Starlink was not that amazing as a business decision.
If one expects to generate orders of magnitude more supply of a good (launch capacity), then one needs to expect the existing (conservative, long lead-time) market will have insufficient demand.
So one needs to generate additional demand.
So one needs to find a profit-generating business that's limited by mass in space / launches, where each component is inexpensive enough that its loss doesn't bankrupt the company.
Space-based telecommunications falls out pretty obviously from those requirements, given the pre-Starlink landscape (limited, exquisite assets serving the market at high premiums).
In small irony, it's also the exact same possibility space optimization that led to Amazon starting with books: Bezos didn't give a shit about books specifically, but he did like that they were long-tail, indefinitely warehouse-able, and shaped for efficient shipping.
In novel logistics spaces, it's better to find the business that matches capabilities than the other way around, because the company's core competency and value is their novel logistics solution.
It was an obvious market, that was visible years before the project was announced. I don't think any one was surprised, it was not like Apple launching iPod or the iPhone.
What was impressive is at that they solved a lot of hard problems like satellite manufacturing at scale, phased array dishes, or fleet management of thousands of satellites or laser interconnects between satellites, and so on, for basically a side project to increase their primary product demand enough to justify the reuse being a useful feature.
Hmm, don't know, easy to say it was obvious in hindsight. But over the years, Google project Loon and other similar attempts at increasing internet coverage (think Facebook tried too at one point) have not been nearly as successful. Yeah, still not convinced it was obviously going to be successful, but maybe am missing some aspect you're seeing.
Market was obvious, solutions weren’t as you cite there were many tech failures, it was just a logical extension to their business that is not really hindsight.
It was not the same kind of new market entry Apple did with the iPhone or even the iPod , or Amazon doing AWS, which if we claim today as obvious would be hindsight
Well, sure, agree that there is a natural logic to the idea, but to actually go through with something that no one has done before and actually execute it (which as we all from the tech/sci industries here know), and also do it on a large scale and be very successful is an entirely different matter. Yeah, the number of things that need to go right is still pretty high, and at least to me, was extremely impressive. But to each his own.
If one expects to generate orders of magnitude more supply of a good (launch capacity), then one needs to expect the existing (conservative, long lead-time) market will have insufficient demand.
So one needs to generate additional demand.
So one needs to find a profit-generating business that's limited by mass in space / launches, where each component is inexpensive enough that its loss doesn't bankrupt the company.
Space-based telecommunications falls out pretty obviously from those requirements, given the pre-Starlink landscape (limited, exquisite assets serving the market at high premiums).
In small irony, it's also the exact same possibility space optimization that led to Amazon starting with books: Bezos didn't give a shit about books specifically, but he did like that they were long-tail, indefinitely warehouse-able, and shaped for efficient shipping.
In novel logistics spaces, it's better to find the business that matches capabilities than the other way around, because the company's core competency and value is their novel logistics solution.