SpaceX continues complaints over Amazon Leo

=SpaceX filed a complaint to the FCC on April 20th with a list of complaints, starting by saying "Amazon simply refuses to take 'yes' for an answer. Amazon consistently rejects any offer to resolve its self-inflicted inability to meet the FCC's deployment requirements, insisting instead on inflicting maximum harm on the millions of Americans that rely on competing systems".

This segment refers to Amazon's FCC obligation that they launch at least 50 per cent (1,616) of their planned LEO fleet by July. As SpaceX helpfully points out Amazon remains over 1300 satellites short of this milestone.

Not mentioned in the filing is the additional problem caused by the April 19th failure by a Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket to successfully place an AST SpaceMobile satellite into orbit. The US authorities will now expect a compressive investigation in the 2nd stage of the New Glenn rocket, and this will likely take months, not weeks. Amazon Leo's launch plans will be severely impacted by this stoppage.

SpaceX's letter to the FCC further alleges that Amazon has made a never-ending cascade of extension requests "seeking different deadlines for a different number of satellites".

SpaceX cites the long-standing 'Teledesic precedent' and used by Amazon, O3b and Telesat that could not meet their deployment milestones but whose delays were foreseeable.

SpaceX summarises its position saying that it does not oppose Amazon's desire to deploy additional satellites into its first-generation system "but that any satellites it deploys after the milestone date must be deferred to a subsequent processing round".