Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by patrickyeon 2761 days ago
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.