>>13480289spacex, lockheed martin,airbus,reshetnev,mitsubishi many others own big satellite factories mass producing sattelite BUSes or whole sattelites
>like a toyota motor company for sats?yes, many of these are however also owned by large aerospace companies
>who people hire to design and/or build sats they need?yes, many of them mass produce for commsat\constellation companies but they'll make a custom one for you based on their standard BUS if you want.
t. someone who worked for a company that built and operated GEO and LEO sats, not mass produced tho only a handful of GEO sats at a time.
>my impression is that entities who want a sat build their own and just contract other companies for parts(like hiring a textile company for covers or something of the like)you're right in that unlike maybe car companies or something like that in the space industry you but the components from specialized companies. no one builds all their shit in house .
when we built LEO\GEO sats and probes we did build some stuff on our own like basic thermal systems,antennas and most of the mechanical stuff but most of the other shit like thrusters,startrackers,batteries,computers,reaction wheels and transcivers (we did make our own transceivers for the commsats tho). of course these components aren't THAT mass produced and are usually customized for each project and tested on each spacecraft. the sattelite industry is very conservative in that regard the most important stat on systems is 'space heritage' as in the number of years of operation in orbit the component had because once its up nothing can be done about it.its the reason you saw satellites with helium batteries long after li ion was a thing because they had a lot of space heritage.
this is why i think the next big gold-rush will be orbital services\manufacturing. you dont have to be as conservative if you can repair refuel and replace components in orbit. i can see this easily a shitton of money in the near future.
