Jeff Bezos has billions of reasons to grovel

Jeff Bezos is currently the third richest person on Earth with a net wealth over $220 billion. In addition to being an absolutely obscene number, this seems like a very good reason Bezos should not have to get on his knees in front of anyone.

Except there he is, putting a "libertarian" pro-Trump stamp on The Washington Post so blatant that editors are heading for the exits. Not only has Bezos told his staff that the Post is going to be out there battling for kind of truth, sort of justice, but very definitely the Republican Way, he's made it clear that from now on the Post's op-ed column will only support a single position.

"There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views," Bezos said. "Today, the internet does that job."

See, journalists, there's no reason for you to be objective or for major news outlets to feature opposing points of view. People can get all the viewpoints they want on Elon Musk's Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. So turn the propaganda crank, we're making sausage.

But why? Why does a guy whose personal wealth exceeds the total wealth of 101 of the world's 172 nations (yes, really) have to pucker up for anyone?

The answer is in the stars—or at least, it hopes to be. Because six years ago Bezos put a huge chunk of the two major companies he controls on the line, and now a series of delays and failures has left him in a position where the whole survival of his tech bro empire could be in the hands of his enemies.

Back in 2019, just as SpaceX was preparing to launch the first of the satellites that would form its Starlink network, Amazon announced that it was going to provide a competing space-based internet solution named Project Kuiper.

The system would involve placing 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit. To make this work, Bezos, who was still CEO of Amazon at the time, had to have the communications bandwidth to support moving data between the satellites and the ground. So in 2020, he negotiated a deal with the FCC that awarded Kuiper exclusive rights to a series of frequencies.

He had the radio waves. He had the money to start cranking out satellites. However, there was still one other thing Bezos' plan required: a way to put all those satellites into orbit.

When Starlink started, Musk had an existing fleet of Falcon 9 rockets that had proven their reliability since 2010. For the previous four years, SpaceX payloads had been going to orbit on reused boosters that were recovered after landing. Though the economics of the whole deal were still very much in question, there was never any doubt about how Musk intended to get his satellites into orbit.

Bezos didn't have a rocket. Though his Blue Origin launch company had been founded in 2000, two years before Musk started SpaceX, by 2019 the only rocket in their arsenal was the small New Shepard. That rocket was fine for brief suborbital joyrides into the Texas sky, but it couldn't get anything into orbit. Design work on the much larger New Glenn orbital rocket began in 2012, and the first launch was slated for 2020.

But by the time Bezos signed his deal with the FCC, it was clear New Glenn was running years behind schedule. Though Bezos put his upcoming rocket down for 12 launches to support Project Kuiper, he knew that would cover only a small portion of the project's requirements. In addition, many Amazon shareholders weren't at all enthused about watching Bezos puff up the value of Blue Origin by funneling money from Amazon. Those dozen launches were enough to net him a lawsuit.

Bezos had to go out looking for more rockets. What followed was a shopping spree so big that it theoretically consumed much of the Western world's available launch capacity over the next several years.

First Bezos turned to Europe, giving Arianespace its largest contract ever by pre-buying 18 launches on the new Ariane 6 rocket that was still in development.

"Usually, customers only need half the capacity of a rocket to carry their satellites, but this time, the entire launcher is booked. It's as if we had signed 36 contracts at one time," explained [Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël[.

Those 18 launches likely meant bills of about $2 billion. But it was still far from enough to get all the Kuiper satellites into orbit.

The next obvious partner for Bezos was Musk's primary competition for U.S. launches, United Launch Alliance. ULA had its new Vulcan launcher in the works that was originally scheduled to fly in 2019. By the time Amazon came knocking, Vulcan was also running behind—not least of all because it depended on engines built by Bezos' Blue Origin—but it was not quite so behind as Bezos' big rocket.

Amazon signed up for an amazing 38 full flights of the Vulcan. To be extra safe, the contract also included nine launches of ULA's older Atlas V rocket. The cost of this contract isn't clear, but with each of these launches costing over $100 million dollars, the cost for ULA flights alone could easily exceed $4.5 billion.

The billions that Amazon committed to these three launch vehicles still wasn't enough to get the whole constellation into orbit if Kuiper was going to become a real competitor to Starlink. But these were huge expenditures.

In fact, the purchases from Amazon were so large that they almost singlehandedly made Ariane 6, Vulcan, and New Glenn — a whole generation of new launchers — economically viable. These contracts essentially created the current situation in the launch market. Without Kuiper, it's unclear that any of these vehicles would have had the demand necessary to overcome years of cost overruns and delays.

And those delays are really, really what's at issue here. Because back in 2020, when Bezos cut his deal with the FCC, there was one little catch...

... this authorization and 47 CFR § 25.164(b). Section 25.164(b) requires Kuiper to launch and operate 50 percent of its satellites no later than July 30, 2026, and Kuiper must launch the remaining space stations necessary to complete its authorized service constellation, place them in their assigned orbits, and operate each of them in accordance with the authorization no later than July 30, 2029. 47 CFR § 25.164(b).

How many Kuiper satellites are in orbit today? That would be zero.

After years of delays, Ariane 6 was first launched in July 2024. The next launch is expected to take place in March, but Arianespace has customers who got in line ahead of Amazon, so no Kuiper satellites going up on the second launch. Or the third.

After years of delays, Vulcan was first launched on January 8. 2024, and completed a second flight in October. However, the first flight of Vulcan slated to carry Kuiper satellites has been bumped to no earlier than some time in 2026.

In 2023, an Altas V carried two nonfunctional Kuiper test satellites into orbit. No more have gone up since then. Because of the delays in the first launch of Vulcan, several missions that had been planned for that launcher were moved onto the remaining Atlas rockets. There are reportedly just over a dozen of the Atlas V rockets remaining and ULA has stopped selling them for future flights. If not clear when (or if) any of the remaining flights will carry Kuiper satellites.

After years of delays, New Glenn made its first flight in January 2025. A second launch is currently scheduled for late spring, but it's unlikely that New Glenn will fly more than twice in the coming year. The next launch is likely to carry a demonstration of Blue Origin's lunar lander. When it will first carry any Kuiper satellites is unclear.

Under pressure to find a reliable ride to space, Amazon reached out to SpaceX in 2023 (after Bezos had stepped down as CEO) and secured three flights of the Falcon 9 for Kuiper satellites. The first of these launches is scheduled to take place sometime in mid-2025.

What's clear is that when the timer runs out on July 30, 2026, Amazon is unlikely to have more than a few hundred Kuiper satellites in orbit. At best, they might get two launches each from Vulcan, Atlas V, Ariane, and New Glenn before the deadline. Oh, and three from SpaceX.

And that's a very generous estimate.

After contracting for roughly $10 billion worth of launch access, spending several billion more to build the satellites, and who knows what on research and development, Bezos is going to miss a critical deadline. And he knows it.

If the FCC pulls the plug, it will mean a serious chunk out of the pocket of Amazon (and people whose net worth is largely tied up in Amazon shares). It might even threaten the viability of Blue Origin along with one or more other launch providers.

In ye olde days of yore, when the FCC made decisions based on what was good for the public, a situation like this would likely result in a routine extension of Kuiper's deadlines. Because having more then one provider in the orbital internet market is clearly a good thing. But now we're in an age where Musk could very easily pull the plug on this deal, giving himself a near monopoly on space-based internet service and dealing his rocket launch competitors a kick to the space balls.

Musk has Bezos' companies—both of them—in a vise. And he has a golden opportunity to squeeze. All this is before he even starts threatening to destroy plans to return to the Moon that are a very big part of Blue Origin's future.

So don't be surprised when Bezos declares that the new slogan for the Post is simply "All Hail Trump!"