alt Hacker NewsWe know a little more about Amazon's satellites
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The sibling story has further details,
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/a-rocket-launch-monday... ("A rocket launch Monday night may finally jump-start Amazon’s answer to Starlink")
I wonder what "earth observation" opportunities there would be with such megaconstellations, from simply having a camera with a telephoto lens pointed down to a giant, sky-spanning Synthetic Aperture Radar utilizing multiple satellites.
Anything like that would explain the secrecy...
The video of the satellite release looks really eerie; it’s got something biological to it, like an insect releasing its pods.
I wonder how competition will play out against StarLink. People just choose which billionaire they like better?
> Say a couple perpetually quarrels about who's going to do the dishes. To prevent further squabbles they decide to split the chores on weekly, alternating basis. > > Everything works well, until one of the spouses falls ill. The dishes pile up in the kitchen sink, but the other spouse does not feel responsible for the mess. It’s not their turn. And yes, there's nobody to blame.
And this is where accountability sinks distinguish two different kinds of people: some will (rightfully) realize that it is not their responsibility and no one is to blame, so they will do nothing. Others will see also see that it is not their responsibility and no one is to blame, but they will also see that it will become their problem regardless of responsibility or blame, and so they do something about it.
Unfortunately the latter is often not rewarded or even actively discouraged or punished in corporate settings.
The space around us will become such a junkyard with all these big corps competing to put thousands of sats at the same orbit all around us
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The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.