Case Studies: Launch Decisions Under Constraint
What do recent launch decisions by OneWeb, the European Union and Amazon show about how customers actually buy launch?
Chapter summary
When launch supply is constrained, customers buy availability and reliability first and price second, and the dominant supplier wins even when the customer would prefer not to use it.
Key takeaways
- 1
OneWeb moved to SpaceX and India's ISRO within months when Russia cancelled its launches in 2022; the EU launched Galileo navigation satellites on Falcon 9 in 2024 because Ariane 6 was not ready; Amazon spread its constellation across four suppliers in 2022, yet still needed more SpaceX launches and more time from its regulator in 2026.
- 2
Each case shows a different side of the market described in Chapters 4 to 36.
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