Bloomberg Businessweek

 TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek March 11, 2019

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likely to fall into the ocean. In a typical year,

Arianespace will send up about one rocket a

month, although keeping up with OneWeb will

require it to work faster. OneWeb has contracted

with the company for more than 20 launches. By

October, Wyler expects to witness one every three

weeks or so, with each rocket carrying about 34

OneWeb satellites. If he’s right, he’ll quickly break

by a wide margin the record number of satellites

launched by a single company.

Launch days remain a special occasion here,

even though they’ve been taking place for decades.

Before blastoff, the French Foreign Legion clears

the forest and seas and provides security on-site.

As the event draws near, hundreds of people,

including men in uniform and women in bright

sundresses, arrive at a theater attached to the

glass-enclosed mission control while an announcer

delivers play-by-play commentary. Branson found

himself taking selfies near a concession stand dol-

ing out fruit juices, finger sandwiches, and desserts.

When the launch happens, everyone runs out

to a balcony to watch as a giant rocket streaks

across the sky and to listen as its thunderous rum-

ble cuts through the humid air. The event has the

feel of game day in a small Texas town that runs

on football.

For Europe, Kourou is the ideal place to launch

rockets. All the inherent danger has been offloaded

to a faraway land, and the aerospace operations

dominate the economy, providing Arianespace and

other space agency bodies with unequaled influ-

ence. This can embitter locals who’ve been left

out. Unemployment rates of 20 percent or higher

are common in French Guiana, schools are under-

funded, and rates of poverty and murder are high.

Protesters in 2017 blocked access to the spaceport

and disrupted a launch as they voiced their con-

cerns about the poor economic conditions.

Wyler has spent the past 20 years trying to

improve the lot of the less fortunate and bring more

economic balance to overlooked areas. He made mil-

lions as a tech entrepreneur and investor, then went

to Rwanda after the genocide there to lay fiber-optic

cables and modernize the country’s infrastructure.

Later, he started a company called O3b (as in “other

three billion”) to create a satellite network that could

deliver high-speed internet access to islands and

nations near the equator. OneWeb is both an admis-

sion that these past projects didn’t work out as well

as planned and an attempt to correct their techno-

logical shortcomings. “There is a lot of hope in this

rocket,” Wyler says on launch day.

As with the site itself, the optics of Wyler and

Branson’s own lifestyles can appear at odds with

deeper societal issues. Both men flew into French

Guiana on their private jets and flew off after the

launch to their island getaway homes. It’s not crazy

for skeptics to wonder whether OneWeb’s wealthy

backers will make sure the service lives up to its

original vision. Wyler could end up with merely a

zippy internet system for the traveling elite.

Without question, though, it’s only through

force of will that Wyler and Branson have brought

this project and the promise it carries as far as they

have. Huge satellite networks have been notori-

ously bad investments. Wyler had to coax inves-

tors from around the world to make OneWeb look

and feel like a global effort, and he’s had to fight

against Musk’s outsize persona in a complex public-

relations war. “There have been a lot of people bet-

ting we fail,” he says. He expects a limited version

of the OneWeb service to come online by the end

of 2019, more than a year behind its original sched-

ule, and to roll it out to more customers through-

out 2020. “I’ve been at this since 2012 and seen it all

clearly in my head since then,” he says. “I’ve com-

municated the vision, and now people are starting

to believe.”—Ashlee Vance

THE BOTTOM LINE Wyler’s ambitious space internet plans, even

scaled back, may be difficult to fund to fruition unless he can sign

up deep-pocketed industries.

○ Farmers Business Network offers cheaper

alternatives to Bayer and DowDuPont

Seeds of a

Better Business

Farmers don’t have a reputation for skewing to the

political left, but just get them talking about seeds.

At an expo center on the outskirts of Memphis one

gray February day, several dozen of them make for

a receptive audience as Charles Baron expounds

over plates of scrambled eggs and home fries on

the inequities of Big Ag. “On either side of your

family business are these massive oligopolies,” the

35-year-old says, gesturing toward a PowerPoint

slide bearing the logos of agrichemical compa-

nies and commodities traders. “You, as growers,

should have the power in the industry. There’s no

reason you should have the lowest incomes when

○ U.S. farmers’

spending on seeds

last year totaled

$22b

“We want

to bring the

internet to the

poorest people

in the world and

have built the

world’s most

expensive

system to do it”