PM

As I see it, the moat for terrestrial (and in particular wire-based) last-mile comms infrastructure is that each additional customer connected is often expensive, and if they switch to your competition, that wire is basically a sunk investment.

For wireless, the dynamics are very different (as long as spectrum isn't monopolized). As soon as you have enough satellites launched for global coverage, you can compete for all customers, and each one that switches away to the competition is more bandwidth available to you to undercut your competitor on pricing with.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 1:12:40 PM

There might be room in orbit for everyone, but not in the night sky without ruining observation, I’m afraid.

by vlapec

4/15/2026 at 1:19:27 PM

On HN, the standard response is that earth-based observation is lesser than space-based.

Which boils down to "Use something incredibly expensive that we have very few of, instead of something that we have a number of that is comparatively cheaper. How dare you question the holy, sacred internet!"

by reaperducer

4/15/2026 at 1:34:55 PM

[dead]

by redsocksfan45

4/15/2026 at 1:16:50 PM

Are we going to run out of space?

During the Artemis launch it was very briefly mentioned that the launch window isn't a continuous window, but a series of windows interrupted for short times. I wondered if that was because of the thousands of satellites in orbit.

by reaperducer

4/15/2026 at 1:25:54 PM

No, it's not. Launch windows [0] are about relative position of orbital bodies which enable use of more efficient transfer orbits.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_window

by newpavlov

4/15/2026 at 7:42:18 AM

SpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs. I'm betting the next acquisition target will be AST SpaceMobile. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see big telecom/ISP mergers pass regulatory approval now that they have competition from the heavens

by jameslk

4/15/2026 at 12:39:48 PM

They'll try. But they are between two forces squeezing the TAM:

The anvil: satellites can't serve most people in a densely populated area, whereas terrestrial wireless can be engineered and deployed to serve any population density, even tens of thousands of people in a stadium.

The hammer: electronics get cheaper faster when they don't have to be space grade, and electronics get cheaper faster than rockets. As they get cheaper, terrestrial wireless will be deployed in more areas that are uneconomical right now.

And that is how the satellite TAM gets slammed.

by Zigurd

4/15/2026 at 1:48:38 PM

> The anvil: satellites can't serve most people in a densely populated area, whereas terrestrial wireless can be engineered and deployed to serve any population density, even tens of thousands of people in a stadium.

That's if everyone is trying to connect to the satellite. Would it be possible to have regional hubs that connect and distribute the connection via a local wireless link like 5G?

by hrimfaxi

4/15/2026 at 1:57:07 PM

You don't need to be close to having everyone connect to cause congestion on a satellite network. That congestion is caused by the amount of data used, not by the number of connections.

Every kind of network has the potential for congestion, it's just easier and much cheaper to engineer a terrestrial network to avoid congestion. There are congestion scenarios for satellite networks that are not solvable.

by Zigurd

4/15/2026 at 4:50:05 PM

You can use satellite backhaul for a 5G tower. And I'm sure there are many towers with satellite backhaul.

But, once you start having multiple towers near by, you are going to link those up terrestrially (wireless or not) and pretty soon you'll end up with terrestrial backhaul.

by toast0

4/15/2026 at 6:05:50 PM

Satellite backhaul really only happens in mobile disaster recovery truck-mounted cell sites, and the fairly rare occasions where a rural site can't use terrestrial wireless backhaul.

by Zigurd

4/15/2026 at 9:53:28 AM

> SpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs.

Traditional ISPs already have a nice network of copper and fiber optic cables. I don't think satellites offer any advantage to most people here, except for those living in an area with slow wired connections.

by cubefox

4/15/2026 at 12:37:37 PM

Intercontinental latency in air/vacuum is lower than in fiber (even in total, i.e. after accounting for the extra distance from ground and the legs up and down from/space), so there’s also a market for high frequency trading.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 11:37:34 AM

It's all about bypassing regulations, just like Uber and AirBNB. Most US ISPs have old copper cables that only support DSL. Upgrading them means digging up the streets and that's expensive and a legal minefield. And those ISPs are local monopolies so why would they spend money just to keep the same number of customers who are locked in anyway?

by direwolf20

4/15/2026 at 12:03:36 PM

I don't think that is very true in this day in age. Here in Cincinnati, the vast majority of houses now have fiber run to them. There are still some stragglers, but that's mainly because slumlord apartment owners don't feel like dealing with upgrades.

by reportingsjr

4/15/2026 at 8:22:27 AM

> I'm betting the next acquisition target will be AST SpaceMobile.

Or possibly viasat.

by RobotToaster

4/15/2026 at 8:37:06 AM

Oh, I missed the memo that Amazon Leo is the new name for Project Kuiper, rebranded in November of last year. I saw a presentation back when it was Kuiper so have still been calling it that

by spondyl

4/15/2026 at 11:14:11 AM

Leo is a dumb name. I still call it Kuiper.

by philipwhiuk

4/15/2026 at 11:31:22 AM

Helps to think of it less as lion and more of an orbit.

by everfrustrated

4/15/2026 at 10:19:07 AM

[dead]

by redsocksfan45

4/15/2026 at 8:28:48 AM

I wonder if there will become a point where these companies will be considered too big and will be forcibly cut up to smaller chunks... If feels like they have tentacles in everything now.

by Ekaros

4/15/2026 at 11:21:15 AM

There is no such thing as a company being "too big", it's only a question of market power (eg monopolies) and abuse of that power.

For LEO data it seems that there will be plenty of competition. If you're talking about Amazon, they're in fiercely competitive markets. Them having the capital and cash flow ('size') to launch a competitor to SpazX is only a good thing.

by nutjob2

4/15/2026 at 9:54:14 AM

People think that with better D2D technology, emergency and telemetry messages will still be short and to the point. These messages will not be like streaming videos.

When companies work together on things, like spectrum and constellations and handset deals it changes how people get billed.. It does not change the fact that people want to keep the messages small when millions of devices are using the same channel.

I am curious to see if people will still talk about having satellite access or if they will start talking about paying for what they use once this is up and running. D2D technology is still going to be used for these messages.

by Egonex

4/15/2026 at 10:38:08 AM

Spectrum contention is going to be insane in D2D.

Starlink already has to constrain the number of broadband accounts per locale to avoid saturation.

by bobdvb

4/15/2026 at 12:33:25 PM

Fixed Starlink is competing with fiber/DOCSIS/DSL, though. That's orders of magnitude more bandwidth than people in areas remote enough to not warrant a terrestrial cell base station (which could itself also be backhauled over much more efficient fixed satellite).

by lxgr

4/20/2026 at 9:24:54 AM

It's definitely competing in rural areas, but Starlink does suffer from physical limitations on the number of terminals per geographic area.

This is a long standing problem with cellular in urban areas. For example at Clapham Junction train station in London, which is not a terminus but a through station with 17 platforms and around 2000 trains passing each day, the local cell towers struggle to keep up with demand because so many devices pass in and out of the station every few minutes.

For Starlink D2D they can definitely gap fill for rural areas, but people are mistaken if they think Starlink can compete with the majority of the users (who aren't rural). Less than 10% of rural folk in the USA have unreliable signal. That's still an interesting market, because that's somewhere in the region of 3-6mil people. But I want to temper the hype because people seem to think LEO satellite can take over everything, when the reality is that terrestrial connectivity is always going to be better for the majority because of physics.

by bobdvb

4/15/2026 at 12:32:12 PM

With small enough spot beams, the difference between a large rural cell and a very narrow direct-to-device spot beam footprint is really not that big anymore. Starlink apparently already offers video calling over direct to cell in the US via T-Mobile!

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 9:16:25 AM

Are we going to be able to see the night sky by the end of this decade?

https://satellitemap.space

And what's the effect on cancer rates, etc. from all that toxic pollution to both launch the satellites and then vaporize them in the atmosphere years later?

https://bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-p...

Sure would be nice if the answers to these questions were not guessing before we do the damage and impossible to fix after

by ck2

4/15/2026 at 1:31:59 PM

We need to start requiring that for each batch of satellites that goes up, some piece of space junk - hell, any piece of space junk - gets brought back to Earth's surface in one piece for proper recycling.

by lenerdenator

4/15/2026 at 12:24:26 PM

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770323 My comment from there:

Interesting, I was expecting Apple to eventually buy them.

Still, makes sense to me: The aging Globalstar satellite constellation itself is probably not very interesting to Amazon, but their global L-band and S-band spectrum is, as are their existing licenses to operate a mobile satellite service in most countries.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 2:50:26 PM

Post-Jobs Apple seems paralyzed and unable to commit to any big moves.

It is impossible to overstate the success of the iPhone, but there are so many recent examples where they dipped their toes in only to fail or be left behind (autos, VR, AI, etc).

What will the next 20 years of Apple look like? Just more iPhones?

by bequanna

4/15/2026 at 4:05:01 PM

The same as it has for about the past 20 years? Take a 30% cut of all transactions that ever happen as long as an iPhone was somewhere in the process.

Charging a high fee to be a middleman is insanely profitable. People shouldn't be surprised that companies that get there don't do anything else.

by mrguyorama

4/15/2026 at 7:23:04 PM

I'm not surprised, but I think it's fair to find it upsetting. It's a twofold loss: A loss of competition in all markets that Apple monopolizes, and a loss of everybody working towards protecting that golden goose instead of actually improving the product.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 3:31:45 PM

Apple Watch and Airpods are two of the largest consumer product launches of the last 10 years and they're both post-Jobs.

by fckgw

4/15/2026 at 6:28:47 AM

So, Amazon wants to own the tubes too?

I guess the stack should be completed with this. AWS servers, satellite communications, boxes to view content on TVs, apps on mobiles, content creation studios, advertising, product placement, product sales. Whew!

I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space, in case it becomes feasible to run space data centers.

by kumarvvr

4/15/2026 at 7:34:05 AM

> I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space

Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos' private aerospace company

by karavelov

4/15/2026 at 8:04:44 AM

They would also need to protect all this stuff spread globally and into the space. No government will be able to do that - like we've already seen with the datacenters being hit in the Gulf states. Company like AMZN will have all the components for the most modern weapon system - global autonomous drone offense and defense network with the space component (or imagine a 1 GW datacenter in space temporarily rerouting its power into a laser or a microwave effector 80-ies StarWars style :) plus de-facto global intelligence network that each of these companies have, and thus will have and will be able to better protect themselves. Those large BigTechs will unavoidably have to move into defense, for themselves and as-a-service for smaller transnationals.

by trhway

4/15/2026 at 8:12:00 AM

There is a constant lack of acceptance of the privatisation of the world in the tech industry. Or of course people realise it but like it.

The randian matra of "Private = good, government = bad" always wins out

You end up with a private company run by the elite, not the people. One Dollar One Vote.

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 6:51:05 AM

Amazon seems to have a service for everything, one time I saw they had satellite ground station as a service

by ge96

4/15/2026 at 7:12:31 AM

I think America in general is moving to a service based economy where you don’t own anything anymore. Everything from cars (lease) to homes (rentals) to electronics to insurance etc comes at a monthly cost. This kind of model works when the central government is trusted (or at least perceived to be trusted) to keep the wheel churning. I think the current government took some of the power back from big tech and people didn’t like it. Very interesting because the whole argument was private companies having too much power. Now the argument is government having too much power.

by compounding_it

4/15/2026 at 7:16:13 AM

You only now just think this? The writing has been on the wall for quite some time. Especially as you move down in age cohort.

by enos_feedler

4/15/2026 at 11:18:59 PM

Yes even the WEF has been planning for this for a decade with their "you will own nothing but you will be happy" indoctrination.

by wolvoleo

4/15/2026 at 11:32:29 AM

At some point government and companies will be merging into one.

by vjvjvjvjghv

4/15/2026 at 7:41:29 AM

Probably for their existing L/S-band spectrum and carrier licenses.

by bigfatkitten

4/15/2026 at 6:59:30 AM

Why space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that can transfer heat away.

by piokoch

4/15/2026 at 7:39:03 AM

They don’t have any advantages at all.

People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.

by bigfatkitten

4/15/2026 at 11:15:08 AM

For now there's a regulatory oversight advantage (or rather lack of same).

by philipwhiuk

4/16/2026 at 4:23:17 AM

There’s a whole lot more oversight, from the radiocommunications and aviation safety regulators.

by bigfatkitten

4/15/2026 at 8:13:52 AM

Desert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free.

If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 11:15:49 AM

You can do the same to the ones in the Pacific and desert too.

It's a declaration of war much the same.

by philipwhiuk

4/15/2026 at 8:17:48 AM

Defense systems in space need to be... in space.

I don't think people are looking at this the right way. They need to be inaccessible to terrestrial and air weapons, have lower latency, not be dependent on power plants, etc.

by sublinear

4/15/2026 at 8:40:54 AM

Far easier for someone like Iran or China or the US to take out an LEO satellite than an underground data centre, or even a surface on in the case of DCs in US or China.

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 11:21:28 AM

It's also pretty easy to launch another one into orbit to replace it? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. We can have all these options simultaneously. The easiest targets are where the faster paced more offensive action is going to be.

People have been talking about waging war in space for many decades now. All the arguments for and against it were made a very long time ago, and it was decided it's a hell of a lot better that way. Even a nuclear blast in orbit is more tolerable.

Space superiority is just too damn appealing as the next frontier after land, air, and sea where we've been stuck in stalemate for a while. It's perfectly natural we go to space for this, including the datacenters.

by sublinear

4/15/2026 at 12:01:23 PM

I don’t think Iran has the capability to shoot down LEO satellites. Kind of weird to loop them in with China here other than China helping Iran.

by ericmay

4/15/2026 at 12:38:55 PM

You need about 2,500m/s delta V to reach LEO altitude. Iranian long range rockets are well in that range.

It's thus far easier for Iran to hit an LEO DC than one in Colorado

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 12:47:17 PM

Are you suggesting for a fact that Iran as the guidance and targeting systems to identify specific LEO objects, and fire missiles at those targets with accuracy?

by ericmay

4/15/2026 at 2:16:59 PM

I'm saying that it's far easier for them to take out an LEO satellite than an underground data centre, or even a surface one, in the centre of the US.

Are you saying it's not?

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 2:54:28 PM

I'm saying I don't think Iran has the capability and the difference in capabilities between America and China on one hand, and Iran on the other is so different that I'm perplexed as to why they would even be mentioned in the same sentence.

I'm actually not even sure your suggestion is true. Theoretically they don't need to launch a missile and could attempt to infiltrate a data center instead. They're secure but not that secure against a determined enemy with any amount of real training.

by ericmay

4/15/2026 at 12:56:34 PM

Iran has a space program capable of launching LEO satellites.

by lxgr

4/15/2026 at 1:16:09 PM

Launching LEO satellites is a different capability than shooting down LEO satellites.

by ericmay

4/16/2026 at 1:01:39 AM

Launching something into orbit is much harder than intercepting something because to intercept you don't need to reach orbital velocities. You can just go up and boom. The velocity of the target does the rest. Tracking it really isn't such a hard thing these days.

by wolvoleo

4/16/2026 at 1:27:10 PM

It’s not a hard thing, but you still have to have the capability to track objects and design a rocket with the capability to hit that object.

These aren’t capabilities Iran has. Certainly not anymore.

by ericmay

4/15/2026 at 8:25:58 AM

That's true, but they're also very vulnerable to ground based LASERs.

by RobotToaster

4/15/2026 at 7:14:26 AM

You don't have to buy real estate.

by nish__

4/15/2026 at 8:37:12 AM

Land is pretty much irellevent in the cost.

The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings.

Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1]

It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m.

That's 570GWh a year.

Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2].

Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

[1] https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 9:34:33 AM

Not for the data center, for the fiber lines.

by nish__

4/15/2026 at 12:39:45 PM

Pretty much zero cost. Or just use your satellite capacity you'd use from your space based DC.

by iso1631

4/16/2026 at 5:55:38 AM

Zero cost to run fiber to every household on earth??

by nish__

4/16/2026 at 9:05:28 AM

Zero cost to run fibre from a nearby IXP to your new data centre with $100m of equipment

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 7:38:43 AM

>Cooling will be a big issue

a 1m2 at 70C radiates 785 Watt. Seems thet cooling will be more simple than on Earth.

by trhway

4/15/2026 at 7:44:32 AM

A 1m2 heatsink/fan on earth can sink kWs. My heatpump is about 1m2 area and can sink 15kw. Seems earth is at least 20x times better.

by pretendgeneer

4/15/2026 at 8:43:19 AM

If you build a pyramid with the base pointing to the sun (as solar), and a "height" about 5 times the base in constant shadow, with decent internal circulation, that will operate at sub-20C just from the two radiative sides pointing away from Earth (you make the earth pointing sides reflective)

Cooling isn't an issue.

by iso1631

4/15/2026 at 7:49:44 AM

in space 1m2 of thin metal will radiate those 785 watt. No fan, no heatpump, nothing. Only the launch cost. Which given the projected Starship launch cost will be cheaper than installation on Earth.

by trhway

4/15/2026 at 7:55:58 PM

Well if they really want to be full stack, they need to also get down into pharmaceuticals and bio-engineering, right?

by saltcured

4/15/2026 at 1:32:04 PM

Any reasonable government regulatory agency would block this aquisition. Amazon just laid off 16,000 people. They are unworthy of further consolidation.

by josefritzishere

4/15/2026 at 8:15:31 AM

[flagged]

by ButlerianJihad

4/15/2026 at 8:32:59 AM

If something hits a house then you can analyze what hit it. I wouldn't make a conspiracy out of it. Meteor and space junk are quite different things.

by nixass

4/15/2026 at 8:34:45 AM

You can, but what if they don’t want to?

by ButlerianJihad

4/15/2026 at 9:02:46 AM

Space junk would come down in other countries, too. Even if there was a great conspiracy of "them" in the USA, there's plenty of others to report on it.

by aniviacat

4/15/2026 at 9:09:37 AM

Reporting on something is rather late after it’s already hit its target, don’t you think?

The key to strategic usage of deorbiting is that the mass is already in position, and only needs to be properly wielded.

No amount of “investigation” or reporting would stop that from happening.

by ButlerianJihad

4/15/2026 at 8:50:04 AM

"they"

by nixass