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Orbcomm, a major communications satellite outfit, signed a $500M deal to launch their new constellation of sats with SpaceX - but with a side provision that allowed them to use other providers as backups. They have now dropped that part of the deal and are going all-in with SpaceX for the whole shebang.
Many of these will go up as secondary payloads attached to the 2nd stage on other SpaceX flights. The below PDF shows how secondary payloads can be launched on 2nd stages, including SpaceX Dragon/DragonLab flights. Interesting in light of Orbcomms move because their first sats go up on next years COTS-2 Dragon flight for NASA.
This should raise major red flags in Russia and with other providers like Ariane, ISRU (India), ULA etc. because of the very low cost of a piggyback flight on a booster that's very inexpensive to start with. Other providers can do piggyback too, but not at SpaceX's price.
PDF....
Many of these will go up as secondary payloads attached to the 2nd stage on other SpaceX flights. The below PDF shows how secondary payloads can be launched on 2nd stages, including SpaceX Dragon/DragonLab flights. Interesting in light of Orbcomms move because their first sats go up on next years COTS-2 Dragon flight for NASA.
This should raise major red flags in Russia and with other providers like Ariane, ISRU (India), ULA etc. because of the very low cost of a piggyback flight on a booster that's very inexpensive to start with. Other providers can do piggyback too, but not at SpaceX's price.
PDF....