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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Is buying a 'turn-key' dish going to be easier than using their service? I assume the 'can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability' part also applies to the off-the-shelf system (disclaimer: I know zilch about this).

They say it's going to save at least 80% over the cost of operating your own, can only assume they will price it very competitively and have done the math. Hard to say anything without seeing numbers.

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You're absolutely right that it depends on pricing, assuming what they offer has the technical capabilities to do what a customer needs. But how they calculate that 80% matters too, and if it's measured against a more "traditional" groundstation contract I'd say that's also being misleading.

I've seen new turn-key installations come with an equivalent UI and an API to match it. Plus a bunch of debugging/calibration/testing controls. And then (assuming licensing, real estate, and services availability) you get to drop that "anywhere" and optimize its geographical location to match up with your system requirements.

Turn-key systems will totally let you specialize it to maximize utility. Selection of RF feeds/hardware on the input side, and eg. hardware data modems and co-located command-and-control servers on the output side.

That’s what I was thinking! Invent it for DoD, sell it to everyone else.

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