Blue Origin announced yesterday that it going to build a major satellite constellation — dubbed TeraWave and comprising more than 5,000 satellites — to provide internet service to the globe while also providing data center capability for those companies that wish to establish space-based cloud computing facilities.

It plans to begin launching satellites in 2027.

As I noted in today’s quick links below, such a story would normally merit a full post, “but considering Blue Origin’s inability to get almost anything off the ground, this proposal doesn’t deserve that much coverage at this point.” I just can’t get excited about any Blue Origin proposal, until they actually start launching it. For almost a decade this company has been making these kind of grand announcements, and has only so far managed to achieve one, its New Glenn rocket. And that has come years late and at a pace that is glacial.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream propaganda press immediately went bonkers over this proposal, immediately declaring most absurdly that TeraWave is already a major challenger to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. Here are just a few very typical examples:

• BBC: Bezos’ Blue Origin announces satellite rival to Musk’s Starlink
• CNBC: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches satellite internet service to rival SpaceX, Amazon
• Business Insider: Jeff Bezos’s grand plan for a satellite constellation to rival SpaceX is coming together
• The Verge: Blue Origin’s Starlink rival TeraWave promises 6-terabit satellite internet

This adulation by the mainstream press of Bezos is far from unusual. For reasons that baffle me, the propaganda press has consistently considered any project proposal coming from a Jeff Bezos’ company to instantly be God’s gift to humanity. For more than a decade now it has been touting Blue Origin as the company that SpaceX needs to beat, flipping reality on its head. Now it ranks Blue Origin’s TeraWave constellation a major Starlink rival, when it is at least two years from even launching its first satellite.

There is one aspect of this story however that does deserve to be highlighted because it appears no one else is noticing it, which is why I after some thought I decided to write this full post. When Bezos controlled both Blue Origin and Amazon, the idea of having Amazon create the Leo constellation made sense. Bezos was doing what Musk was doing with SpaceX/Starlink, using his rocket to launch his constellation, with the revenue produced by Leo available to Bezos to fund Blue Origin space projects, as he wished.

Bezos however has stepped back from Amazon, so Blue Origin has lost that model. It can no longer profit significantly from the revenue Leo eventually produces for Amazon, as SpaceX is does with Starlink.

Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of
April 2025. Click for original image.

Thus, Bezos is now creating a Blue Origin constellation for this purpose. When TeraWave launches and begins garnering customers, it will generate revenue to Blue Origin directly, which Blue Origin can then use to push Bezos’s own dreams in space.

And what are those dreams? Bezos has repeatedly said he wishes to move heavy industries into space, in order to protect the Earth from the pollution those industries produce. If he follows through with this concept, then in about a decade he will begin building such large facilities, either in orbit or on the Moon and elsewhere.

For example, Blue Origin’s proposed space station, Orbital Reef, has appeared completely dead for the past year-plus. The company has done practically no development. This could change however if TeraWave eventually pumps some cash into Blue Origin’s coffers.

But of course, such revenues are still at least a decade away, assuming Blue Origin moves fast. And that remains an decidedly uncertain possibility.