SpaceX and Amazon Fight Over Object-Years Condition Request

Amazon's Kuiper and SpaceX are clashing over SpaceX's request that the FCC Space Bureau impose an object-years condition on the Kuiper system. In an application for review, SpaceX said the bureau's granting a license modification for Kuiper in April "unreasonably deviated" from commission policy because it failed to impose the object-years condition, though it has been applied to multiple other non-geostationary orbit systems. In its opposition last month to the review application, Kuiper called the AFR "meritless." Kuiper said a 100 object-years condition -- that being a cap on the total cumulative time to deorbit failed Kuiper satellites -- isn't appropriate due to orbital characteristics, and the proposed Kuiper system is very different from SpaceX's proposed, much-larger, second-generation constellation, which had a 100 object-years condition on it. Kuiper's arguments against the AFR are "an Orwellian spin on the facts," SpaceX told the bureau this week. The bureau has applied the object-years condition numerous times, it said. The FCC can't wait for a rulemaking to address the reliability risk Kuiper presents, it said.