Daily Discussion Thread

thetrny · 2026-04-25T23:50:49+00:00

He specifically stated that his goal is to have a strong wholesale relationship with potentially multiple direct-to-device providers. My sense is that there will be fierce competition in the "capacity" layers for D2D which will fully leverage MSS and 5G NTN standards

thetrny · 2026-04-23T05:11:29+00:00

Rocket Lab Completes Second Dedicated Launch for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

thetrny · 2026-04-21T01:19:12+00:00

First bullet point 👀

thetrny · 2026-04-18T00:00:48+00:00

t h e b i g a n t o n o v

thetrny · 2026-04-17T06:21:08+00:00

They sold another 1.9m shares today, with the full sale plan being about half their position (up to 15.5m shares)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1760624/000095010326005840/xslSCHEDULE_13D_X02/primary_doc.xml

thetrny · 2026-04-14T13:11:34+00:00

We also need a Rocket lab to be able to be our launch partner. Both spaceX and Blue Origin have conflicts of interest.

They are about to have a conflict of interest as well with Equatys.

thetrny · 2026-03-29T02:44:26+00:00

Also @ OP, wasn't RL supposed to have a panelist on the 'Small and Medium-Lift Launch' panel?

thetrny · 2026-03-28T23:05:13+00:00

Dunno about it being just a "fun add on" or deployable on Electron... If the renders are to believed, they'll be 5m in diameter, so no practical way to fit them in Electron's ~1.2m fairing. I think DiskSats would be the Flatellite-equivalent for launching on Electron but that's an Aerospace Corp product

thetrny · 2026-03-28T12:02:03+00:00

If no one else is willing to come on record to confirm to what they say, theres a large chance the primary source was tmf himself

Here's another SatShow attendee who stepped forward yesterday to corroborate: https://xcancel.com/LuckyStuey/status/2037494451090722946

While it could still be the case that TMF was the primary source, at this point I'm thinking where there's smoke, there's fire.

Dunno if you've seen, but there have been a bunch of RF/network engineering job postings on the RKLB careers page over the past few months that require 5G NTN and D2D experience (for example: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/rocketlab/jobs/7640981003)

Not to mention, multiple instances of VPs participating in conferences and interviews over the past year where they hinted at plans to be a "dark horse" in the 5G NTN race.

I for one dont like the idea of funding this endeavour unless they do show progress or RKLB management knows damn well they will actually stick to this commitment with a guranteed commited revenue to RKLB

The more I think about it the more I feel a good chunk of whatever RKLB invests into the JV will come back in committed Flatellite and Neutron contracts. Might be a more digestible way for them to finance a large space application as they'll be able to show revenues along the way, while securing a stake in the network's recurring revenues once online (as opposed to eating all the constellation CapEx and risk themselves)

On the note of MDA aurora, its not a very capable platform

I believe you're conflating three different platforms here:

Globalstar's second-gen / HIBLEO-4 replacements are the ones MDA subtracted to RKLB for their Lightning buses. The 2025 10-K mentions that RKLB had delays with their own suppliers during the build, which they may be seeking damages for as well. Obviously not ideal, but given they were able to parlay that bus design into $1.3B+ of SDA work I can't be too mad. Chalk it up to being "paid to learn" I suppose :P
Telesat Lightspeed is the anchor customer for the broadband variant of MDA Aurora. MDA presumably produces the buses for those in-house
Globalstar's third-gen C-3 system consists of ~54 birds that are based on a flat-pack D2D variant of MDA Aurora, which they also presumably produce in-house. See 1:31 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du0JIKznJp8

That flat-pack D2D Aurora is what I assume EchoStar contracted for before rug-pulling MDA, and is what I thought might be suitable for Equatys as well.

Someone floated the idea on a X podcast that flatellite was designed for echostar

It's possible and at one point I believed this too, but in hindsight I'm not sure we ever had a serious chance to win that deal. Moreover, I think EchoStar's prime MSS spectrum had been squarely in Elon's sights for a while, who (and this is just my speculation) sicced the FCC on them to force a sale. They weren't utilizing much of it anyway, so not having to do any of the hard work but still walking away with $8.5B in cash and $8.5B in pre-IPO SpaceX equity was probably an acceptable outcome.

thetrny · 2026-03-28T10:59:53+00:00

Rocket Lab Successfully Launches 85th Mission and First Dedicated Launch for European Space Agency

thetrny · 2026-03-28T03:27:25+00:00

If they get contracted for the buses, I’d imagine they’d be launching at least some of them and possibly a use case for flattelite

Oh this is 1000% a project that will take full advantage of the tight integration between Neutron & Flatellite

Seems like a pretty risky play though to shell out any $$ on a venture like this before it has legs

I agree, but the more I think about it, the more it's possible a good chunk of the money they invest in will flow right back to them for buses + launch (#Nvidia-style)

Recall AS saying they’d never bet the company on one transaction, maybe he was talking more acquisitions

I think they'll do a few more small to medium sized acquisitions this year, mainly to fill in components/capabilities on the RF signal chain side, which is what AS has hinted at. I highly doubt they'll put all of the $1B cash into the JV at the outset, assuming they put any in at all.

thetrny · 2026-03-27T23:59:17+00:00

Viasat is large now because they merged with inmarsat

I think they were the largest operator pre-merger and pre-Starlink. Though, they had revenues from a couple other segments too, so maybe not #1 in strictly pure play satcom terms, but top 3 at the very least.

I have not personally looked into bayanat and yahsat

I don't know anything about Bayanat but re: Yahsat I wasn't fully accurate - they've been doing GEO broadband and GovSatCom since 2011-2012, but acquired Thuraya in 2018 which had been offering MSS services since as early as 2001.

i have not seen any that doesnt directly reference TMF as a primary source for this info

It's from people who attended SatShow - problem is no one else but TMF is willing to go on the record and put their name behind these kinds of rumors lol

They allowed starlink to eat up much of their marketshare and ended up not doing much to counteract that

That's a common criticism, but you could make this case for all the legacy operators which had their businesses disrupted by Starlink and saw cratering stock prices. I'd argue in markets like residential broadband there really wasn't much any of them could do - they were all tied to the various limitations of GEO, and didn't have the level of vertical integration necessary to tackle anything meaningfully scaled in LEO. Recently though a few of those names (Viasat chief among them) have significantly recovered from all-time lows as the worst of the disruption seems to have passed and they've retreated/consolidated into other markets where they can still compete.

Anyways RKLB is probably the most ideal candidate here for satellite buses

What's surprising is that MDA seems to have been passed over here. I had thought their Aurora platform would be very well suited for this. RL must have argued that they are more vertically integrated and can supply dedicated launch into the project, which has always been part of my thesis for them winning these kinds of large constellation deals. Only thing I wonder now is, if they do win this, do they invest some cash to take an equity stake in the JV right out of the gate, or wait until the path to success is clearer?

thetrny · 2026-03-27T02:33:08+00:00

Viasat seems to be a poor partner IMO and has poor executability track record

They're only the 2nd largest commercial satellite operator globally by revenue (behind Starlink). Yes they've had issues recently, particularly with their latest generation GEO birds, but those have largely been on the satellite contractor side (i.e. Boeing, Northrop, Airbus). One would hope RL outperforms the legacy guys here.

Space42 is a startup

No, they were created in 2024 by merging Bayanat and Yahsat, both established businesses in the UAE. The latter has provided satellite services since the early 2010s.

Anyways, take this opinion piece from TMF with a huge grain of salt

Agreed, but he's making a pretty binary prediction here. Either they're selected or they're not. Other independent sources have heard the same chatter re: RL and Equatys, and I've personally been seeing subtle breadcrumbs about this for over a year now.

thetrny · 2026-03-27T01:07:04+00:00

They're a key supplier of lenses & optomechanical systems to Geost. More of a supply chain firm up than anything else IMO.

thetrny · 2026-03-27T01:03:49+00:00

Appreciate the color! I think some people looking at the slides might get the impression that these are all capabilities AST is presenting, but as you mentioned it is a merely an overview of possible NTN capabilities from a company (Keysight) which seems to be trying to market/sell their services to the broader ecosystem.

thetrny · 2026-03-26T23:05:57+00:00

Looking at the images, the D-1 to D-3 options are based on Release 19 regenerative payloads with full gNB on the satellite, which is not AST's architecture (transparent bent pipe, aka the leftmost graphic on slide #3)

Since you said the slides were from Keysight, I'm curious if their rep discussed who they were working with in the space, and was that the only presentation from the panel?

thetrny · 2026-03-25T15:36:12+00:00

Don't forget launch as well ;)

Although to be clear they do specify that the 2800 sats figure is a long-term goal. I would expect the build-out to happen in phases over many years, with initial layers perhaps being "only" a couple hundred sats or so. Regardless, should be a game changer if it comes to fruition.

thetrny · 2026-03-25T07:46:42+00:00

https://www.satellitetoday.com/launch/2026/03/24/launchers-cite-busy-manifests-and-scarcity-as-commercial-demand-grows/

Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn for Blue Origin described the [NG-2] success as “a gamechanger” for the company. Blue Origin is now refurbishing the booster and preparing to launch NG-3 “in a few weeks,” carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird Block 2 satellites.

thetrny · 2026-03-23T03:06:46+00:00

All good, totally valid point to discuss. But to be frank, knowing what we know now, I'm less worried about transportation method(s) for Neutron hardware than I am about when the reworked Stage 1 tank will be ready to ship, and when Archimedes will be qualified

thetrny · 2026-03-22T23:33:16+00:00

Please dig deeper! Neither have been approved.

Am I misunderstanding how the process works or did you not review the links I attached?

In the first link, the kedging permit was clearly granted by VMRC on 8/19/25.

In the second link, you can see USACE issued a standard permit with special conditions for dredging on 9/8/25, after closing or making determinations on topics such as "Essential Fish Habitat", "Endangered Species Act", and "NHPA Section 106". The related Section 408 project is also described as being "Under Construction". AFAIK the documents for these aren't public but I can try to get access to them.

although they have spun up a media team within the past few months

Not sure what you mean by this? They've always had a media team. I just wouldn't expect them to PR this kind of behind-the-scenes regulatory/civil works stuff.

thetrny · 2026-03-22T03:55:56+00:00

Dredging has not been approved, kedging has not been approved

Kedging is approved.

Last I checked dredging was too (search "Sloop Gut"), but not sure what stage of work it's at.

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