$ASTS: Falcon9 Pause, Launch Fest, FCC Spectrum Bonanza, M&A Rumors

been encapsulated yet. And so similar to what Amazon has done with some of their Leo satellites, they've been already stacked and ready to go. I don't think they've been encapsulated yet, but they're waiting for the ULA bulk and launch, which I'll talk a bit more about later. But they also have a bunch of other batches that are ready to go. And so I think, in other way, this also applies to SpaceX, because I think Amazon had a handful of launches that were supposed to go over the next few weeks. And then those disappeared for the manifest. So this is a pause. I assume that the company was probably notified of this, and they shipped the blue birds down there because they want to have them ready to go once the pause is lifted. My guess, too, and we'll learn more, is that they probably will send more batches of blue birds to AsherTech. And then they'll have them stacked and encapsulated and ready to go. And so what will likely be late November and maybe early December, you're probably going to see this huge rush of Falcon 9 launches of AST satellites, but also Amazon satellites and some other commercial cargo as well. But the key thing is that you want to have those satellites ready to go. And so yeah, I think the pause this kind of someone had mentioned before, which I thought was correct, is that this pause now that it's out there publicly, it kind of puts a nip in the butt of the fud that maybe SpaceX is somehow trying to mess with us and slow down launches when in fact, this is a pause overall because they're trying to launch Starship. There's a specific catalyst. They want to launch Starship for the first time out of Florida. And so they're focusing their efforts on that, which in turn is pausing all these different cargoes. I think there's also global star. And there's a few other customers as well, which are being put on hold. So that's the latest news around that. It's not official. I mean, it came from this one SpaceX VP of launch, which seems like a very credible source, but there's nothing official that we know of. But based off of some other sources as well, it seems like that is indeed what's happening. And once this pause is gone, then they'll get back to launching satellites. And so I think the key, of course, is having as many satellites ready to go. And so will we see additional shipments? Well, who knows? We'll find out in the upcoming call. There is also, there's been, there's some rumors as well that additional boxes, shipping boxes have been are on their way. And so instead of having what we've visibly seen is likely four to five boxes, there could be even more. And so why would you need more boxes? Well, you would want more boxes if you're cycling through multiple satellite deliveries at a time. Because what happens is when you send these satellites to get processed at SpaceX or Astrotek or ULA or Blurgeon, those boxes actually stay there until the satellites are stacked, tested and then encapsulated. And then the boxes are returned. Because you don't want to be in a situation where in the stacking process or in your loading propellant or testing something happens and you actually need the box to then send it. If you can't fix it there, then you need to send it back to Midland. And so you might want to have more than four or five boxes. If you're on this cadence of sending several batches this period of time, or I guess if you eventually move up to four or five or meaning, that would be probably the first Blurgeon New Glenn launch would be four and then you'd get to six and then you get to eight. From ULA, my guess is they probably go with four the first time on the ULA Vulcan Center. But they can do up to five. So in the extended fairing that Amalance using on November 13, that Vulcan is actually in its heaviest configuration. It will be six solid rocket boosters. And so in that configuration with the extended fairing, you can easily fit five bluebirds and put those in space. So yeah, that's why you would want, especially if you've got multiple launch providers, you'd want multiple boxes so that you can cycle through these deliveries. And of course, as I went before, the boxes need to wait around until you're absolutely sure that those satellites are done and then the boxes can be returned. So yeah, I mean, if you kind of fast forward, right now, we are basically at the end of October. It's October 28th. We've got Halloween this weekend. And then we're all of a sudden into November, while it seems like it's been a long time since May, since the Blurgeon incident on the pad, time has gone by pretty quickly. So we are right around the corner of being in November and shortly after in December. And so December's looking very busy, because you could see multiple batches launched by multiple batches of AST satellites launched by SpaceX. Obviously, we've got to finish testing them and deliver them. But you could see, I think previously, we were thinking perhaps October could have been a multi-batch launch, but that's obviously now paused. And so everything kind of gets backed up. But as long as you keep producing, just like Blurgeon has been producing New Glenn GS1 and GS2, first and second stages and been stacking those up, you can do the same thing with production, right? And so ideally, when we come to December, hopefully there'll be multiple batches ready to go, right? And so December's looking pretty busy, because by that time, you'll a Balkan Centaur as I mentioned before, Amazon is flying 40, they're Leo, the fixed wireless satellites on November 13th. And then you've got Blurgeon come December, probably very late December, looking to possibly return to flight with New Glenn. And so from what we understand, I think Pat operations, once they get all the infrastructure in place and the umbilical cords and all these things that you need to load the rocket full of repellent, Pat operations are supposed to restart in November, right? And so I'm not sure if that means the first half of November or second half of November and all the gory details that are involved in that, but it is interesting, there was some, based off of some chatter, it sounds like Blurgeon was able to stack the tower much faster than people had expected, right? And so I think maybe perhaps the timeline is faster. I think if you asked most people in the industry, they would have told you that it's likely Blurgeon, New Glenn would return to flight some time in early January, like December was kind of a hopeful thing, and then most likely a few weeks into January, whereas it is possible now that maybe given that they have kind of met the timeline and are progressing quite well, you might be able to see a static fire, sometime in the first half of December, knock on wood, and then of course a first commercial launch, which would be the Blurgeon Blurring mission, which is their vehicle that, out of the fairing, it's this spacecraft that can deliver additional payloads to whatever orbits you need. And so that's gonna be their first mission. My guess is, when people ask, I would think that Blurgeon probably after that, if it's successful, we'll take then a cargo of Amazon Leo satellites and then after that, then you might see your first bluebird mission, which either my guess maybe if you wanna be really safe, takes one satellite, but probably it's gonna be three to four, and then after that you bump it up to six and eight, right? And so those, I think obviously given all the concern around launch, Blurgeon, New Glenn is an important piece of the plan, and so hopefully that will go off well, once it returns back to commercial missions. Someone, there was someone who had tweeted this, which I agreed with, I'll just read this here, it says, this delay is not necessarily, this is in regards to Falcon 9. This delay is not necessarily a big deal. If the company communicates clearly the state of the factory and how many satellites they can expect to finish in the interim, launch can always catch up, the factory is a more critical bottleneck. And so related to that, we should get some type of update at the earnings call and then space mob due diligence has been tracking the Antonov and it looks like most likely, we haven't fully confirmed this, but I think we have pretty good educated views that this Antonov in India is likely going to be carrying additional rings to composite rings to Midla. And so yeah, I mean, as far as I can tell, fat the production is moving along unclear exactly where they are in terms of satellites per month, but you wouldn't be, there was another batch of us delivered, I think it was a few weeks ago and then there's another batch coming currently, which in previous batches, I think you were looking at anywhere between seven to eight composite rings, but add that to the stack of satellites that they plan on finishing relatively soon. And so that gives you some sense of, in my guess, if that Antonov is indeed landing in Midland and delivering rings, then maybe we'll get some type of PR like a tweet or something from the company. But yeah, so that's kind of the update on Falcon Paws and what it means for launch. I just think that all of some year and gets more heavily backloaded. And because we do have atro tech, I think there's probably going to be more satellite shift there and stack and integrate into fairings and then they'll be ready to go. So it should be a pretty interesting late November, early December. Let's see, so moving on. I did want to point out, so SpaceX, as we all know, they're buying grain management, the 800 megahertz spectrum for $8 billion. They made a filing at the FCC to have this spectrum included in supplemental coverage from space, which is the term we use for using terrestrial spectrum for satellite connectivity. And so what was interesting about this filing is that they disclose that they have a desire to operate in low-band frequencies internationally. And so it's not a surprise, they will have access to this seven-by-seven megahertz band of spectrum here in the US. It's not interesting, national, by the way. But as part of deploying that spectrum, they will likely, as we've read in the press, they will probably deploy, I guess up to 80,000 macrocell sites. So that's going to be pretty expensive endeavor. I posted an article about how they're talking about the Crown Castle, but also American Tower. American Tower interestingly mentioned the work, potentially work with SpaceX in their earnings call, which I think is kind of interesting because American Towers are part, I strategic partner of ours, which is fine. I mean, they pretty much serve M&O's and if SpaceX pays them something, then they'll build towers out for them. And they also sit on our board. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that kind of evolves because on the one hand, they've been a very strong partner and they sit on the board and they've been there for years. But then on the other hand, if they do get closer with SpaceX, then maybe they'll have to be, some type of situation where they come off the board, they refuse themselves or I don't know, maybe having their insight of what SpaceX is doing is a good thing for us. But anyway, what's interesting about this filing is that SpaceX has notified the FCC that it does want the ability to operate in low-band spectrum globally. And so what that says is, and I know there was like some, I think it was free speech or something. He was like, oh, you know, the SpaceX V2 direct to sell satellites, they'll be able to do a low-band as well. Eventually, it makes a ton of sense for SpaceX to develop a low-band satellite, but it's not going to be the V2 because the V2 specifically is built for midband spectrum and as we've learned from Katzzi and you can ask any AI as well, you need a different phase-deray because the element spacing for the transmission, the antenna have to be different, right? So if it's for midband, you have much shorter spacing than for tighter spacing for low-band, the spacing actually is much wider. And so it's a different phase-deray. And so I think for SpaceX, eventually, it does make sense for them to deploy a low-band satellite. So add that to the list of the things that they need to do. So their V2 satellite is midband and then they'll have to develop a larger phase-ray probably in order to low-band. Unless they keep the phase-deray at a similar size and they just space the elements further apart but then they'll need to fly more satellites. And then the question is, if they don't use a larger phase-deray, then will they have to make that up by operating at higher power? Which in this filing, they said they do need to operate at higher power levels, which then of course, introduce more interference. And they'll have to hope that regulators in the US but then also globally are okay with that. As we know, MNOs who own low-band spectrum, if SpaceX is able to acquire some bits and pieces in different geographies, they'll have to work with, or I guess across the table from MNOs to try to get that approved. And we've talked about the competitive dynamics of regulators being okay with...