Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink.
I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and match, the trophy has been handed over and the crowd has gone home.
SpaceX and Starlink have the same owner, both are private companies, with SpaceX launching 80% of the global space payload last year and rising, and Starlink has a constellation two orders of magnitude bigger than any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than foreign militaries sponsoring them. There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market.
We can only hope the competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX has been about space debris risk and ensuring the satellites are not visible to the naked eye and don't disrupt astronomy. So far the proposals I've seen have been much worse than Starlink in these areas.
IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space.
Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites.
One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 years. Which means the operators can never stop launching. It's an ongoing operational cost.
For smaller operators like OneWeb, they don't have to launch that often, but for a serious competitor like Kuiper, they'll be constantly launching some satellite every year.
IMO, launch cost will be a problem even for China. The cost of an LEO constellation is so high that even if it's partially subsidized by the military it'll be a serious cost for the country.
That could change pretty soon, though - various companies and organizations in China are aggressively working on getting reusable rockets working.
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1. $70 m / 17.5 tonnes == $4 m / tonne
2. $15 m[3] / 17.5 tonnes == $0.86 / tonne
3. The $15 m number is not public info, but it is widely believed that it is in the correct ballpark.
In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment (ie, almost exactly the same as Boeing and United Airlines divestment due to the Air Mail Act).
> Air Mail Act of 1934:
> This legislation prohibited the common ownership of airlines and aircraft manufacturers to prevent conflicts of interest and promote fair competition in the aviation industry.
> In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment
I guess we'll see what happens.
As with most things monopoly related, the critical fight is over how to appropriately define the market. Presumably SpaceX would argue that Starlink is an ISP and that it just happens to use satellites to deliver its service.
And if that doesn't work, then it's a satellite internet provider, but competes with both LEO and GEO services.
If it ever goes to court, it'll be interesting to see how such an argument holds up.
For obvious reasons I think it's pretty safe to say we can count on at least the next four years of zero regulation or government scrutiny of any company Musk is involved in, monopoly-related or otherwise.
But you may have noticed companies like Boeing getting white-glove treatment from regulators.
You know, deciding that their competitor's cheaper aircraft should be subject to a 300% tariff. Not burdening them with too much scrutiny about whether that modified aircraft should keep the same type rating. Taking their word for it when they say every aircraft has 100% of the door bolts installed. If they have broken some regulations, maybe giving a $150 billion company a $250 million fine.
Not ceasing to regulate - just regulators with broad discretionary power exercising that discretion in line with the will of the politicians who appoint them.
Starlink is the most important military weapon in the world right now. Those civilian organizations have no say when state security is at hand. It's like disarming nuclear rockets because some green guys care about birds. Will not happen.
"National security" obviously gets significant concessions from regulators. That doesn't mean military and adjacent industries or significant industries and works are above the regulators, it just means the necessity of the activity and input from military and other interested parties would be duly taken into account by regulators.
That's not unique to SpaceX and I don't think that's wrong as such, although people argue that military interests in general get too much leeway.
Parent should have said "SpaceX", Starlink is just a subsidiary.
SpaceX has more military applications than Starshield alone. For example, SpaceX's assembly line will be pumping out (eventually) a rocket a day. That's the plan.
From a military perspective, Starship is supposed to be able to send 100+ people on long space trips. If that is instead to deliver troops to other parts of the planet, I'm sure hundreds could be packed in. Imagine a fast deploy with parachute capability for personnel and cargo, just as with planes, but with immense range and deploy speed.
You may wonder why, but aircraft carriers and their fleets are considered less usable as deploy platforms, due to increased vulnerability. If the US continues to withdraw from the world stage, its ability to deploy could be affected by a reduction in 'friendly' regional countries and thus leased bases. I don't see any issue with this now, but once a large conflict breaks out, who knows... and this could vastly enhance Starship or equiv as a deploy platform.
I'm sure some reading this will balk at "large war" and "never happen" and so on, but Starshield is an example of a platform for such a large conflict. So considering the use of Starship itself as a lightning speed, emergency deploy platform is important.
There are all sorts of gotchas, such as being shot down, but of course those same issues exist with planes or ships.
Frankly, with the state of AI, the close-to-real Android + military robots, along with drones, Starship would be best served by mass fly-over and deploy of 100k small drones, or hundreds of military robot platforms, or.. well, lots of things.
This really isn't about Starship of course. It's just that we've gotten to the point where this sort of platform is very usable. I can't imagine sending in a large-cost asset like this for general troop deploy, but I can for special ops, weapons platforms in low-risk flyovers, and a variety of other use cases.
Starship as passenger transport point to point on Earth is a nonstarter most likely, even for civilian applications.
It looks just like an ICBM, because it is an ICBM. I doubt Russian and Chinese air defence forces will wait for them to land and see if it’s full of people or plutonium before launching a retaliatory strike.
Your missed the part about parachutes. Also about flyovers. No landing would happen.
(We've been dropping people and gear for 100 years by plane. And yes, it can be done with Starship.)
On the side of civilian transportation, there is nothing to stop normal passenger planes from having nukes on board. The shape of the object is irrelevant.
Kind of yes. I mean Trumps Supreme Court changes the rules because they interpreted something differently. So any political or government agency is all vibes based to me. Anything other interpretation is rose tinted.
Elon Musk was just appointed by Donald Trump as being in charge of firing half of the government. He won't likely do that. But any regulator who gets in his way?
Yeah, not many will volunteer for "the firing line."
I really don't know what Musk has been appointed to do and it's a laughably blatant conflict of interest, but conflicts of interest seem to be what the entire government is built on. Politicians involved with energy and military companies are involved in decisions to go to war, generals get lucrative consultancy jobs at military firms, congress makes billions of dollars insider trading, foreign aid somehow finds its way funneled through "charities" owned by the ruling class, politicians cosy with medical companies block real healthcare reform, etc.
Musk isn't anything new or different here. The idea that he'll just be above the law is fearmongering hyperbole though. Sure he'll get favorable treatment and be able to push his agenda to degrees well out of reach of us commoners. No more than if he'd just stayed in the shadows and bought his politicians and judges and bureaucrats and generals like a normal billionaire.
I follow the same reasoning as you. This is actually nothing really "new". Patronage from politicics is something that is publicly criticized but is quite common among politicians and business.
It's too bad no one in government will ever step up to undo the citizens united ruling. At least we didn't have legal-but-opaque bribery, prior. The difference is substantial when people can't report on where campaign financing comes from without someone first talking too loud about it in a public setting.
The good news, at least, is that Citizens United was only a legal ruling and can be overturned by another ruling. Laws are much harder to undue, with rulings we don't need anyone in the government to step up (other than judges trying the case).
Because I heard he was going to have some advisory or executive capacity on government operation. There's a significant conflict of interest there if he's running and owning these companies at the same time.
Its hard to determine a conflict of interest when the role isn't clear though, and the problem there is that everyone can really go off of what they heard through the grape vine.
If the role truly is advisory I wouldn't personally see that as a conflict of interest. Regulators are often asking for advise from those they are meant to regulate without it getting flagged as a conflict of interest (for better or worse).
It used to be that even a WHIFF of conflict of interest was treated as "no smoke without fire, better divest".
Carter placed his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid precisely that - sadly, we have seen a complete erosion of norms, standards, and morals in public life.
I don't think it's that hard to determine. He has big companies involved in significant regulatory actions and oversight, he would stand to gain a lot by influencing things slightly in his favor. Sure, taken to absurdity everybody in government has a conflict of interest because they are alive on the same planet and have heir own views on things, but for the case of someone like Musk it's pretty clear.
Politicians and bureaucrats can and should consult with the people they govern of course. The "proper" way to do that would be via reasonably open and transparent process that is open to interested parties so competitors, customers, unions, scientists could have their say.
Again I'm fully aware this isn't how things actually work, so I'm not saying Musk is really doing anything outside the norm in American politics by buying a seat at the table. He's just being slightly more open about it than most of them.
I wouldn't be opposed to going after such situations as corruption or conflict of interest issues, but that's going to be a big can of worms.
From the FAA and Boeing to multiple health agencies and pharmaceutical companies, there are a ton of advisory type roles that involve industry leaders "recommending" policy. I'd be surprised if Musk ended up at the top of the list when sorted by impact, counted either by financial impact or number of rules and regulations impacted by industry.
> The idea that he'll just be above the law is fearmongering hyperbole though
Is it? If there is anything the 45th and the aftermath has shown is that there are people clearly above the law. And even without the 45th, Musk himself has escaped justice many many times - especially the SEC whose explicit orders he openly defied multiple times.
Yes I think it is, and I think the rhetoric around Trump is hyperbole and fearmongering too.
Not that you can't criticize them, I just don't see exaggeration being interesting or helpful there. Also I think caring about certain corruption or conflicts of interest when it happens to politicians one disagrees with is fairly easy to be seen as being divisive or politically motivated even if it's not. I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
Musk isn't going to be immune to federal regulators. I'm sure he'll get the kinds of favors that come with buying politicians as all the rest of them get though.
> Yes I think it is, and I think the rhetoric around Trump is hyperbole and fearmongering too.
Well just reading through Project 2025 is very sobering. It's not like old times where what they wanted had to be read through the lines any more, it's right out in the open what they want to do - and even getting a quarter of their plans actually passed through is a very, very troubling perspective.
> I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
A sad consequence of people no longer debating policy on a shared common ground based on facts, but on tribalism, lies and propaganda instead.
I shouldn't have brought up Trump, the subject never goes anywhere useful in an online debate. That was just my opinion, and other opinions and fears are not invalid.
> > I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
> A sad consequence of people no longer debating policy on a shared common ground based on facts, but on tribalism, lies and propaganda instead.
Yep. When they do that it does make you wonder who shares common ground with whom, and who spreads lies and propaganda about what.
I just seriously wanna praise, first without commentary, that you just said
>other opinions and fears are not invalid
And then for commentary:
I'm the sort of person "intense" enough that I'd want to pounce even on your comment about not bringing up trump, but that overall phrasing was such a perfect way to communicate what you mean, and your good intentions, to me when you at first read (to me) as apologist and unwarrantedly dismissive.
That's all, often in these times it feels hard to even achieve this basic level of communication across personal and political differences. I really admire it.
I’d say it’s just as likely that six months from now there will be a falling out, Musk will be called a pathetic loser, government agencies will be turned against him, etc.
If past behavior is any kind of indicator, it’s more likely than not. I would not be surprised if we see Musk doing a perp walk within 12 months.
For those who forgot, Musk joined Trump v1.0's advisory council in December 2016 [a], and resigned from it in June 2017 [b]. All of this played out once before.
Elon knows well enough to act as a supporting character. He can't run for presidency anyway given he's not a native, and no other political post would be interesting enough. There'll be no falling out.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that addressed Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and declared that they're only enforceable by Congress really opens a can of worms.
It sounds to me like the 22nd Amendment and the Article II natural-born citizenship requirement are also only enforceable by Congress. If you're making your plans based on a theory that Congress is able to do the right thing, or that the Supreme Court is not a hyper-partisan institution, I would have a strong C because plans A and B are pretty questionable.
What silly political posturing. Native-born is the specific reference, and a perfectly valid one. By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't natives, than vast parts of the world's population are also not natives of the places where their families have lived for centuries.
Why not go further and say that the "natives" also aren't natives since they also migrated to the Americas over the Bering land bridge?
People were here, and Europeans showed up and killed nearly all of them, claimed all the land as their “manifest destiny”, and proceeded to subject the few original inhabitants they didn’t kill to lives of desperation.
> By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't native.
It's not my logic. The term Native American has an agreed, standard meaning. Trump's family does not meet that meaning. My comment was not an attack on your political views.
Are you suggesting that being born in a place makes one native? I'll accept that definition. Now go convince the rest of the world to update their definition of Native American.
And as you apparently agree, the term native, in reference to someone born in a particular place (regardless of ancestry) also has a standard meaning, which millions of Americans who are natives of the country meet. It also happens to be a good definition, because it helps fight against the kind of idiotic racism by which the descendants of immigrants (especially those who are non-white) still get labeled as foreigners despite being native born.
Again, silly, pedantic social justice posturing because the context of the comment about Musk not being native is obviously in reference to this, not native American history.
As the other reply above states, the first nations, as they're called where I'm from, often suffered terribly at the hands of white settlers historically, and there's no honest way to deny that, but it's a separate matter from discussions about what makes a person American today.
Parent didn’t say Trump is a Native American, just a native (of America, from context). That’s a perfectly normal use of the word ‘native’, and you don’t win consciousness points by pretending otherwise.
And this is why we can't have nice, cheap things. Instead we usually get that "cost" pressure solved by giving it on a silver platter to worker-rights-leading China.
There has to be a better way to prevent abuses in the market without crippling it. But following from that, at what point did we assume this kind of (monopolistic) abuse would happen automatically anyways? I haven't seen it yet, so let's maybe hold off till it happens?
Maybe one day X will host all sorts of government-unapproved content on satellites that are free from US jurisdiction and control? @Elon, do this now, they'll come for you eventually.
it is a fascinating outcome when a vertically integrated monopoly is the cheapest option, and best consumer value. The challenge is figuring out if the firm is really providing the best value, or just a local minimum.
My understanding is Standard Oil provided good service for low prices in most cases. It's not always the case that monopolies provide super expensive or bad service.
> vertically integrated monopoly is the cheapest option
I would like to remind you that you can use google, gmail, google maps, google drive and a bunch of other services for free (and the best consumer value even if accounting for their data gathering).
Now that Starlink owner Musk effectively runs the US government from Trump's ear no divestment of any kind will happen that negatively impacts Mr. Musk
If China where to compete they also need LEO satellites that is just over China for a couple of minutes, that have to take a long round trip around the word to give a couple of minutes access again.
That’s why you need a huge constellation.
It’s either selling to the whole world or nothing. If you don’t want to go for slow GEO stationary.
I suspect a China-based constellation could probably serve most of africa, much of asia, most of south america, and some of the middle east. Maybe Russia too.
Not North America or Europe.
In fact, it probably has similar coverage population-wise to what a USA based company can offer.
When Starship starts launching customer satellites, it's possible that even the price for customers would be cheap enough to launch and maintain a LEO constellation. But competing requires massive innovation in cheap and fast production of satellites which are very energy efficient and highly capable. Especially, the technology for starshield protecting against cyber warfare in space and the direct to cell capability. This would be the main reason for not emerging a viable competitor for some time. SpaceX has innovation advantage in the satellites, manufacturing, dishes, base stations, software apart from the launch capability.
Is it really required to be an LEO constellation? It would certainly be good, so that eventually the satellites deorbit and contribute less to Kesseler syndrome risk. But some nation state might chose to not care about that and deploy at higher and more stable orbits.
Yeah in theory China is the biggest potential competitor, having both a space program, a state deeply involved in business, etc. But their space tech is archaic in comparison, using really nasty fuels to blast stuff into space. The reusability of SpaceX's rockets is a feat that is years ahead of the competition - it's been nearly ten years since the first recovered Falcon 9 booster in a commercial launch if my quick fact check is accurate, and no other competitor, private or governmental, has managed it yet. And in a few years they will have a reusable vessel capable of launching 100 tonnes into LEO, at a fraction of the development and launch cost of e.g. the Space Shuttle.
Unless of course Musk's political fuckery ends up dismantling SpaceX. But, Musk didn't do the engineering on these feats, so the knowledge and patents will continue on if he doesn't.
PRC didn't take reusables seriously until a few years ago, really when strategic value of starlink became obvious. They're already making relatively quick progress, as in the expected faster than original catchup mode progress.
Ultimately the issue with simping for SpaceX is that it's still an American company working at American scale. People are conflating SpaceX doing cheap payload advantage at modest scale for actual scale. There's like <20 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink. People see 50% and 80%, but ignore that <20 is rookie numbers. Frankly no reason PRC won't have 100 reusables fleet _IF_ demand justifies it (TBH only real justification after megaconstellations is space weaponization). And then like with all PRC catchup, they'll put more than SpaceX lifetime aggregate payload in a few years, and then it won't even be close. Sure Elon can wank about starfactory building 1 vehicle per day, but if there's strategic reasons for it, PRC will be able to build 5 per day at less cost once they sort out the tech stack.
It's not actually necessary to use reusable rockets to get at a similar cost per launch. Long March 5 is at 2.8M$/ton (so less than SpaceX commercial price).
Also, 15M$/launch is not widely believed to be correct. There is much creative accounting SpaceX could be doing with Starlink (is at-cost account for booster depreciation? If so how, since we don't know how much reuse a booster can be expected to give? Or is it just the cost of refurbishment?), and since the last statement where Elon claimed 1000$ per kg actual cost, SpaceX had to raise their prices, claiming it was due to inflation - is that accurate? Most estimates I've seen are that the cost is 20-30M/launch, which would instead give 1.1-1.7M/ton.
So, it's a big advantage but not an insurmountable one.
They do depreciate, even if the later launches are more valuable, that increase in value is marginal compared to the per-launch capital cost. Airplanes, cars, buildings, everything depreciates.
What do you mean by per-launch capital cost? Maintenance? The increase in value of a F9 booster after use is more than the near-negligible per-launch maintenance cost.
"Depreciation" and "capital cost" reflect the fact the vehicle has a maximum life, even given maintenance.
Imagine if I buy a $200,000 Lamborghini which, with regular servicing, will survive 100,000 miles.
That means for every mile I drive, not only am I paying for fuel, and insurance, and tyres, and servicing - I'm also paying, on average, $2/mile in depreciation.
And sure, the "true" value chart might not be linear. Maybe there'll be a sharp drop when the car ceases to be brand new, or a bump in value when it becomes a classic. But so long as it's worth $200k at 0 miles and $0 at 100k miles, the average cost of a mile must be $2.
The statistics here are inverted. The main marginal cost of a launch is the risk of loss of payload which the customer must insure against. The risk of loss of payload actually goes DOWN with more launches, making costs cheaper the more a booster is reused.
It’s as if your car gained value with every mile driven.
The fact that customers launching exceptionally expensive payloads (the US space force, for one) tend to demand new boosters is not consistent with this.
But even then, it doesn't change that the booster has a maximum lifespan and/or eventually increasing repair and therefore depreciation - we are working on an amortized basis.
They don't anymore. They actually require the use of flight proven boosters for important payloads now. Astronauts too are usually sent up with reused boosters, for safety.
We don't know what the maximum lifespan of these boosters are. There are workhorses that have over 20 launches under their belt, and no sign of deterioration. Obviously at some point something will give, but we're not there yet.
> The fact that customers launching exceptionally expensive payloads (the US space force, for one) tend to demand new boosters is not consistent with this.
> There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market.
Economics?
Competitors would have to match SpaceX's vertical integration: Satellite design, reusable launches at cost, its exiting armada of satellites, and its moving target of customer penetration. The latter is huge. Starlink is clearly not satisfied leaving any satellite demand on the table.
There is no military on Earth that has demand for satellite bandwidth approaching anything like SpaceX's, which is basically being designed to meet the needs of the whole planet.
Note that militaries (US, China, Russia, Europe, ...) have their custom means of communicating on planet, for unique reasons, but the vast majority of their communication is over commercial cell phones. This is no different.
If anyone was going to have a chance, it was Bezos. But neither his launch capabilities, or big satellite constellation plans, have amounted to much.
China will feel the need to try. But they won't have SpaceX's customer base to support a fraction of a comparable effort. (And I say that as someone who has tremendous respect for the multi-decade cadence of their space capability march.)
"SpaceX is really good and it's hard to compete with them" is not an economic reason for it to be winner takes all. Economic reasons would be, for example, regulations that either explicitly or implicitly prohibit others from competing, as are present in many terrestrial ISP markets. Some way for SpaceX to corner the market for some essential resource like spectrum or orbits and exclude competitors that way.
Vertical integration is definitely one. It's such a big factor it can cause regulators to break up a company. See Google/Chrome as an example from last week.
"SpaceX is vertically integrated" is also not an economic reason for the space ISP market to be winner takes all. Vertical integration doesn't cause breakups. Anticompetitive behavior causes breakups, with or without vertical integration. And vertical integration is not some kind of cheat code to suppress competition. It can be a business advantage but it can also easily be a disadvantage.
I don't know what the precise defining lines are, but I can certainly see how you'd make more money running an electricity cable to a home with no electricity, than running a second cable to a home that already had an electricity supply in place.
And Wikipedia says "frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate [...] examples include public utilities such as water services, electricity, telecommunications, mail, etc" - starlink does sound like capital-intensive telecommunications.
Of course, even if nobody cares to take on Starlink in the broadband satellite internet market, there are a bunch of incumbent cable and cell phone companies. So it's not like starlink are on course to an internet access monopoly.
Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.
It's not the same because there are plenty of companies that can manufacture cars at scale but only one company that can launch satellites cheaply. Arguably Waymo is ahead of Tesla FSD and they have access to the mature Hyundai and Zeekr supply chains.
It is the same. In both cases people are doubting the ability of the free market(and non-free markets) to detect and respond to an opportunity. How long do you think it will be before a, say, Chinese SpaceX catches up while being unfettered by environmental restrictions and backed by government subsidies?
Space is quite important and as the world deglobalizes there will be intense pressure to compete. SpaceX is breaking new ground and giving other competitors plenty to copy.
Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced.
Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain.
SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.
If what you are saying is true, why would Waymo not then pivot to a cheaper sensor system like Tesla? They have extensive experience with deep learning and plenty of training data. Surely this only buys Tesla a few years of lead time?
You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give up.
China is going to do it for sure. It doesn't have to be as efficient as SpaceX if it is massively subsidized for defense purposes. And China is pretty good at building things cheap.
On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. There are other up and coming private launch competitors too.
The issue is that space launch has some huge economies of scale.
And {world space launch demand} is >> {one country's space launch demand}
The argument for China overcoming SpaceX would be:
- China needs to get within functional (not cost) technological parity with SpaceX ASAP (i.e. which means reusability, albeit for cadence/capacity reasons)
- After that, they need to incentivize global demand to launch on Chinese rockets (likely heavily subsidizing prices to attract demand)
- After that, they need to continue to out-innovate SpaceX on technological and economic fronts
Of those, convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law.
The issue is that SpaceX, unlike any space company since some never-realized 1960s hypotheticals, is a flywheel company built around scaling.
They create demand so they can scale manufacturing that they can use to decrease prices that creates more demand... etc. etc.
You can't beat a company doing that by just getting "big enough" unless the scaling company (a) runs out of increased demand or (b) cannot convert increased volume into cheaper economics per unit.
"convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law."
Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
For countries that aren't on the US' shit list (e.g. Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or Thailand), why would I take a chance on Chinese legal agreements instead of American ones?
The American private company might be prohibited from launching military assets for you, but once a launch contract is otherwise signed, you know it's going to happen.
In contrast, a Chinese legal agreement is worth what, if the central government decides to get involved?
This is an interesting comment because Russia and China have been sending satellites for many countries over the years .Do you have an example of a Chinese company refusing to launch a payload for a foreign customer ?
I'd love a link so that I can get educated more
American Gov is far, far more fickle and likely to "get involved" / abuse export controls / fuck over friendlies due to domestic politics. Space is ITAR heavy, there's less guarantee that private American company can honor agreement than CCP verbal contract. This is 2024, JP steel just happened, US "rule of law" means nothing when strategic interests involved, never have. Can't say the same about PRC, granted they're to high end capabilities export. Ultimately, going with PRC likely will get you ITAR tier tech access bundled with cheaper launch, see state of military drones sales.
> On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches.
[citation needed]
Sure, New Glenn is designed to be a partially reusable rocket.
But it's far from clear that they'll even successfully launch on their debut, not to mention recover the booster.
And even when they've sorted all that out, word on the street is that the rocket was not designed to be inexpensively manufactured. It's not clear to me just now low reuse can help drive down their launch price.
And adding onto this it's not just cost, they also have the fastest turn around and the highest reliability.
It's vaguely analogous to the early automobile market where Ford was dominating by every single objective metric so competitors were left to compete on subjective metrics like styles. Incidentally this era is where planned obsolescence really took off.
Unfortunately for competitors I'm not sure coating a rocket in a chrome finish and running a sleek ad campaign is going to beat out price+speed+reliability.
With respect, I’m not sure you understand the scale of what we are talking about. No other organization — including national space agencies and military contractors — has the life capacity to compete with Starlink at ANY cost. Even if money were no object, the other contenders literally don’t have the launch capacity and can’t reasonably scale up.
It’s as if Intel released the Pentium Pro back in the 50’s when everyone else was working with vacuum tubes. Yes, in theory there is room for competition. But the gulf is so large in practice.
Apple's feature is not comparable. It is extremely low bandwidth and requires special hardware and holding the phone pointing in a certain direction. Starlink acts as a regular (albeit low bandwidth) 4G tower in space.
You have no idea the margins at which Elon Musk operates.
If you read his biography he is obsessive about cost cutting like no else in the history of mankind. There are plenty of examples where Musk brings down the cost of a component by 90%.
No other leader takes risks like Musk and hence he will always push frontiers.
His companies never get lazy or bloated even if it reaches $10T market cap.
Musk methods can't be replicated because it is the anti-thesis of every management practice.
My family had starlink installed at a remote house we own for internet access. While we could get it up and running, the connection wasn't reliable and we encountered many issues. When we tried to contact Starlink for help, support was non-existent; sent us to multiple dead ends, and often wasted our times with repairs promised weeks into the future, over and over, which never surfaced. After 8 months of pain, we ended up getting rid of it and moving back to our 6mbps.
Starlink is like Elon's other companies. Engineering marvels—where the customer's are merely an annoyance and the means to an end. They are basically hostile to the customer every step of the way; and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top.
Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.
2023 in the Pacific Northwest. We were given the argument that tree cover was a problem quite early on in our attempted troubleshooting. The house is a waterfront property, with a clear view of sky to the east. Anyways, the suspected issue continued to evolve, and we were not able to get to the bottom of it with the support we received.
Certainly, our experience could be an anomalous. But I certainly hear this happening all the time with Tesla, with the manufacturer trying to void warranties and evade liability for vehicle defects.
I just.. wouldn't be bullish on any of Elon's companies in a crowded market; which I suspect will define more his companies in the future. His politically obtuse behavior and lack of respect for authority is enough to turn off ethically minded consumers; and that's before the general crummy experience of being his customer. My best friend has a Honda EV that broke down twice, one time being potentially out of warranty-and the dealer repaired it, no questions asked
It can be counterintuitive because the user terminal is shaped like the kind of satellite dish we’re mentally prepared to understand, the kind we’ve had for the last 50 years, but it’s fundamentally different. The “clear view of the sky to the east” is the source of your problems. Starlink satellites move quickly across a the sky, and the dish needs a comparatively massive 100+ degree view angle to ensure continuous contact. If you look around online you can see comical configurations with Starlink mounted on enormous poles to get them above the tree line. This issue is the #1 cause of problems we see with new installs.
Realistically Starlink is not going to diagnose RF issues at your site. Microwave either works, or gets expensive fast (because you need an expensive person with expensive test equipment to properly investigate). A wild guess based on the available information is that reflections off the water surface are the cause.
Yeah I'm not really sure what issues you could reasonably expect a satellite internet provider to be troubleshooting at all. It's very much a 0 or 1 situation.
Again... the logistical structure of the company is not something that the customer should have to be privy to when trying to figure out if the product is going to workout for them, or not. If the product is not going to be working, the company should not be charging the customer $100 a month for 8 months promising a fix that will never come in.
Just pointing out that there's things you can't diagnose without being physically present. And these kinds of issues aren't only existent in Telecoms or SATCOM in particular.
The user should ask for a credit/refund. The product was almost certainly working. But not meeting expectations. If not it wouldn't have been on for 8 months. Can't tell me you ran 0 bytes over it
Did you try a different wifi hotspot, convinced the one they ship with it sucks from my experience with it. Couldn't handle a connection maybe 8 meters away and one floor up, no walls.
Generally, sky to north is what matters. I've done a fair bit of boondocking with starlink and found it to be very sensitive to tree cover in the wrong part of the sky.
I don't think that starlink's support or documentation is particularly great, but it still seems better than my experiences will cell phone and internet service providers.
IMO it depends on what you see as the point of business and entrepreneurship. I don't see money as the goal, but rather on creating great things. So Buffet wouldn't even rank for me, while you would have omitted Musk's closest competitor - Thomas Edison.
Put another way, if in 30 years Musk has 10 trillion in wealth would seem, to me, to be much less relevant than if he succeeds in making humanity a permanently multi-planetary species.
Advancing humanity in so many different revolutionary fields all at once is something that had not been achieved in a very long time.
I get what you're saying, but I also think you're being reductive in devaluing wealth creation.
Why is a company worth more today than it was five years ago?
Because it's generating more revenue, has more assets... is better at doing whatever {company thing} is.
One can argue that (a) {company thing} isn't good for humanity at all and/or (b) a company which generates more money isn't really more successful, but merely a side effect of capitalist valuing.
And maybe...
But I'd say there's a pretty strong argument that Buffett is worth what he is because BH made multiple companies very much better at doing what they do. In the same way that Ford or Walton made their money by building companies that did what they did better.
And I'd add in the perspective that science and discovery without engineering into mass application is... a hobby with limited impact. The real litmus test is "Can you use this to improve many people's lives?"
And when you do that in a capitalist society, you usually have a chance to make a lot of money.
Many people don't have any real understanding of how wealthy people have been in the past. The Walton family is a fun case. Split the fortune among the family and there are still billionaires in the mix.
Edit: should add that Elon is still valued at a good percentage of the US gdp. So, not unreasonable to say that is incomprehensible, as well. By that measure, is similar to Rockefeller, I think.
I wouldn’t use the Waltons in this example, considering Walmart is eclipsed by a few companies, and even by 50% by one business that Musk has a significant share of.
Silly comparison, all told. Walmart is the single largest private employer. 1.6 million in the US. Literally 10x what Tesla and SpaceX have. Such that it is clear valuation is tough.
Look, Elon is worth a lot. Walton family is worth as much, as well. Just split among several people. None of which should be scoffed at. None are made more impressive by pretending the others are less.
This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go.
Inflation-adjusted I believe Rockefeller was worth more than $400b at the peak of his wealth.
The Walton estate now is worth over $350b, but it’s not a fair comparison as it’s had much longer to compound.
The other thing is that while SpaceX is incredibly successful, the other companies he’s started aren’t. Tesla (despite its massive growth) is in a market of rapidly growing competitors, and he’s on record saying the company lives or dies on tech his own engineers have suggested in court isn’t coming (FSD).
I find your view even more perplexing. I get that it’s entirely motivated by anger and contempt, but it’s still weird that someone would get upset over the respect someone else is getting online.
I suppose it’s some deep personality trait difference that makes us right wingers appreciate his work and what makes leftists hate his guts.
I think this is a psychological thing. Humans during evolution were highly rewarded for seeking and keeping powerful allies. So by imagining that Elon is my friend (because I'm his friend) and Elon is really intrinsically powerful (instead of just a lucky, well positioned grifter that can fall from grace at any moment) I can feel better about my own safety. I can feel more powerful by extension and the indirection somehow muddles that fact that it's all made up. The same mechanism works in religious people.
You might be onto something but we need a proper "evolutionary theory of bootlicking" before we get carried away.
Its pretty clear that the all-too-common in space and time hierarchies, oligarchies, command-and-control pyramids etc. rely on trickle-down privilege to sustain.
But the feeligs of disgust and disbelief at how a person can diminish themselves in the hope of some crumbs falling their way must also have strong evolutionary basis?
The OP said “the most successful businessman in the world”.
Sure one can argue about how OP came to that conclusion, by what measure, etc, but the man produced a highly successful car company, in a field nobody has really been able to do it, under terms where everyone was counting down the days until it went bankrupt.
That alone is an amazing feat.
Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Then he started a satellite company that pushed the boundaries of communication for the average person.
I’d say all those feats are worthy of praise and make him a person who stands out significantly from any other businessman in recent history.
So saying he’s the “most successful businessman” doesn’t seem like an absurd or overly hyperbolic statement.
And how you got “stroking off” or the even more absurd “bootlicking” from that statement is just bizarre. I saw zero evidence of either.
I’d say your comments are the odd ones here and say more about you than the OP.
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism [1],[2].
The Economist made a feeble effort to rank countries in this respect [3] but it does not even include the tech sector in the "crony-prone" sectors (eyes rolling).
[1] "situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regulatory environment, direct government largesse, and/or corruption. Examples given for crony capitalism include obtainment of permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other undue influence from businesses over the state's deployment of public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works" etc.
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism
No, actually the burden is on the person making that claim (you).
> Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Look closer into how the sausage is made. For example the Moon grant for SpaceX to the tune of about $3bln was awarded by a person who wrote it in first person singular and after she did it, she promptly quit and went to work for SpaceX.
Musk is definitely successful, but a grifter not a businessman.
> [...] man produced a highly successful car company
Musk is claiming to posess and even selling non-existent technology to both investors and consumers (pre-orders never fullfilled) for almost a decade now. Other people (Theranos, Nikola) who tried to replicate his success in this field but didn't have pants padded with hundred bln$ are curretly serving very long prison sentences for investor fraud. While Musk got off on the grounds that what he says is widely known to be pure puffery and no-one of sound mind should expect what he says to be accurate. Funny how billions "in the bank" can change how justice percieves you.
Musk is now basically so full of hot air that when he stumbles he falls up.
We also used to not have have LLMs, bipedal and quadrupedal robots, ubiquitous GPS maps, cell phones, miniature cameras of insane quality, ridiculously fast mobile internet connections, residential fiber and many other useful things.
Many smart people make things happen all the time. Regardless of whether there's some singular rich grifter in that specific that can latch onto them soon enough to claim credit or not.
> SpaceX - may or may not be profitable in the last year - it's hard to know. Until recently definitely no profitable
SpaceX is very much in the same position as early Amazon.
If they wanted to, they could be profitable today. But they are investing heavily in the future.
IMO, that's a good sign for SpaceX. Many large companies have run out of ideas of what to do with money, so they accumulate it in bank accounts, or do dividends/stock buybacks.
Your experience is not typical. Starlink has been working flawlessly for me for the last few years. It revolutionized Internet access in my remote area. HughesNet was the only game in town with speeds under 3Mbps and 10GB monthly data cap. Now everyone has Starlink with over 100 Mbps speeds. Never heard of issues.
I stated in a neighboring comment that our experiences could be anomalous. Based on how frustrating it was talking to them on multiple occasions with multiple different service reps I assumed it was endemic to their culture; a la Comcast. At the very least, Telsa seems to be trailing tens of thousands of angry customers online who are struggling with defective vehicles.
Tesla has some of the highest customer satisfaction scores among car brands. I'm not sure what you are referring about "tens of thousands of angry customers", you need to look at percentages and not absolute numbers. Tesla has had quality issues and problem with services but overall people are very happy as far as car brands go. And you have to be reasonable with your expectation for customer service of an internet service provider. There's only so much you can do to help an individual customer. Maybe it doesn't work in your area for some specific reason, you can't expect their engineers to spend time investigating that single case. If it was a broader issue i'm sure they would look. Did you try getting new Starlink receiver?
I appreciate you have had a bad experience, but to then think that's the overall experience is myopic. There are many highly remote areas where people can't speak more highly of Starlink.
Internet provision not all that far out of major Australian cities can be abysmal. I'm only 30 minutes drive from the centre of Perth and my options are currently 5G (operating at about 4Mbit), Wireless Broadband (performance promise - the download speed will reach 25Mbit at least once in any given 24 hour period!) or Starlink, at a pretty stable 120/20.
I'd love to not have to pay for it, to use what local/national companies can provide, but so far nothing comes close.
I am informed that the wireless system is due to be upgraded to support much higher speeds, but that was supposed to happen this year and there's not a lot of this year left.
I would think 5G could really improve that situation. In the states we have the 600 MHz spectrum on T-Mobile and can pull down decent speeds 30-150mb through trees 15 miles from the tower. Upload is not great.
At least in part that's been delayed because of someone in the area raising a band of nutters and giving the council hell about 5G killing her grandchildren. Sigh.
Might happen before too much longer - she managed to get the project to build the new antenna on private land killed (I'm sure much to the annoyance of the landowner, who was going to pocket a nice chunk of ground-rent). But now the local authority have given the go-ahead for one to be built on their land, and they're going to get the rent. She is apoplectic, which brings me great joy.
It may or may not be relevant to your case, but every time a story like this comes up I will remind people in general that fiber-optic cable is 50 cents per meter (probably $1 per meter Australian), wireless links cost equipment and a regulatory approval fee and are easier in less densely populated areas, and there are tons and tons of stories of people dissatisfied with their ISP creating a better competitor, your neighbours are likely as frustrated as you if they use the Internet, and there is no minimum size to an ISP.
If you set up a wireless ISP, you become a carrier and that is expensive.
TIO membership, the carrier licence fee, telecommunications interception and data retention obligations create recurring costs in the thousands of dollars a year before you serve a single customer.
I'm not sure there are tons of stories about people creating their own ISPs in Australia are there?
I know of companies that set up competing wireless infrastructure, and even one suburb around here that is served by a private network rather than the national network, so I guess they did it, but they have (at minimum) hundreds of customers.
At that price I might be looking at $1k-$2k just in fibre-optic cable, before we talk about any of the necessary equipment or the price of actually installing that cable underground. That covers starlink for quite a while.
I use Starlink in Italy and it's been flawless. To be honest it's like magic with how easy it was to setup and use.
One my colleagues tried Starlink at his cabin in the PNW and he had to return it. He just couldn't get a clear and wide enough line of sight through the tree cover. I wonder if that was your issue?
I think this is quite perceptive. Musk is a narcissist, and the driving motivators of narcissists are a bottomless need for praise and attention and contempt for others.
Musk is famous for being contemptuous of his employees, and he's starting to show more and more contempt for Rest of World. Cybertruck and X both reek of it.
Everyone here is assuming Musk is rational and SpaceX and Starlink will continue to develop rationally.
I don't think they will. He appears to be becoming more and more unhinged, and that's going to have negative effects on his fledgling empire.
I was an early user of Starlink, starting with the original terminal (today I have the 3rd generation high performance terminal). Being in a very rural area in MT where there was never congestion in my cell and I have a very open view of the sky, it has worked well for me since day 1 and has only gotten better with time.
Personally, I monitored latency more than speed, as I always had enough speed to do whatever I wanted. When I first started using SL, latency averaged around 100ms (which compared to my previous provider HughesNet was amazing, but was high compared to ground based connections), but today averages around 35ms which is still technically higher than ground based connections, but for all practical purposes for me, is indisguishable from any other internet option, even for online gaming and live video streaming.
Although I did not monitor speed as regurarily, it averages around 300Mbps for me. Sometimes it exceeds 400Mbps (I just ran a speed test and got 420Mbps), and it is rarely less than 100Mbps.
I have contacted support twice, and always received quick replies. However, based on my monitoring the Starlink Reddit forum, customer support during their beta period did appear to have often been poor. And there was also a period of time where performance was poor in many populated regions as they started opening up the floodgates a bit sooner than they probably should have, resulting in slow speeds for people in many regions, until their satellite launches caught up to demand.
However, my impression is that both of these issues have improved significantly since Starlink left beta. I do still see some complaints about customer service, but anecdotally it appears less frequent. My impression is that they have the ability to remotely troubleshoot many hardware issues, and will quickly send a replacement if they can confirm a fault. I do worry about this though, as even a quick reply and a quick hardware replacement means several days of downtime.
Speed complaints are almost certainly less frequent than they used to be.
I have no doubt that your customer service hell story is true, and if that happened to me I would be just as turned off, but I think that, especially today, that is not the norm.
I have considered purchasing a spare terminal as a backup, but I do have some concerns. I have heard that terminals that stay unpowered and unconnected for very long periods of time get too behind on FW updates and essentially become bricked, I don't believe that is the case today but I am not 100% sure. Also, back when there used to be a queue for signing up, it would not have been practical to just set up a new account for the new terminal, but now that the sign up queue is gone, maybe it is an option today. I have not fully researched my options for this redundancy idea.
A (temporary) monopoly is not as bad in something that wouldn't otherwise exist. If Elon Musk concentrated only on cars, or SpaceX had had another couple of launch failures and gone bust, this functionality might be 40 years away.
Not to say you're wrong, we all benefit from competition in the long run. We get it from a level playing field and preventing natural monopolists from locking the gate behind them.
If you read it uncharitably. If you read it charitably, the “it’s awesome” can be referring to how quickly they made something work that otherwise wouldn’t for many more years.
Perhaps they merely mean it's awesome to have one global satellite broadband service, and one semi-affordable launch option, instead of zero which is what we had before?
A more charitable interpretation would obviously be that the OP is very happy with the products and services that these companies build and provide and if the alternative is between this never happening and the companies becoming monopolies, at least in the short-term, they are OK with it.
Can you read this sentence and tell me how none of this follows from it?
> SpaceX and Starlink have the same owner, both are private companies, with SpaceX launching 80% of the global space payload last year and rising, and Starlink has a constellation two orders of magnitude bigger than any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
It says: "It's a private monopoly, and IMO it's awesome"
The European Union wants its own satellite network to counter Starlink. It will be build by SpaceRISE, a consortium that include Airbus, Thales, Deutsche Telekom...
It took roughly 20 years for the EU to deploy 30 satellites.
How long do you think it's going to take to deploy 300 or so of them when the Ariane 6 had only one launch (with a partial failure) in the last 14 years?
If you want to build a constellation, you need the means to send payloads in space at a relatively low cost. The EU can't do that so it will be an expensive and slow endeavor and by the time those 300 satellites are up there, Space X will have deployed 10s of thousands of them.
You can say, that the EU does not want to compete with Space X or that their goals are not the same but either way, it's just too little too late IMHO.
I agree with your overall point, but that's a super deceptive metric to use. First Ariane 6 was scheduled for 2020 and only the first one ever launched.
Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use? Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others? Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson? The world's largest passenger aircraft? The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine? The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?
> Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use?
It took 20 years to deploy 30 satellites. You can call that a success I guess.
> The world's largest passenger aircraft
That is an Airbus project which is not an EU project. Airbus is the result of a merger between multiple companies and was not initiated by the EU.
> The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?
This drug is manufactured in Denmark by a Danish company. It has nothing to do with the EU.
> The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine?
You mean the Pfizer vaccine? That's a German company, not an initiative from the EU.
> Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson?
They did build the CERN ... in 1954. Which we can agree was a long time ago. Since then the ability of the EU to deliver big projects such as for example Ariane 6 has gone down rather quickly. Also you ll notice that when the CERN was created, the EU as we know it today did not exist.
> Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others?
Ok and so what? Does that invalidate my arguments? A few successes amongst a ton of failures. That does not inspire any confidence.
That is why I am skeptical but I am prepared to eat my own words if the EU has a complete up and running constellation of 300 satellites in orbit by 2035.
The EU has some great companies for sure but these companies did not get there because the EU helped them or because the EU decreed that such companies have to exists.
So between the US, the EU, and China's version of starlink how many satellites will that require? I see Starlink will use 42,000 when fully completed so that is 3 * 42,000?
Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests.
SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.
That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink.
It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market.
And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious.
But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.
I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan.
I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch).
The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.
The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.
Define the time frame. 1 year? Quite likely. 10 years? nothing is less sure ... But in 50 years, I bet SpaceX doesn't even exist anymore. Companies rises and falls and it's always been like this (and the same applies to Empires, Countries or .. Species). It's always a matter of timeframe
It'll be interesting for sure. similar to requesting Chrome to become separate from Google, there might some law enforcement scenarios where they'll have to split things.
Yes, being able to manufacturer and deploy your satellite services at cost is an insurmountable competitive advantage. There is one other player in this space, Rocket Lab. They are 5-10 years behind SpaceX, but are the #2 launched rocket in the USA and 2/3rds of their revenue is from satellite manufacturing. I think something like 25-50% of the non-SpaceX satellites in-operation have a Rocket Lab logo somewhere on the craft. The next step in their vertical integration plan is to launch their own constellation and provide some sort of space-based service. Although it's several years away and pending the scale-up of their medium launch vehicle test flying next year.
Their CEO has come to the same conclusion as you. The major space companies of the future have to be vertically integrated if they want to compete. The founder has a pretty cool story. From New Zealand. Built a rocket bike and a rocket pack, but didn't go to college. Being a foreign national without traditional education meant he couldn't work in the space sector due ITAR. So he started Rocket Lab in 2006.
Their small lift vehicle (300kg) was the fastest vehicle from first orbit to 50 orbital launches, and tracking to be the fastest to hit 100 orbital launches. Their medium lift vehicle (13,000kg), if it makes orbit next year, will become the most capital efficient ($300m spent) MLV developed, and the fastest MLV to go from announcement to orbit (5ish years).
After Rocket Lab and SpaceX, the competition is pretty thin. Blue Origin is launching their HLV (40,000kg) New Glenn for the first time in early 2025 and there are a couple of startup and traditional defense contractor projects, but all unproven.
SpaceX is so insanely far ahead of everyone else. They will hit 100+ launches in 2024, Rocket Lab is at 15ish with their 300kg vehicle, and planning to scale their 13,000kg vehicle to 3 launches in 2026, 5 in 2027 and 7 in 2028. New Glenn will be on a similar ramp.
If you are right and Starlink will have no competition, then why would it not be regulated? Generally speaking, monopolies are regulated to prevent price gouging, including natural monopolies. And if its not a monopoly, then clearly the game is not over.
Starlink mostly does have competition but they are seeking out specifically underserved customers which is an ever decreasing market. 5 or so years ago I signed up for the waiting list because there was no reasonable internet, 6mb DSL. Before I got the invite there was 4G for $50 a month. Now there's two 5G service providers and Fiber is suppose to come very soon.
In the market for internet service, Starlink is a disruptor to existing ISPs. Especially for those servicing rural areas. I don't understand a reflexive reach to encumber a nascent business model with additional regulations. What problem are you trying to solve?
Because it is not abusing its position. Monopolies are not an inherent bad, they just tend to start abusing their position, and when they do then they get handled.
This is more common with public companies than private companies though.
Founders have their own life, honor, ethics, desires, etc. which usually help strongly keep the company on a positive track. e.g. Valve Corporation.
This is the American model of anti-trust, very much not the European model (which explicitly targets competition for its own sake even when consumers are not harmed by the monopolistic behavior).
Just because you like a company (and as a consumer, I like Steam) doesn’t mean it’s not acting monopolistically.
Valve is certainly abusing its position. It charges extremely high rents for the services it offers because of its dominance as a marketplace.
It does provide a host of services and does them well, but whether they are value for the platform fee is another question. Using those services creates lock-in and friction to port to other platforms. By providing them as part of the package, Steam has extinguished companies that used to provide those services, meaning that it’s even harder to provide the same functionality elsewhere.
Companies always abuse their position. Its basic capitalism; markets only thrive and are fair when both buyers and sellers have multiple options, and it would be odd to assume this time is the exception.
So start drafting up the policies if they need time, but don't enact them yet. I'm not a fan of the owner, but if the product is good and the price is fair, leave it be until it becomes a problem. Let's not punish innovation.
What people sometimes don't understand about monopolies, specially of a new product, is that the competition, in additions to all the competition that already exists for internet, is simply not having it.
SpaceX can just asked for an absurdly high price, because if they want to sell into the broader consumer market, people aren't going to pay 1000s of $ a month to watch Netflix.
Perhaps you’re not aware that SpaceX sued the US government to break ULAs monopoly on national security launches and brought down costs.
And perhaps you’re unaware just how many national telcos world wide have a national monopoly and for the first time ever may have to compete with Starlink?
Perhaps you’re also unaware of the grip that Russian rocket engine manufacturers had with the RD180 engine on the US launch sector until recently and the positive impace SpaceX has had on that.
On the one hand you’re arguing that SpaceX is awesome for breaking monopolies. On the other you’re saying it’s awesome that “it’s over” and they own the market now.
> Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?
The implication here is that Bell Labs was a good thing. While I find it hard to say I wouldn't have loved to have been a part of something like that, I think we may have been better off without it, considering what it squashed.
A research environment like Bell Labs freed from the behemoth of AT&T would have been a great boon to society had it stayed around in a similar form to today.
AT&T was heavily regulated (common carrier) through much of it's history and was a big part of the reason that BellLabs was so influential. Not true of SpaceX and Starlink.
Would we have had a single lab that became famous for so many things? No. Would we have got thousands of smaller labs that added up to more innovation? Maybe.
For example: Mitutoyo seems to have a monopoly on producing accurate digital calipers that have battery life measured in years (using one dainty little LR44 alkaline cell). They use approximately fuck-all for power whether switched on or off.
Certainly, the market is open for others to produce an actually-competitive product with similar performance. All it takes is for the competition figure out how to do it and put them into production, since any necessary patents expired long ago.
But they simply have not done so.
So here we are today, wherein: The free market has decided that Mitutoyo has a defacto monopoly on tools of this capability.
>For example: Mitutoyo seems to have a monopoly on producing accurate digital calipers that have battery life measured in years (using one dainty little LR44 alkaline cell). They use approximately fuck-all for power whether switched on or off.
metrology is vast. I am a fan of Mitutoyo too, but this is a poor example of a monopoly.
I have literally 3 different brands , including Mitutoyo, on my desk, and the Mitutoyo unit offers the worst value-to-dollar ratio and it's the hardest to read at a glance; it's only there because it's the coolant-proof unit I have on hand at the moment.
i'd gladly give up a bit of battery life for a backlight and some bigger character display; thankfully the market responded by offering this from about numerous other manufacturers..
>So here we are today, wherein: The free market has decided that Mitutoyo has a defacto monopoly on tools of this capability.
well, no.
Mitutoyo is great, but American shops, especially any DoD affiliated ones, push American made Starett like crazy. All of my less-discerning maker friends use Amazon/Harbor Freight/Chicago no-name Alibaba glass scale calipers and they're perfectly happy with them. My German friends often use Vogel/Hoffman/Mahr.
But anyway, whatever. I love my Mitus, and I even have a pair of their very first electronic scale calipers in a drawer somewhere ; the battery life was great even then.
Mitutoyo isn't a monopoly, not even close. Just because a company offers a product that is arguably just slightly better in one aspect than others does not make it a monopoly. (I say this with a 10 year old pair of harbor freight calipers on my desk that easily have a 2 year battery life with regular usage. Also, Dial Calipers.)
But to answer your question, must they? No. Do they tend to be bad? Yes. Does their behavior get worse over time? Typically.
Yeah I should think so. edit: I don’t use this category of tools so for the sake of argument I will assume your assertion on Mitutoyo’s monopoly is accurate.
Without serious competitors, Mitutoyo has little reason to push the boundaries of performance or reduce costs further. Monopolies can result in complacency, where companies become gatekeepers rather than innovators.
In this case Mitutoyo may have a fine product but the monopoly introduces a systemic risk of lack of innovation or price gouging.
You’re assuming the market has chosen rationally but economic conditions, patent legacies, and lack of competition might simply be symptoms of market failure rather than optimal outcomes.
They are when you can regulate the crap out of them to benefit everyone after they’ve benefited from government contracts, FCC governance, an educated population, etc.
SpaceX has no qualms launching competitors constellations, it has done so with Kupier already.
Sure the prices might not be quite as good as what Starlink gets but definitely comparable in big-O notation (especially compared to other launch providers).
It’s not over precisely because it’s vertically integrated. Buyers want to maintain leverage. SpaceX wants to avoid forced divestiture. Hence the airlines inking deals with AST Mobile, and SpaceX lofting their birds.
I would even go to say that the reason Starlink exists is to use up SpaceX excessive launch capacity.
With its idea of building assembly lines and reusable rockets, can launch more stuff than there is market for. So they create their own market. Starlink launches are almost free besides the fuel, as they have rockets lying around that are already paid for.
A state-funded competitor could come up though. China for instance may want their own satellite internet for strategic reasons, and fund that. I am sure Russia would be interested too. This in turn, will pay for development of a reusable rocket program.
Lets cool down a bit. Falcon 9 launches cost much more then 'just the fuel'. Estimated launch price is still 10-20 million $. The Upper stage is an expensive thing to build. Operations cost are also not that low. Fuel cost are only like a couple 100k$.
China is deftly building something. Russia doesn't have a snowball chance in hell of building something like Starlink.
Even if you like Elon and his companies monopolies are still bad. He is not going to live forever, somebody else will be in charge sooner or later and that person/group may not adhere to same principles.
Monopolies due to the State granting permissions to only one company, or gaining advantages due to coercion or lobbying are indeed terrible.
But monopolies due to excellence in the development of the product, like Starlink, are not bad at all. In any case these are extremely rare and tend to last very little time.
While you're technically correct, the parent is more correct. Competitors have to pay normal launch rates. The competitive service needs to include those costs to end users.
Starlink "pays" for launches at cost. While we don't know what SpaceX's cost margins are, they are not trivial. To setup a low orbit constellation is extremely expensive and competitors lose millions per launch that Starlink gets to reinvest.
There's been 136 launches of Falcon 9 for Starlink. ~US$62m per launch? If their margins are 20% that's that's $1.6b in savings. And I bet F9's margins are closer to 50% - supporting Starship and more.
Musk is similar to Henry Ford in that he currently has an advantage due to the innovative nature of his business. However, over time, his ideas will likely be replicated by other businesses or even governments.
I'm not entirely convinced that becoming a strong political figure by aligning with one side is a wise long-term strategy. This election was a loss for the opposition, not just because of their poor communication of achievements but also due to the ordinary cycles of politics. People often place blame on those in power for any problems during their tenure. The pendulum of trust will eventually swing back to the other side. Musk's political aspirations also pose a risk for him, as they could jeopardize his relationships with allies within the currently dominant party.
What I’m suggesting is that monopolies like this often collapse when they become too politically entrenched, threatening the very power structures that initially enabled their rise and powet accumulation.
Swarm wasn't a competitor to SpaceX at the time, Swarm and Starlink wasn't aiming at the same market at all. And they didn't exactly kill Swarm. They launched Swarm satellites for a while and there was talk of integrating Swarm transceivers on Starlink satellites. I think once direct-to-cell became a reality, the idea of Swarm was subsumed into that project since it should do everything Swarm did but better. It's worth noting that the Swarm founders are now working on the direct-to-cell project.
You don't need LEOs to have text direct to cell. You can cover with a lot fewer satellites in higher otbits. China had this since last year, though through special protocols, not LTE, so you need new hardware. But the hardware fits into a regular cell phone.
It’s awesome but also worrying. Elon is a political timebomb. I wouldn’t put it past him to selectively deny people usage based on political alignment, sex etc. At least for now there are much worse geosynchronous competitors, but some future state where one doesn’t exist is worrying.
Musk is at least a named individual, somewhat accountable for his decisions. Yes him having the ability to cut people off is worrying, but I'm less worried about him doing it than e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation, or whoever cut off Kiwi Farms (where we still don't really know who's actually responsible).
Allegedly. Even assuming they were the people who wanted that to happen, we don't know how/why they have the authority and who to vote out if we don't like their decision, whereas Musk is expected to be appointed by the duly elected president who made it clear to the electorate that this was his plan.
Oh we know damn well. The good old "scream so loud the issue cannot be ignored anymore" issue. Especially with Fong-Jones' background in tech with access to a lot of vocal influencer figures in the field.
Not to mention the big amount of brain-melted teens who immediately assume anything said about anyone who dares to express negative opinions about what the aforementioned teens believe as true and create a supposedly warranted lynch mob against them.
There are countless examples of Musk selectively banning people on Twitter based on political belief, such as this one [1]. And of course, he banned the @elonjet account, even after specifically saying he would not [2]. More specifically to StarLink, he banned Ukrainian forces from using them around Crimea [3].
I believe by the time Starlink arrived in Ukraine Crimea was already occupied and post "referendum" and providing service there would be like providing service to Russia, no?
I didn't say "it was sovereign" (all by itself). I referred to "its sovereignty", in terms of who it belonged to (both in 1991 and now). The two contexts are entirely different.
what it is, is an occupied territory of ukraine fully controlled by russia with russian military on it
And yet -- still entirely under Ukrainian sovereignty. It seems you're a bit unclear as to what the term means. It doesn't mean "military control".
Point mean: just because the Russian currently military sits on the Crimea, doesn't mean it's "part of Russia".
And no, it's not just a symbolic difference. It's a hugely, hugely important one.
my question was rhetorical.
Indeed, it looks like you're shooting into the wind here. I'll have to leave to explore these topics on your own.
Whether to provide Crimea with Starlink or not depends on who sits there. Similar reason why all Crimeans got under sanctions immediately after annexation. Not just Starlink but every other Western company respecting sanctions stopped doing business with Crimea. Same with Donetsk and Luhansk.
No one cares if it's "legally" Ukraine. People care about the "effectively".
Legally always depends on who you ask. Some will tell you that Taiwan is part of PRC for example. Maybe at least half of the world will. However Taiwan is not under sanctions because effectively it isn't under PRC.
> Indeed, it looks like you're shooting into the wind here
I am just trying to reduce you some confusion by explaining some basics. Starlink was not yet in Ukraine when Crimea was annexed and the world mostly sat and just watched it happen. Therefore the musk-man could not "cut out crimea". There's nothing to argue about. Just don't spread misinfo please, there's enough of it.
Of course, you can always find people who say something wildly at odds with the overwhelming international consensus, and in any case completely lacking in any intrinsic substance.
But that doesn't mean what they're saying is even potentially valid, and that the matter "depends" on what they say.
You have it reversed. It’s fair, it’s hard to tell if you haven’t worked in the launch industry. But drive out to Mojave and go talk to the dozens of companies out there. Many of them have reusable designs. But also if you look at the financials, I think many would laugh at the funding many of these companies get when you compare to Silicon Valley. Clear vaporware frequently gets bigger investing.
The problem with launch companies is that you have nothing to launch. It’s a vicious coupled system, because it also means you can’t bring prices down to increase the number of launches. You need scale to bring prices down. You can’t implement the Silicon Valley model of run all your competitors (ULA) without dumping 10x down the drain compared to your Uber or Netflix.
So the reason it works is because SpaceX is its own customer. You are bootstrapping. The satellite internet idea isn’t even new. I was pitching this to a company I worked for in the early 2010’s (inspired by the brand new planet labs), but what helped was I even found white papers by Qualcomm and others that clearly had the exact same idea. My boss dismissed it because the failures of Celestri, Teledesic, Iridium, and Globealstar. I’m sure this is why I was able to find those white papers too, and very clearly so did SpaceX.
The difference here is that SpaceX is a launch company AND has the funding of a billionaire that is willing to take the risk [0].
Imo, the real question is who pitched Kuiper and did they do it before Starlink? It’s a good and obvious idea, so I’d put money down that someone did. I’m pretty sure they’re fucked now as there’s legitimate reasons you want LEO satellite mega constellation to be handled by a monopoly. You just can’t have a dozen of those companies running around.
[0] side rant: why the fuck are more billionaires not willing to take big risks. Especially those with at least a billion liquidated from their stock. What’s the point of that money? You’re so wealthy it’s effectively impossible to go broke. The real exception is if your wealth is mostly paper and you’re defrauding people. At 10 billion it basically will not happen even then. If you can stash (not even) 50 million, you never have to work ever again to live in high luxury.
The conpetition is there already. In Europe you can get satellite Internet for around $40 a month. It’s slower than Starlink (transfer is decent, but the latency is in the hundreds), but much cheaper.
I don't know about everything else but 3bln out of that 15 were supposed to fund entire Moon mission and he burnt through that cash delivering a handful of suborbital empty metal pipes ... sorry, the last one was containing a banana to add insult to injury.
That's ridiculous. There's no extra money coming. This is a firm fixed price contract. And the original plan was 2028 before Trump changed things.
Most of the 15billion is for already delivered deliverables. (You have absolutely nothing to stand on) Blue Origin is also going to the moon and received more money for a smaller lander.
Where's their rocket?
The Moon lander contract is less than what SpaceX will make from starlink alone in 2024.
I think it's important to recognize the irony in how much SpaceX and Tesla benefit from government programs and funds that he now wants to turn off as part of DOGE, but you can't say SpaceX has barely done anything.
Yeah but if they were like, "Lemme tell you how to provide Internet for boats and Iranians in the most expensive way possible," it doesn't sound like that exciting of a business anymore now does it?
If anyone from Starlink or SpaceX is reading these comments here’s what you want to do: Sell your own branded trail cam with solar charging and LTE from orbit. You can charge $25-$40 a month for unlimited pictures sent from the cam. This would open up hunters, nature enthusiasts, and researchers to be able to place their hardware anywhere in the field without worrying about connectivity. Here in SWVA we have deep hollows that can’t get LTE without dense tower coverage that we don’t have the population to justify, but you can grab a satellite connection.
After writing this out I’m beginning to doubt the market would be big enough but I know at least 20 people with 2 or more LTE cams for deer season.
I work with researchers that deploy all sorts of solar powered sensor equipment in remote parts of New Zealand. Realistically Starlink would need to support NB-IoT and LTE-M which is what these kinds of devices are moving towards (if they need cellular connectivity). These are low power variants of 4G and 5G.
Even if you have solar and a fixed platform, you usually want to deploy as little solar as possible. Especially if you need to carry the gear on foot. So minimising power consumption is really important.
Agreed. As an avid hunter/angler I've been trying to make things more difficult the last few years instead of easier. At some point the trail cams start making people look more like butchers IMO. Similarly in the fishing world, tools like Livescope are becoming deeply embedded in the community.
For me, the draw of the woods and rivers is the chance to disconnect from technology and reconnect to nature.
This service uses a different radio link using LTE. That’s why you don’t need the dish. They had to launch new satellites with the extra radio gear. So your past experience is not necessarily representative.
In Finland, i get 5Mbps LTE uplink for EUR 4 per month, for a trailcam, with unlimited use (at least in principle). So $20 per month sounds expensive, but obviously there are places where one has no earthly LTE and then it could be justified.
In general, having low-bandwidth Starlink IoT connections globally accessible would be just great, I can see lots of usage.
Finland is fairly flat and has _excellent_ LTE coverage. Being in Norway myself, which isn't flat, but still has fantastic LTE coverage for political reasons, I do often find myself thinking like you, and need to be reminded of how abysmal coverage is in rural North America (and even in for example rural Germany).
$25-$40 is insane. Spypoint offers 250 pics for free a month and 1000 for $6 a month. As long as you can connect to a cell tower (1 bar is enough). That probably covers 80 % of hunt properties.
At least in the Western United States, most hunting is done on publicly owned land, and there's enormous swaths of public land with absolutely zero cell phone coverage.
This could also be a hardware startup. If only there were some entrepreneur types around...
Presumably there's a market for this in other niches, e.g. weather monitoring, defense/border monitoring, etc... The question is whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Where's the really valuable data?
I recall not too long ago a startup advertising exactly this idea for farms. It was some box with various sensors (and output lines) that you could configure to do a multitude of tasks
As long as it doesn't need near-real-time viewing (or if it does, said viewing can be billed for as a separate per-user fee), it wouldn't cost anything extra to SpaceX in the sense that those cameras could use free capacity, only transmitting when nothing else is.
Ten years ago I installed one cam for Surfline and at that time it's was an off-the-shelf but expensive outdoor camera (stock firmware) connected to a locally-based broadband.
I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands
Compared to leveraging the existing cellular networks and using satellites for rare edge cases. ~8$/minute or say 1$/minute averages out to a more reasonable number when less than 5% of calls use it.
Sailors can make calls using the ships Wi-Fi via full sized Starlink dishes, they need coverage on land.
But even ignoring that the contention is low in the middle of the ocean and satellites have hardware either way, driving down the market rate for calls at sea.
Yes, but compared to the setup for equivalent satellite services it is very cheap. The Inmarsat antennas need active compensation and they sit inside big radomes, while the Starlink antennas are smaller and do not need to move thanks to being phased arrays.
The bandwidth, latency and stability that Starlink has is also leagues better than geosynch based solutions, for a much lower monthly price.
Even without considering the better performance, the price makes it viable now to have a internet connections in places it did not make financial sense before.
250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean and unlimited on waterways, higher demand is cheaper per GB ex: 1TB for 1,000$/month. https://www.starlink.com/boats
Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute allowing a 24/7 conversion for for a full month for 250$, or more realistically mostly sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls. The actual hardware installation is relatively trivial compared to operating a boat.
Is the reason that Starlink charges so much more for boats is low competition? Or is there something obviously much more complex / expensive about beaming gigs of data from space over the ocean vs land? I don't write this post with any spite; I am genuinely curious.
Starlink is normally a single hop from a home to a satellite and then down to a base station hooked up to fiber. To work over the ocean you pass messages between satellites potentially several hops and then eventually down to a base station, but that’s inherently constrained as with all mess topologies you get far less bandwidth than initially seems possible.
So in part it’s overhead to deal with inefficiencies and in part it’s a limited customer base for a lot of hardware, but it’s also just what the market will bare.
Starlink signals are essentially line of sight right now. The bump up in power to penetrate even a single layer of drywall is almost certainly way outside the power budget of a Starlink satellite.
Whether a material is opaque to it. Buildings are transparent to lower frequency radio. Imagine that the satellites transmitted in visible light, doesnt really matter how powerful it is if you're in a room with no windows.
Starlink is used in low density areas. You could setup LTE towers at a remote mine and use Starlink for the back haul, but for their customers using WiFi calling gives the same benefit without extra hardware.
Starlink would need to license LTE spectrum in every country it operated. Much easier to work with local carriers and piggyback on their existing bandwidth.
I think this is the biggest reason. All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers. Why? Preventing losing national capabilities, government revenue (taxes, licenses & other domestic carrier fees, lobbying, kickbacks, bribes, etc) and, most importantly, losing the ability to snoop at will on calls and data (at least metadata if not full-take). Even in countries where the major carriers are all based in other nations, existing towers being land-based creates jurisdiction for the government to control and tax.
While many westernized democracies like to proclaim their commitment to freedom, rule of law and individual human rights - in practice there are currently zero governments on earth free enough to not consider loss of that absolute control over citizen's private communication an existential threat. Even in places where existing laws don't currently make it illegal, as soon as technology enables it - it will certainly be made illegal (by any means necessary). I assume SpaceX is smart enough to understand this reality.
> All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers
The ITU is pretty overt about how frequency allocation governance works. Absolutely no one wants a free-for-all frequency regime, for a multitude of reasons - not even SpaceX.
You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei.
1. Pretty much every country on earth with a government regulates how radio spectrum is licensed for telecommunications, not for the purposes of control as an end, but coordination and preventing interference.
- "...without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse..."
Well, how did those predictions of the future perform?
- "The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week."
Thank you for further buttressing my point: granting a foreign company with military links access to your telecoms infrastructure is a bad idea, for tangible reasons. Worse if there's no local oversight.
> You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei.
Radio Free Europe has been doing something similar successfully for what, 70 years? Of course being in violation of a given country's laws is a tradeoff.
An example is flying over India. Satellite internet service is not permitted. It cuts off the moment your flight crossed land in India and usually re-actives immediately after leaving.
Pirate radio is a lot less fun to run if you need it to be two-way.
Because you need your customers on the ground to run their own pirate transmitter (which can be located and penalized by ground authorities), and your satellites need to receive signals from the ground - which ground authorities from first-world countries can make arbitrarily difficult, deciphering a multitude of <1W transmission from customer cellphones is kinda difficult when a modern electronic warfare radar transmitter is tracking your satellite at the same time.
Yup. Small cell size is actually a feature for cell phone communications. You have to share bandwidth with everyone in your cell - the smaller the cell, the less crowding.
This is a general starlink issue, which is why I don't understand how is it economically or physically viable in crowded areas, such as cities, where the majority of human population lives.
It's not. They don't have the capacity to cover densely populated areas and it will always be cheaper to build out infrastructure on land in those areas than to launch something into space.
They aren't trying to compete with cell towers. SpaceX is partnered with traditional carriers in each country where LTE service will be available and the Starlink service is intended to supplement those services by providing service where existing cell towers can't.
I suspect the primary reason they took this approach is that licensing for these frequencies is astronomical if you want to cover the entire US. That would bleed them dry as they build out the constellation and try to ramp up user count.
Partnering with a national carrier handles the licensing aspect and if the tech pans out the economics could shift to allow them to buy national spectrum and offer direct service.
It's not acquiring the spectrum that's an issue right now. It's it not interfering with terrestrial networks. Euro carriers already pushing back against relaxing emissions restrictions for DTC specifically: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10930985930353/1
Help me: Is DTC "direct-to-consumer"? I tried to Google for it, but I didn't find anything obvious. Else, hat tip for this FCC find! What a great share on HN.
Adding to this: I wish I can just buy a 4G modem for my cubesat and get 24/7 access through Starlink without waiting for my cubesats to be in view of my groundstation...
Have you looked into AWS Ground Station? I don’t know if it’s economical, or has enough locations for 24/7 access, but it might be better than once an orbit.
All ground station as a service are limited by radio licensing, you need to apply for transmit license to the country that the groundstation is located to legally transmit to your cubesat. Its not as easy as spinning up an EC2 instance
Compare this to a 4G modem / smartphone, its amazing that you don't need to file spectrum license to another country version of FCC everytime you travel. It. Just. Worked.
i wouldnt need more than 1MBit to ssh into my servers comfortably, and pull directions to the nearest "full power downlink" if i want to listen to music while i work or something
Direct to Cell has pretty low bandwidth. The total bandwidth is 4Mbps per cell, with each person getting kpbs. If they do offer internet, it will be like 2G or dialup.
I was looking into the bandwidth (apparently most important parameter in cellular service) offered but nobody is mentioning including the Starlink landing page for the service. Sure it mentioned LTE but it can be anything from 1 to 100 Mbps and LTE+ can be well into Gbps.
Here is the previous post last year on Direct to Cell by Starlink and the main complains is about the puny bandwidth [1]. But if you are outside the town in remote places or in the middle of ocean any communication albeit a few bytes is most welcome, beggars cannot choose. For most IoT services it should be adequate but if you're inside tropical jungle or Amazon forest it will not work need to climb tree for the reception to work.
Others have already touched on the technical and regulatory issues, but also think of pricing. Would they price is like the US carriers do, or would they price it like a Scandinavian carrier?
If they want customers all over the world, they'd need to match the cheapest offering, as it's hard to argue that the service for some reason is more expensive in the US. I tried finding the price for a US cell phone plan, I can't actually do it. AT&T is impossible to navigate and always seems to bundle a phone. Mint Mobile tries to push 3, 6 or 12 months, which isn't even legal and the plans still come in at $40 for what is a $25 plan here in Denmark (with no additional fees).
If Starlink launched a world view subscription, at competitive prices they'd immediately crash the US cell service market.
Kinda not. Generally if you got road you got reception. Only wilderness areas don’t. For few people who go camping, etc the standalone miniterminal makes most sense.
Yes there are, but I my guess is 95%+ of car miles are in areas with good reception. If you are building roads putting cell reception there is trivial.
The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly; and hence the partnership with MNOs. With 5G (after Google & Meta got involved, the designs took on a Cloud/Internet-heavy focus), Starlink very well might have "slices" carved out exclusive for its own use world over.
And then one day: one censorship for the whole world.
No, thank you. The availability of different providers in different jurisdictions is crucial for thwarting world to function. I speak as a person from a country with government censorship implemented.
I see where you're coming from, but I prefer to have the relationship with a single entity (my cellular carrier) and get access to both. Simpler to deal with.
Agreed on the potential complication if/when I'm in another country, but, well, everything can't be simple...
I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if it's limited to low bandwidth applications like text and voice).
We're currently talking data rates on the order of (optimistically) 5 Mbit/s for a cell with a diameter of 15 square miles, i.e. something like 0.1 Mbit/s per km^2.
In very rural areas (which is the use case!), that's infinitely better than nothing, but anywhere people live, this is effectively nothing, and there is currently no way around ground-based infrastructure.
That was 9 years ago and a lot has changed since then. They're moving to 3rd generation devices which have higher bandwidth and now have thousands of satellites deployed. Once Starship is able to deploy payloads, they'll increase the number of satellites even more quickly.
A lot has changed, but the calculus of fiber vs. satellites hasn't. Fiber (and fiber-served cellular) is good for high density, satellites are good for low density.
It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another.
xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch).
His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
The closest comparison I can think of is Berkshire Hathaway (one person/group controlling multiple wide ranging private and public companies).
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation.
Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo.
He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard. But he also delegates to experts he brings in to run his businesses.
It's obviously not the same as PE, but there are distinct similarities. With each of his companies he clearly can't take an active role all the time, but what his team are experts at is identifying the areas he needs to be on top of, and they will quite literally fly him in for it. It seems to me it's always the start of something, be it a new company or project. He will be there 24/7 getting it off the ground, but then hand over to lieutenants to run.
It's a formula that seems to work again and again. We're (well those of you in the US) are in for an interesting time over the coming year as he has a new project to kick start.
I agree with you, yet in a somewhat different way.
He is an investor investing in science fiction. This isn't even implied, he comes out and says it again and again.
I'm reminded of xerox parc's "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and I think that's his philosophy.
As to "businesses he knows well" I do not agree. He didn't go into electric vehicles, rockets, robots or neural interfaces as "business he knows well".
Just read about musk going to russia to try to get a launch vehicle going and coming back insulted and frustrated. So he broke down the problem and learned how to solve it.
Also "Private Equity" has a connotation of rent seeking nowadays, like "buying all dentists and monetizing to extract profit".
I don't see him that way philosophically. I see him as a pure creator, not a rent seeking wealth extractor.
I see twitter as sort of frustration thing, like hyperloop.
With hyperloop - he was frustrated by the way high speed rail was being handled in california, and hyperloop came into being as his cost + engineering sort of optimization. But with hyperloop he wasn't forced to buy it.
With twitter he just got in too deep and had to buy it.
(though I probably don't know enough about the details of twitter and could be wrong)
Seriously though, if he's primarily in a delegation mode these days, good for him, I think he's earned it
Bias disclosure: I feel like I could be a Musk if I actually had zero laziness and a few extra connections. We are similar in intelligence and interests and worldview (other than his edgy tweets of the last 1-2 years)
It’s not being downvoted due to any inaccuracy, but rather the implied positive sentiment about Musk’s involvement with the government.
A more pessimistic view might be: Musk’s businesses have technological advantages but are financially over-leveraged. Their present success relies on heavy government subsidies while their future success depends on complete privatization of government functions.
While it's true, SpaceX will raise money by making Starlink (the less important / easier business) public and keep SpaceX (the real business that makes it possible that Starlink depends on) private.
＞ His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
It's not unusual for large companies to have a large web of corporate entities, but what's problematic is that they have different ownership rather than the same owners/owned by each other. (I started to say that one is public and others private, but it would be the same issue if two were public, as they would obviously not have the exact same set of owners.)
When xAI makes a deal with Tesla, if xAI is getting the better end of the stick, that is a self-dealing problem that the SEC can investigate on behalf of Tesla shareholders. The assets of Tesla belong proportionally to its owners, so Musk or another large owner can't make deals that give their private company an advantage at the expense of Tesla owners.
If Tesla gets too generous of a deal, that's something the non-Musk owners of xAI if any could raise an issue with, but when the public company is allegedly getting shortchanged, the SEC gets involved too. Moreover, even if you are trying to do it right, there is always the opportunity for someone to challenge you.
> His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
My understanding is that, given Tesla is a public company, any collaboration between Tesla and other Musk companies needs to be approved by the board (or maybe by other C-suite executives) without Musk in the room. Musk can come up with the idea for a collaboration, but then the decision that it is in the best interests of Tesla and all its shareholders to proceed with the collaboration needs to be made independently of him.
By contrast, I don't think the rules apply as strictly to his other companies since they are privately held. The law cares a lot more about protecting shareholder rights in public companies than in private ones.
Collaboration is handled by the executive team. The Board of major companies is not so active as to negotiate deals. One may be an activist board member and hold sway over the CEO, but ultimately it's the CEO's job. The Board simply picks the executive team.
AFAIK, Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chair, had no particular association with Musk prior to joining Tesla’s board. She is an Australian business executive with a history of working in senior finance roles in Australian and US firms. She was recruited on to Tesla’s board by another (now former) Tesla director, Brad Buss, who to my knowledge has never been that closely associated with Musk either. Musk obviously trusts and respects Denholm, but I believe their relationship is more professional than personal - Denholm lives in Australia and travels to the US for Tesla board meetings.
Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive? Robyn Denholm excecised and sold $35M worth of TSLA in the past month.
If receiving stock based compensation is grounds for not being independent then wouldn't most companies have an independence issue with their boards? It just seems like a crazy claim on it's face.
> Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive?
Has a court accepted that argument? I mean, you can come up with all sorts of grounds to claim an independent director isn’t really independent, but unless a court with jurisdiction accepts the argument, it doesn’t really count for anything.
HN is a court of law: some things may fail to meet some legal test, but not that in no way means it automatically becomes subjectively "right". I am adding a datapoint on what's arguable and leaving the judgement of cogency to the reader.
My previously-unstated opinion is: remunerating directors like executives blurs the distinction between those 2 roles in ways that are likely detrimental to long-term shareholders.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
My uncle had an inimical board that tried to remove him, but he somehow replaced them all one by one before they could. Needless to say he replaced them with people who didn't want to remove him ("buddies"; but what kind of a leader surrounds himself with people that want him to fail?). He's never told me how he did that despite my asking several times.
> This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
No it's not.
Competent CEOs hire boards that align with their world-view but are independent enough to provide useful advice. And almost all startup boards will have investors who definitely will not rubber stamp the sort of thing going on at Tesla.
Some companies have board governance rules that mandate a majority of the board seats be of "outside and independent" individuals, but of course this can easily be gamed and, of course, these rules themselves can be put to a vote during shareholder meetings.
Still, it's always worth considering these structures before one invests--especially in med-to-large-cap public companies.
Alternatively, in private small-cap and venture-boards, the seats are nearly always filled by founders and lead investors and I would argue that's a "good thing".
Following the law should be above the shareholder gain. Mentality like yours is what got us in this situation where people are blatantly abusing the government for personal gain.
It's not enough to just do a poll and say that most shareholders are "happy." If there is even one owner, which there will be, who objects, you need to be able to show that decisions were in the best interest of the company. That doesn't mean said owner has to agree with them, but if there are deals that arguably favor outside companies then you will hear from either the SEC or that one shareholder.
The other comment saying "the law is above shareholder gain" is kind of missing the point thought--the law in question is specifically to protect the interest of shareholders.
> Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
Starlink is not a separate entity — it's a division of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
From Terms of Service[1]:
> Your order for two-way satellite-based internet service (“Services”) and a Starlink antenna, Wi-Fi router and mount (“Starlink Kit” or “Kit”) is subject to the terms (“Terms”) of this Starlink agreement for the United States and its territories. These Terms, those terms incorporated by reference, and the details you agree to in your online order (“Order”) form the entire agreement (“Agreement”) between you (“customer” or “user”) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (known as “Starlink” in these Terms).
I didn't realize SpaceX was just a nickname for Space Exploration Technologies Corp, TIL
So the Terms of service is with SpaceX but apparently there is such a thing as Starlink Services LLC, but I'm just going off Wikipedia, all this corporate structuring is opaque to me.
> SpaceX was just a nickname for Space Exploration Technologies Corp
It's slightly more than that: it's a legally recognized nickname for the actual entity, technically called a "Fictitious Business Name" (aka DBA, "doing business as") registered with the state.
> there is such a thing as Starlink Services LLC
One might register a bunch of shell companies in various jurisdictions, holding various assets and contracts during the course of business, for tax reasons, to limit the blast radius of liabilities and facilitate business (for example, retail gift cards, e.g. Amazon, are often issued by a separate legal entity.) I think there's a qualitative distinction there with what Berkshire Hathaway or perhaps Alphabet Inc. do with their separate businesses that are hands-off subsidiaries. It appears at the moment Starlink is very much intertwined with SpaceX and user contracts and the trademark are actually directly owned by SpaceX, so not sure what they are using that particular LLC for.
In the context of OP, the corporate structure of SpaceX et al. is about as far from interesting as it could possibly get. The obsession some posters have with rich people (and Musk in particular) is really unhealthy!
It’s going to be unambiguously good for wilderness rescue and disaster response.
But I like camping and hiking in remote areas in order to remove myself from the world. And I think the lack of connectivity discourages unprepared people from taking on more than they can handle in the wilderness. If the wilderness becomes fully connected, will it spoil that feeling? Will it lead to the last few truly remote places in the US suddenly being overrun with TikTok crowds? I honestly have no idea, and it’s a little scary.
But it feels like an anachronism that we don’t already have worldwide connectivity, and I guess this was just bound to happen.
There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous. It is good that rescue services can help you if accident happens (and it can happen even to the adequatly prepared).
Definitely. But when Apple released their Satellite SOS feature, I expected that to remain the cutting edge for a while, and for all devices to eventually gain very limited satellite emergency call capabilities. Instead, it seems like we’re going straight from most devices having zero connectivity in the (US) wilderness to all devices having connectivity everywhere in the world, as soon as next year. That’s a lot of change to come all at once.
Sounds like the future. And a good one at that. The pros far outweigh the cons. If someone can't disconnect purposefully to be with nature, then that's on them.
Sorry, forgot to add the crucial details. Such is the life while close to quitting work for the day.
The location, despite not being remote, has NO connectivity. It's the closest thing I can think of in my proximity that is completely unconnected. You're lucky to get GPRS there in terms of data, and most likely you won't even be able to place a call.[1] There is no broadband/fibre or any other sort of physical network connected to the buildings in the area.[2] The only way of connecting the place aside from Starlink that I've found is other satellite options[3], and it's most likely going to be 6 times as expensive and 50 times slower.
I doubt it is going to work very well so just hold your breath for the moment. Also the space junk issues are becoming formidable, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is all gone in 5 years, if it exists at all. Or else I’d like to believe.
And they’ve been very expensive, subscription-based, and limited: no direct access to the internet, just location pings and text messages (which sometimes have to be preprogrammed). Nothing at all like what Starlink is talking about.
Garmin InReach has existed already for years. It didn't take the feeling away from me and I felt more comfortable having it in my backpack just in case. Wilderness adventures shouldn't be life or death experiences.
Starlink here, which includes data, is a huge jump from emergency SOS on Inreach. I do think we'll lose some of the magic of outdoors experiences when we can check nytimes.com and Reddit in the backcountry.
With Garmin InReach you can text actively. And I didn't. It is a mindset IMHO. If a person cannot control him/herself from using a phone while camping it is on them. No tech can change that and they will end up watching offline shows on their downloaded shows.
Sure, and people were making YouTube videos in the wilderness before that, but the accessibility that came with TikTok and Instagram created a phenomenon increased demand tenfold at many parks. That’s why you have to win a lottery to hike Angels Landing in Zion now.
Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
My guess is there will be some more wilderness livestreams streams, largely made by the people that are already going out to these places to produce content.
Are you particularly worried about a group of people that so far had no interest at all in taking pictures or videos in the wilderness but will now show up in droves to make competing bits of strictly-live content? Who are these users??
My point is that this will allow anyone to be an active content creator while they’re in the wilderness, which makes it quicker, easier, and much more appealing to create that type of content.
In another comment you pointed out overtourism but in this comment you seem to be saying your concern is that it will be easier to create content… for the people that are already there? Who cares if people make content or not while they are there?
Your issue is either not wanting people on their phones in parks — which you cannot control — or not wanting people in parks at all, which not only can you not control but that would also be a downright insane desire.
The reason why parks exist and are maintained is that people go to them. If nobody goes to a park, there is no incentive for upkeep or staff. Much (or virtually all) of the wilderness that you have enjoyed in your life is available to enjoy because people before you enjoyed it and made it accessible to you in some way. That is how parks work
The crowds are completely unmanageable in some parks, and it’s destroying the ecosystems and natural features that the parks were built to exhibit.
Ever heard of Fossil Cycad National Monument? Designated in 1922, and by 1957 all the fossils had been taken. There was nothing left to see. The national monument was abolished.
If you’ve never been, I’d recommend visiting Lake Louise in Alberta. However, when I last visited in 2019, the lake base was packed nearly shoulder to shoulder at 7am. Hiking the trail to the tea house was like walking a sidewalk in NYC at 9am, just a little rougher and steeper. I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse since Covid.
Is it selfish to want to be able to enjoy one of the most beautiful spots in Canada without it being crowded? Absolutely. But the sheer volume of people makes in a completely unenjoyable experience, not to mention the dangers of erosion/wilful destruction/litter/etc that over-toured nature spots eventually succumb to. The nice thing right now is that there are many, many places to go that most people won’t, due to lack of accessibility, lack of cell service, etc. By breaking down barriers, you open the floodgates.
I used to despise gatekeeping, wanting everyone to be able to experience as many joys as possible. But when seeing what happens when the masses get access to delicate niches, my opinion shifts. Maybe I’m just getting older and grumpier though, so take it with a grain of salt.
Not sure honestly. I've been to lots of remote areas, only accessible by multiple days of travel on foot or canoe, so probably? But I live on the other end of the country, so the effort likely wouldn't be worthwhile if it were truly inaccessible.
I was all excited and was thinking I should switch from ATT to T Mobile so I can access Starlink. Then I read it was for T Mobile for Business. You need 6 lines to qualify for T Mobile for Business?
I am skeptical AST will be able to really compete. SpaceX has a massive cost advantage.
I hope that they will, but the engineers at SpaceX have made me a believer. If the gen 1 direct to cell sats don’t perform (it seems like they do), they’ll just launch another batch a couple weeks later. I don’t think AST will have this ability, so I hope they get it right.
They have contracts for now and cash flow. My concern is how much better/worse it will be than Starlink. Consumer pressures will dictate whether Verizon/ATT renew those contracts based on performance.
It takes longer with the dollar amount being so large, but SpaceX has a real advantage of 1) being vertically integrated 2) having customers buy the rockets and 3) having expertise and ability to iterate very quickly on satellite designs. I don’t know of a single company that can compete with them on #2 and 3 right now.
My prediction is that SpaceX satellites will perform better in the real world due to the density they’ve built up, and they will be able to partner with 3rd parties for much cheaper. I’m not saying that’s what will happen, but I’m pretty blown away by what they’ve been able to do so far.
Tangent: my understanding is the Zuckerberg wanted to do something similar and even paid SpaceX to launch a satellite (which was unsuccessful).
It seems Musk liked the idea so much that he decided to do it himself.
To me, this (along with Zuck's issues with Apple over the app store) explains a lot about why Zuck 2.0 has been so focused with avoiding platform risk with recent endeavours.
If that's actually how events played out, one hopes that Zuck would at least be able to appreciate the irony of his idea being stolen by a vendor he hired to implement it.
I heard that Google's project Loon was having issues with LTE time outs due to the distance of the balloons LTE antenna from the ground. How does this square with the much larger distance of LEO satellites?
I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
I think the potential comptetitors in this business (low latency satellite internet megaconstellation) missed their opportunity.
Starship is very close to being able to put next gen Starlink satellites into orbit ("very close" as in most likely within a year or so). Once that happens, it's over, there will not be competition for at least a decade. Before Bezos and others (and/or EU/China) build their own Starship copies (and if you've seen recent EU/China concepts, you can't call it anything else...), it's going to be the 2030s.
Not to mention that the existing Starlink fleet is about to be old technology. The larger satellites launched by Starship is projected to dwarf the terminal speed available now (gigabit+ downlinks to consumer dishes).
Not sure if they are dead in the water or not. However, they have until July 30, 2026 to deploy half of their fleet or they lose the FCC granted frequencies. The fleet is 3232 satellites.
So far they launched 2 test satellites. They contracted most of the launches to either new rockets or ones in development, like New Glenn, Ariane 6, ULA Vulcan. They actually had to contract three Falcon 9 launches to help out with that. In reality, I think SpaceX will end up launching a lot more than that.
Unless FCC is willing to be lenient, 50% of the satellites will be hard to accomplish by the deadline.
The quick maths indicates that to achieve this, they’d have to launch 22.5 satellites per week every week for the next 18 months until that deadline. SpaceX seems to be launching at nearly twice that rate, having launched [1565 satellites](https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/10/30/live-coverage-spacex-t....) in the first 10 months of this year.
> I am sure it's doable if all the space providers work together and there aren't any showstoppers.
Are you living in a different world that me?
NO company or Government on Earth outside SpaceX has the capability to launch more than about 15 orbital rockets per year. Most are in the 5-10 per year range.
That's why I said "if all the space providers work together". That obviously includes SpaceX - they would be doing the heavy lifting here (mind pun intended).
> NO company or Government on Earth
Not that it's a possibility for Kuiper, but China had 67 launches in 2023.
I doubt that very much. Gwynne Shotwell stated multiple times that they will work with whoever. In addition, SpaceX is already contracted for 3 launches of Kuiper.
I think Starlink has caused rural fiber deployments to accelerate because a friend's property in rural Oregon just got fiber, but the challenge remains: after you get fiber to the corner of your 22 acre lot, how do you cover the rest of the 21 acres? With fiber and using wifi as your backhaul you have to get a chain a bunch of nodes to get Internet to each building/area you want wifi. Starlink (business) lets you just stick a starlink mini dish in each place without having to worry about all that.
Centurylink ran fiber down the nearest highway to my rural Oregon property a couple of months before Starlink became available. AFAIK the timing was more coincidence than anything, but you're entirely right about the logistics of fiber being non-trivial. As usual, last mile is the hardest part. Even with fiber at the highway, the only service Centurylink would offer us was 10Mbps DSL. I bet they would have tun fiver to my house for $$$$$, but Starlink is plenty fast and it would almost certainly take a decade or more to recoup the one-time costs of getting fiber installed all the way to my house.
that solution isn't without issues. specifically, you have to climb trees and run power or do solar, and then if there's a heavy storm you can have issues. those aren't insurmountable problems but being able to get Internet anywhere there's liner of sight to the sky is easier (or harder!) depending on the terrain.
Climbing one tree to get Starlink to see the sky is less work then having to climb multiple trees to align a dish and a repeater so it's entirely terrain dependent so all we can say in the general case is we have to take a look at your land/situation before saying which would be preferable to you.
You are right for on-grid systems. If you can get power from the grid, it is easy to get fiber. I have friends working remotely from very rural zones in Brazil, and they got fiber for a lower price than it was for buying up the transformers/posts to route power to their farms.
But, there are still niche use cases, like ships and planes, that would pay a premium for fast LEO satellite connections. For people I know who live on islands, going from barely being able to use WhatsApp to entirely using the internet (YouTube / Netflix) is game-changing.
This is really interesting. Based on their wikipedia I can see they collect a lot of RF traffic - are IMEIs identifiable with the raw data captured that way? I'm surprised they are not encrypted. I say this as someone who knows nothing about the space.
In 2G/3G networks, IMSI is unencrypted in the initial handshake process while the handset gets a TMSI, so it can very trivially be passively observed, but only at specific points in time.
In 5G this is somewhat fixed - the handset uses its Home Network Public Key to encrypt the device-specific IMSI (producing a SUCI) which only the Home Network can decrypt. The MCC and MNC (carrier information) are still sent in the clear to allow the encrypted SUCI to route to the correct Home Network for decryption.
Does this allow the ability to circumvent LTE networks in countries like China? Do we have the capability to send messages to any/all phones in China if we (USA) wanted to?
For that, Starlink would have to use the frequency band that the phone (and, therefore, the relevant operator) is using. Such frequencies are assigned by states to operators, and using them from space would be extremely easy to detect. That is why Starlink either has to make a deal with in operators, or acquire a licence to use a frequency band in every country it wants to operate.
I assume that if Starlink was trying to do this without agreement, in violation of the interational treaty on radio regulations, the USA would have to prevent them from doing so. If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation.
As a side note on the technology, since Starlink satellites orbit 340km from earth, I wonder if they emit a directed signal. If they don't, I don't see how they intend to respect borders when sending messages down.
> Except China, does any other country have the ability to do this?
Any country capable of launching satellites or even sounding rockets could almost certainly do enough damage to majorly disrupt operations. Certainly the EU or Iran, possibly South Africa with the recent resumption of rocket launches at OTB.
It then turn down to "soft" warfare. Iran will give some guy a missile to shoot your cargo ship. I'd like them to do that for countries that can't do anything though (ie: some countries in Africa). Good for the citizenry and no side-effects.
China has demonstrated ASAT weapons. They don't have enough in stock to take out the entire Starlink constellation but just the threat would be enough.
- "I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation."
They absolutely do not have tens of thousands of anti-satellite missiles, or any other credible (non-nuclear) way to dismantle a constellation of that size. If you look at their own news media[0], they (Chinese defense) consider it a major weakness, and priority.
- "Researchers call for development of anti-satellite capabilities including ability to track, monitor and disable each craft The Starlink platform with its thousands of satellites is believed to be indestructible"
There aren't tens of thousands of Starlink satellites over China, and I suspect the issue would be solved or escalated way before the whole constellation gets down.
The regular Starlink, which requires a dish, doesn't even operate in China (it could technically but no regulatory approval). Obviously China would not allow this either.
1. As others have pointed out, the link budget (how much energy loss a particular radio link can handle before it is broken) for D2C satellites assumes a nearly direct line of sight from your handset to the satellite. This is much easier to achieve with satellites in space than it is with traditional cell towers that might have numerous walls/buildings in the way.
2. The D2C satellites use massive phased array antennas that are able to point a very narrow beam very accurately to the ground. This provides a substantial amount of antenna gain that further helps the link budget. The gain from the antennas allows the satellites to pick up even relatively weak signals from a handset.
There are other tricks as well, but these account for the largest differences. Of course, doppler gets in the way, but it is a solvable problem.
In theory, yes. Phased arrays can steer as many independent beams as the connected electronics support. I real life, it's probably going to be dozens or maybe hundreds of beams.
My thinking is that you can think of Starlink satellites as LTE towers that just happen to be ~350 miles away from your phone. It happens to work because while they are far away, the satellites have a very clear line of sight (directly down) with few (no) obstacles.
The complication is that the base stations will be moving much more rapidly than traditional terrestrial towers.
Yeah, this is going to decimate your battery life. It's great to have in an emergency, don't get me wrong, but I'd probably leave data off otherwise when out remote.
No, that’s just satellite backhaul for a cell tower. That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
This is direct from handset to satellite, it’s clearly explained in the link.
This is supposed to launch in New Zealand during 2024, in partnership with a local carrier. Was being heavily hyped a year or so back, but I haven’t heard much recently?
I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.
Initially I thought the same re: hiking, skiing etc. The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
Good news: people who pay more still get all those benefits.
And now, other people have some access (if non-optimal) to rescue services, despite the fact that they didn't (or couldn't afford to) pay more for inReach.
Same. Done a few trips to alaska and had to coordinate pickups and food drops via garmin inreach. Battery life on those is way better and more durable.
Modern smartphones can hold the battery for over a week with minimal usage. You could just turn data on when every few hours or so. It's not automated though.
At least my work S24 says ~16 days in airplane mode + power saver. Not tested.
With an inReach I have the option of periodically tracking my position and uploading that to a site my loved ones can check. Even whilst doing this I can leave the device on for a multi-day trip without worrying about battery drain. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with a cell phone, but the inReach is just a more robust solution for a safety critical application.
> The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
I think it depends on the application you're using it for.
If you're constantly using the gps - yeah, I'd definitely agree with you.
But if you're using it purely for emergency communication, you can just turn off the cell phone, and it should be fine.
It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
If you have zero signal, modern iPhone allows you to connect to satellite and text using iMessage. I just used it this week multiple times during massive Pacific Northwest blackout.
Works surprisingly well. You have to be outside and hold iPhone in the specifics position pointed at satellite, it tells you where to turn iPhone to to get signal.
You can initiate a conversation with anyone while you are connected via satellite. But you do need to set up an emergency contact and/or Family Sharing Group if you want to connect via satellite and receive messages that were sent to you while you were offline.
(I’m referring to the "Messages via Satellite" feature that launched two months ago in iOS 18. This is different from the "Emergency SOS via Satellite" feature that has been around since 2022.)
I'd still carry an old-school PLB (not a satellite messenger subscription service) for the enduring battery-life, ruggedness, and reliability when it matters. And use LTE-Starlink for the basic non-urgent but super convenient communication needs.
this is how i feel. especially in the cold. for a lot of the stuff i do, i'm not gonna trust my life on a glass screen with a battery that doesn't work well in the cold.
A quick glance at these comments indicates the majority are excited about Starlink. I must be in the minority. Is anyone else here on HN very unhappy with the prospect of having no place to escape internet access? I love the idea of no-rescue zones. https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/hike-at-your... Not trying to change anyone's mind, just wondering if I'm a complete outlier.
Because I think that "but I need a place to disconnect, I am undisciplined to do it on my own when I am under coverage" is a poor reason to justify advocating for stopping progress.
Comparing it with actual drugs and calling for the same "deny this to everybody so I dont have to use my willpower, please" is what grinds my gears.
Well good for you, except for the fact that I’m not advocating that folks not have access in general.
>Comparing it with actual drugs and calling for the same "deny this to everybody so I dont have to use my willpower, please" is what grinds my gears.
I literally said this nowhere. The fact that it’s going to be difficult for a great number of individuals to disconnect from the internet _is reasonably comparable to drugs being present around an addict that is trying to quit_.
Next time I’m in the Tenderloin I’ll wander around telling people to just have will power because someone online said that’s all that’s required.
I don’t know about denying earth-wide internet access from ordinary cell phones, nor of the utility of denying you the internet; but I am fairly certain you would probably benefit from going on a well-led backpacking trip away from technology given that I doubt anyone who’s done that would continue to hold your dismissive and unkind position.
… says one of HN’s most prolific users with more points than just about anyone who probably has zero desire to ever be away from the internet for more than two seconds
And you’ve already had comms in most places in the world including the polar regions for some time now. This is about lower cost and ubiquitous access.
This is the nomad dream. Have a single phone service and wander anywhere on the planet with it. No more having to swap SIMs out on every border, being unable to use text-based 2FA, forcing friends to contact only via messaging apps, system messages in a foreign language, etc.
It's not the coverage; that's mostly good. It's not the price; mostly SIM cards and plans are cheaper when travelling than they are at home. It's the hassle of swapping SIMs every time you cross a border.
Starlink isn't meant to be your primary cell service, and likely will never be, considering people are rarely within direct line of sight to the sky when they need to use their phone.
I've been using data-only plans since 2015 combined with voip.ms VoIP numbers (for Toronto and SF). This means I could travel and pop in a prepaid SIM card whenever I went anywhere and not have any problems using data-based messaging services (Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage).
As of this year I ditched my T-Mobile prepaid data SIM and exclusively use prepaid eSIMs (esimdb.com has a great comparison, but Nomad makes it very easy with their app). So I still have to "swap sims" but it's all done on the iPhone itself, no need to bring a sim ejector/paperclip.
What's really funny is that last week my eSIM ran out (I forgot to top up) and my 16 Pro connected to the satellite network (since it assumed no service was available I guess?), where I was able to use iMessage (in the limited way (to individuals, not groups)).
There are travel SIM cards already. Many work in most countries, some even on planes and ships.
Personally, I still buy SIM cards (or, more recently, eSIM plans). Not so hard, but way cheaper, and you can get a local number and use with local services that require one.
Most nomads don't really care for cell phones? This is the facsimile of the idea for people that want the benefits of travel without the negatives of no fixed relationships.
Which isn't really a negative to this. Indeed, if you have the means, I'd say go for it.
You need to activate the plan in the US and return to the US every 90 days (or lose your mobile data). So it’s not really an option for people outside the US.
Direct to Cell is not usable LTE service. It doesn't have the bandwidth. It is effectively 2G or satellite phone, with messages, voice calls, and slow data.
I'm afraid that you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about. Look at the recent FCC issues around interference to benchmark current bandwidth and latency.
So they now offer direct cellular coverage whereas before only offered internet?
This is great for regions that need to be connected and the power elites, but for the rest of us it wouldn't change much.
I disagree with almost all of Elon's "politics" but Starlink still has huge potential. Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much and focuses on making the world more connected, in the hands of the us government and given away like GPS it could be the way to go to get the whole world connected.
> This is great for regions that need to be connected
That's at least a billion people. I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
I'm writing this from an Ayahuasca center in rural Peru connected with Starlink. Before, internet was a ten minute drive into town away. We're now connected when at one side of the center. It would be nice to have it all the way into the jungle. And when you want to be disconnected, just turn your phone off or leave it behind.
> I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
My understanding is that the monthly cost for Starlink varies pretty wildly across the world. Presumably the same would be true for this cell service - idle satellites have the same huge fixed cost and don't generate any revenue.
a) Based on what we've seen in China, India etc many of those will shift towards densely populated cities or will stay and those locations will become industrialised, densely populated cities.
b) In densely populated cities it doesn't make sense to use Starlink when fibre is far cheaper, has limited congestion issues and can provide gigabit speeds at a minimum.
c) It's great that you're writing this in rural Peru but that is a declining use case and should not be extrapolated to the rest of the world.
All those points are true, but it doesn't change the fact that Starlink will be quite profitable for SpaceX.
Currently, each launch of 23 Starlink satellites costs SpaceX around $50 million. To get 1,000 direct to cell satellites in orbit, they'll need to launch 44 times, costing them $2.2 billion. Due to the low orbits, air resistance causes the satellites to reenter within 5-10 years, so to maintain the constellation they'll need to spend $220-440 million per year. These costs will be much lower when they switch from Falcon 9 to Starship.
Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell. That's still 80 million people. If SpaceX charges cell companies $10/month per user for the service, that's almost $10 billion per year. And that's not counting the money they make from selling Starlink Internet, which currently has over 4 million subscribers. At $100/month, that's $4.8 billion per year in revenue.
So Starlink is profitable without direct to cell technology, but since they're launching the satellites anyway, they might as well collect more revenue by adding cell capability. DTC only becomes unprofitable if the cost of the extra hardware and mass is less than DTC subscriber revenue.
If someone is rescued in the wilderness thanks to direct to cell connection; if children can attend online classes despite living in the rural; if science expedition can stay online even in the most remote places, then that’s changing the world.
There's just a really strong tendency for people all over the world to focus on their own experience. And you can actually reinforce this by zooming out too far. If you live in San Francisco, this seems like a pet use case and you can be like "What is it, 10% of the population?" But "the population" is quite the fucking denominator.
I mean, it's already happening and obviously Starlink has run the numbers. So I'm largely just reacting to the tone here.
Niche? Millions of airline and cruise passengers have been using Starlink. Industries, militaries and governments are Starlink customers. Millions of users in the rural areas. That’s some interesting definition of niche.
I’m writing this from starlink ten minutes from Silicon Valley.
Until recently, most of what you wrote applied to us too (our previous options were 128kbit theoretical dsl, 1 sec latency, or extremely flaky cellular).
Now that a double digit percentage of people on our street have starlink, the phone company finally ran fiber to the home.
Being able to make emergency calls from the many dead spots around here would be nice.
Unless you have no cell coverage at your house, they can do this right now. I assume ads aren't economically viable unless the viewer pays for the traffic here.
If we consider President Javier Milei’s perspectives on monopolies, as articulated in his address at the World Economic Forum [1], we can apply his reasoning to the case of Starlink’s potential dominance in direct-to-phone satellite connectivity. In his statements, Milei challenges the traditional view that monopolies inherently lead to market inefficiencies. Instead, he assumes that monopolistic positions, when achieved through “innovation” and “without government interference,” can drive significant technological advancements and economic growth.
Applying this to Starlink, its emergence as a leading provider in satellite-based mobile connectivity could be seen as a result of substantial innovation and investment. Such a position enables the company to offer services that were previously unavailable or limited, particularly in underserved regions. Considering Milei’s argument suggests that in the absence of government-imposed barriers, a monopoly like Starlink’s can maintain competitive pricing to deter potential competitors, ensuring consumers benefit from both advanced technology and reasonable costs.
Milei emphasizes that market failures are often the result of state intervention rather than the natural outcome of market dynamics. In the case of Starlink, minimal regulatory interference could allow the company to operate efficiently, maintaining an environment where innovation thrives, and consumers receive enhanced services. Its the potential drive of the market (competitors) and innovation to keeps them in check with pricing and perceived consumer value. [2] [3]
Awesome proposition, but good grief what a terrible website. It looks like some dodgy knockoff site and scrolling is broken. Not really inspiring confidence.
How can it be that a LTE smartphone, costing ~$100 and doing all the things a smart phone can do, and being designed to connect to a cell network via a tower a few miles away, can somehow also function as the pizza sized $500 Starlink dish?
I keep coming back to the comments waiting to see how many orders of magnitude lower. 1 Mbps would be quite different than 10 kbps. Is this for facetime while camping, or send an SOS if your car breaks down in the backroads?
It's much closer to the SOS. They start with text messaging, which is much easier because it's low bandwidth and tolerant of delays. Voice can also be done at low bandwidth but its a bit harder to ensure things sound smooth. And then data, but I think this will only ever be low bandwidth like internet browsing, not tiktok or facetime. There's probably a reason they aren't boasting about the bandwidth they can achieve...
I am by no means an expert on this, but I think it works because satellites at 500 km altitude have a much wider line of sight than ground-based LTE towers. Throw beamforming and steerable antennas into the mix and I think you’re then getting to why. It’s a “cell tower in space” optimised for wide coverage, not urban capacity.
Could be that the signal strength is really weak so they have to use a very directional antenna to transmit and receive signals. I would bet that receiving a signal from a cell phone is the hardest part. You can always omf up the transmit power, but to receive you really need to have a sensitive and directional antenna
Which bandwidth can a phone reasonably expect given nobody around for kilometers? Are we talking kbits or mbits? Is there some kind of theoretical maximum?
The constellation is subdivided into orbital planes, with ~20 to ~60 satellites in each plane chasing each other around the planet.
The following is somewhat speculative:
The bearing to the next satellite ahead or behind you in the same plane should be roughly constant; likewise, the bearing to satellites in adjacent planes orbiting in the same direction will change slowly during most of the orbit.
Near the poles the required slew rate will likely be too high to keep the side-to-side links working but that's also a part of the planet where subscriber density will be low so losing that capacity for periods of a few minutes when near the poles likely won't matter.
Lots of people in the comments are talking about Starlink as if it was a civilian project, it's not, it's military. Similar to mercenaries and perfidy it's not presented as military, but it is.
And as such it's an action against every other state. Much like the War on Terror, some NSA activities and so on it's the US making aggressive moves against everyone else.
Really good. It’s faster to send a packet from NYC to London via starlink than fiber because the speed of light in air/vacuum is c and the speed of light in fiber is roughly 2/3 c.
Even just going straight up and back down to a ground station within the same cell adds minimal latency.
I would be surprised if it is worse than the audio latency in any of the standard video conference software. I expect it would have a ton less processing and less hops.
I love how libertarians are willing to use a communication network controlled by a billionaire oligarch who bought a presidency to further his business and personal ideological interests, but are worried about government overreach.
In the 90’s, libertarians were against any consolidation of power (including corporations) that could infringe on individual rights. (This was roughly in Ron Paul’s time.)
That’s been replaced with corporate libertarians, which are against any government power that could infringe on the rights of corporations. See also Rand Paul, and the corporatist movement (which is sadly mainstream in the US, an offshoot of fascism, and essentially indistinguishable from modern libertarianism).
Anyway, they are many things, but I wouldn’t say they’re hypocritical.
It's massively hypocritical, even if the people don't realise it right away.
If you take libertarianism to its logical conclusion you wind up with feudalism, which is anything but free.
Whenever libertarians try to take their philosophy through to its logical conclusion in practice they just wind up reinventing government only worse (or reinventing banking only worse in the case of crypto).
In the United States, the libertarian caucus in power since 2022 has several leaders that could be said to be against individual rights, especially if you look within the Free State movement, oddly enough. However, they narrowly avoided their candidacy in this last election. The whole thing is a mess.
What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?
USC students just broke the non-government, non-corporate rocket launch altitude record, reaching 143.25km[1]. But that is still a long way from the ~500km that Starlink operates at.
On top of that the person would have to develop a guidance system and payload capable of targeting and sufficiently damaging one of these satellites - not an easy feat.
Finally, it seems unlikely that a single hit would cause a chain reaction. There aren't that many satellites that are part of Starlink. Imagine 6000 cars spread over the surface of the Earth. Except that they're even more sparse than that because many of them are at different altitudes.
Additionally, SpaceX has already had to deal with the result of the debris field from the Russian Cosmos satellite that was destroyed by a Russian anti-satellite missile.[2]
Starlink has a lot of protection compared to other constellations since the satellites occupy such low orbits that most debris spontaneously deorbits in 5-10 years.
To disable a satalite would you actually need to hit orbital velocity? Couldn't you just shoot your rocket up to altitude and time it such that the satalite hits it?
Lot's of conspiracy theorists have become quite wealthy with the raise of Bitcoin, as it was very popular among them early on.
Military tech or not, its just atoms. Very interesting people are quite rich now, they will have access to precision machining advanced materials and chemicals if they have the motivation.
This is such an unhinged take, what if a super villain decided to build missiles to attack satellites? You understand that’s something nation states struggle with, that billionaire status doesn’t even guarantee success on.
Some bitcoin bro with a net worth in the millions is not building orbit reaching guided missiles in their garage. And if they were the satellites would be the least of our concerns.
They don't fly sun synchronous orbits, so a giant vertical laser cannon near equator running 24/7 can kill them all in matters of days. I think. Carrying this out likely also constitute a de facto declaration of war against the US.
Why near the equator? How much energy do you think it'd take to destroy one, over what period of time. Do you think you can aim your laser at something the size of a desk moving 8km/s at 500km-1500km away?
Its expensive to build rockets. Most rocket startups require at least 100 million $ to get a rocket into orbit. But a rocket into orbit is a far cry from an anti sat weapon. That technology is gone run you another 10-20 million $.
And then that kills 1 sat. SpaceX has many 1000s of sats.
So a small rocket like Electron cost around 8+ million $, lets say 6 million $ in cost. Plus lets say 1 million for the anti sat.
So you need to invest a couple 100 million $ into the development and produce many rockets. So you can calculate 7 million times * 6000, that gone be around 42 billion $.
Of course you would need to launch them from somewhere without a government that can stop you. Taking out vital infrastructure used by the US military tends to make people a bit angry. And neither China, Russia or Europe will want you anywhere close to them. This is likely gone make this much more expensive. Maybe you can make a deal with the Taliban? But they likely don't want that heat either.
So this is just a pure fantasy scenario.
> Maybe starting a cascading effect?
That's not gone happen. Far to low in orbit. As soon as they don't have propulsion they will drop lower. Until then the others can slightly raise their orbit.
There is not even a single nation state who has the capability to take out Starlink.
And no amount of people who burn down 5G towers could ever pull this off.
Doesn’t Globestar still have more satellites in orbit? With Apple supporting them, hoping there will be some consumer choice. This looking like regular cellular will become the new landline company.
To put some numbers to it, it looks like SpaceX started launching direct to cell satellites at the beginning of the year[1], and by July they had over 100 in orbit. Not sure how many are in orbit right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to 200.
Oh, no. Apple owns them at this point. 20% ownership, and they have 85% of Globalstar's current satellite capacity for themselves. GSAT isn't really putting new customers on the constellations and Apple is funding all the replacement hardware.
Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink.
I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and match, the trophy has been handed over and the crowd has gone home.
SpaceX and Starlink have the same owner, both are private companies, with SpaceX launching 80% of the global space payload last year and rising, and Starlink has a constellation two orders of magnitude bigger than any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than foreign militaries sponsoring them. There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market.
We can only hope the competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX has been about space debris risk and ensuring the satellites are not visible to the naked eye and don't disrupt astronomy. So far the proposals I've seen have been much worse than Starlink in these areas.
IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space.
Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites.
One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 years. Which means the operators can never stop launching. It's an ongoing operational cost.
For smaller operators like OneWeb, they don't have to launch that often, but for a serious competitor like Kuiper, they'll be constantly launching some satellite every year.
IMO, launch cost will be a problem even for China. The cost of an LEO constellation is so high that even if it's partially subsidized by the military it'll be a serious cost for the country.
That could change pretty soon, though - various companies and organizations in China are aggressively working on getting reusable rockets working.
---
1. $70 m / 17.5 tonnes == $4 m / tonne
2. $15 m[3] / 17.5 tonnes == $0.86 / tonne
3. The $15 m number is not public info, but it is widely believed that it is in the correct ballpark.
In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment (ie, almost exactly the same as Boeing and United Airlines divestment due to the Air Mail Act).
> Air Mail Act of 1934: > This legislation prohibited the common ownership of airlines and aircraft manufacturers to prevent conflicts of interest and promote fair competition in the aviation industry.
> In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment
I guess we'll see what happens.
As with most things monopoly related, the critical fight is over how to appropriately define the market. Presumably SpaceX would argue that Starlink is an ISP and that it just happens to use satellites to deliver its service.
And if that doesn't work, then it's a satellite internet provider, but competes with both LEO and GEO services.
If it ever goes to court, it'll be interesting to see how such an argument holds up.
For obvious reasons I think it's pretty safe to say we can count on at least the next four years of zero regulation or government scrutiny of any company Musk is involved in, monopoly-related or otherwise.
You believe the FAA, FCC, OHSA, EPA, FDA, etc., will cease to regulate SpaceX, Tesla, Nuralink operations? That seems pretty outlandish.
They won't cease to regulate, no.
But you may have noticed companies like Boeing getting white-glove treatment from regulators.
You know, deciding that their competitor's cheaper aircraft should be subject to a 300% tariff. Not burdening them with too much scrutiny about whether that modified aircraft should keep the same type rating. Taking their word for it when they say every aircraft has 100% of the door bolts installed. If they have broken some regulations, maybe giving a $150 billion company a $250 million fine.
Not ceasing to regulate - just regulators with broad discretionary power exercising that discretion in line with the will of the politicians who appoint them.
Starlink is the most important military weapon in the world right now. Those civilian organizations have no say when state security is at hand. It's like disarming nuclear rockets because some green guys care about birds. Will not happen.
"National security" obviously gets significant concessions from regulators. That doesn't mean military and adjacent industries or significant industries and works are above the regulators, it just means the necessity of the activity and input from military and other interested parties would be duly taken into account by regulators.
That's not unique to SpaceX and I don't think that's wrong as such, although people argue that military interests in general get too much leeway.
Starshield != Starlink
Parent should have said "SpaceX", Starlink is just a subsidiary.
SpaceX has more military applications than Starshield alone. For example, SpaceX's assembly line will be pumping out (eventually) a rocket a day. That's the plan.
From a military perspective, Starship is supposed to be able to send 100+ people on long space trips. If that is instead to deliver troops to other parts of the planet, I'm sure hundreds could be packed in. Imagine a fast deploy with parachute capability for personnel and cargo, just as with planes, but with immense range and deploy speed.
You may wonder why, but aircraft carriers and their fleets are considered less usable as deploy platforms, due to increased vulnerability. If the US continues to withdraw from the world stage, its ability to deploy could be affected by a reduction in 'friendly' regional countries and thus leased bases. I don't see any issue with this now, but once a large conflict breaks out, who knows... and this could vastly enhance Starship or equiv as a deploy platform.
I'm sure some reading this will balk at "large war" and "never happen" and so on, but Starshield is an example of a platform for such a large conflict. So considering the use of Starship itself as a lightning speed, emergency deploy platform is important.
There are all sorts of gotchas, such as being shot down, but of course those same issues exist with planes or ships.
Frankly, with the state of AI, the close-to-real Android + military robots, along with drones, Starship would be best served by mass fly-over and deploy of 100k small drones, or hundreds of military robot platforms, or.. well, lots of things.
This really isn't about Starship of course. It's just that we've gotten to the point where this sort of platform is very usable. I can't imagine sending in a large-cost asset like this for general troop deploy, but I can for special ops, weapons platforms in low-risk flyovers, and a variety of other use cases.
And in times of war, things get nationalized too.
Interesting thoughts on the logistics side.
Starship as passenger transport point to point on Earth is a nonstarter most likely, even for civilian applications.
It looks just like an ICBM, because it is an ICBM. I doubt Russian and Chinese air defence forces will wait for them to land and see if it’s full of people or plutonium before launching a retaliatory strike.
Your missed the part about parachutes. Also about flyovers. No landing would happen.
(We've been dropping people and gear for 100 years by plane. And yes, it can be done with Starship.)
On the side of civilian transportation, there is nothing to stop normal passenger planes from having nukes on board. The shape of the object is irrelevant.
Communication is key.
Kind of yes. I mean Trumps Supreme Court changes the rules because they interpreted something differently. So any political or government agency is all vibes based to me. Anything other interpretation is rose tinted.
Elon Musk was just appointed by Donald Trump as being in charge of firing half of the government. He won't likely do that. But any regulator who gets in his way?
Yeah, not many will volunteer for "the firing line."
I really don't know what Musk has been appointed to do and it's a laughably blatant conflict of interest, but conflicts of interest seem to be what the entire government is built on. Politicians involved with energy and military companies are involved in decisions to go to war, generals get lucrative consultancy jobs at military firms, congress makes billions of dollars insider trading, foreign aid somehow finds its way funneled through "charities" owned by the ruling class, politicians cosy with medical companies block real healthcare reform, etc.
Musk isn't anything new or different here. The idea that he'll just be above the law is fearmongering hyperbole though. Sure he'll get favorable treatment and be able to push his agenda to degrees well out of reach of us commoners. No more than if he'd just stayed in the shadows and bought his politicians and judges and bureaucrats and generals like a normal billionaire.
I follow the same reasoning as you. This is actually nothing really "new". Patronage from politicics is something that is publicly criticized but is quite common among politicians and business.
It's too bad no one in government will ever step up to undo the citizens united ruling. At least we didn't have legal-but-opaque bribery, prior. The difference is substantial when people can't report on where campaign financing comes from without someone first talking too loud about it in a public setting.
The good news, at least, is that Citizens United was only a legal ruling and can be overturned by another ruling. Laws are much harder to undue, with rulings we don't need anyone in the government to step up (other than judges trying the case).
How can you determine a conflict of interest if you don’t know what he’s been appointed to do?
Because I heard he was going to have some advisory or executive capacity on government operation. There's a significant conflict of interest there if he's running and owning these companies at the same time.
Its hard to determine a conflict of interest when the role isn't clear though, and the problem there is that everyone can really go off of what they heard through the grape vine.
If the role truly is advisory I wouldn't personally see that as a conflict of interest. Regulators are often asking for advise from those they are meant to regulate without it getting flagged as a conflict of interest (for better or worse).
It used to be that even a WHIFF of conflict of interest was treated as "no smoke without fire, better divest".
Carter placed his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid precisely that - sadly, we have seen a complete erosion of norms, standards, and morals in public life.
I don't think it's that hard to determine. He has big companies involved in significant regulatory actions and oversight, he would stand to gain a lot by influencing things slightly in his favor. Sure, taken to absurdity everybody in government has a conflict of interest because they are alive on the same planet and have heir own views on things, but for the case of someone like Musk it's pretty clear.
Politicians and bureaucrats can and should consult with the people they govern of course. The "proper" way to do that would be via reasonably open and transparent process that is open to interested parties so competitors, customers, unions, scientists could have their say.
Again I'm fully aware this isn't how things actually work, so I'm not saying Musk is really doing anything outside the norm in American politics by buying a seat at the table. He's just being slightly more open about it than most of them.
I wouldn't be opposed to going after such situations as corruption or conflict of interest issues, but that's going to be a big can of worms.
From the FAA and Boeing to multiple health agencies and pharmaceutical companies, there are a ton of advisory type roles that involve industry leaders "recommending" policy. I'd be surprised if Musk ended up at the top of the list when sorted by impact, counted either by financial impact or number of rules and regulations impacted by industry.
> The idea that he'll just be above the law is fearmongering hyperbole though
Is it? If there is anything the 45th and the aftermath has shown is that there are people clearly above the law. And even without the 45th, Musk himself has escaped justice many many times - especially the SEC whose explicit orders he openly defied multiple times.
Yes I think it is, and I think the rhetoric around Trump is hyperbole and fearmongering too.
Not that you can't criticize them, I just don't see exaggeration being interesting or helpful there. Also I think caring about certain corruption or conflicts of interest when it happens to politicians one disagrees with is fairly easy to be seen as being divisive or politically motivated even if it's not. I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
Musk isn't going to be immune to federal regulators. I'm sure he'll get the kinds of favors that come with buying politicians as all the rest of them get though.
> Yes I think it is, and I think the rhetoric around Trump is hyperbole and fearmongering too.
Well just reading through Project 2025 is very sobering. It's not like old times where what they wanted had to be read through the lines any more, it's right out in the open what they want to do - and even getting a quarter of their plans actually passed through is a very, very troubling perspective.
> I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
A sad consequence of people no longer debating policy on a shared common ground based on facts, but on tribalism, lies and propaganda instead.
I shouldn't have brought up Trump, the subject never goes anywhere useful in an online debate. That was just my opinion, and other opinions and fears are not invalid.
> > I thought that wheeling out the architects of the Iraq war to denounce Trump's corruption/incompetence/bad foreign policy/etc was particularly ironic and sad, for example, even if they might have been technically correct.
> A sad consequence of people no longer debating policy on a shared common ground based on facts, but on tribalism, lies and propaganda instead.
Yep. When they do that it does make you wonder who shares common ground with whom, and who spreads lies and propaganda about what.
I just seriously wanna praise, first without commentary, that you just said >other opinions and fears are not invalid
And then for commentary: I'm the sort of person "intense" enough that I'd want to pounce even on your comment about not bringing up trump, but that overall phrasing was such a perfect way to communicate what you mean, and your good intentions, to me when you at first read (to me) as apologist and unwarrantedly dismissive.
That's all, often in these times it feels hard to even achieve this basic level of communication across personal and political differences. I really admire it.
Safe to say? You sure about that?
I’d say it’s just as likely that six months from now there will be a falling out, Musk will be called a pathetic loser, government agencies will be turned against him, etc.
If past behavior is any kind of indicator, it’s more likely than not. I would not be surprised if we see Musk doing a perp walk within 12 months.
Trump is likely to have an entirely unexpected terminal medical event before his term is over.
The nation will mourn his heroic patriotism. Then business will carry on as usual, only more so, with a more compliant leader.
For those who forgot, Musk joined Trump v1.0's advisory council in December 2016 [a], and resigned from it in June 2017 [b]. All of this played out once before.
[a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13175928 ("Trump Names Elon Musk, Uber CEO to Advisory Team – TheHill (thehill.com)", 92 comments)
[b] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465667 ("Elon Musk quits Trump advisory councils, saying, 'Climate change is real' (latimes.com)", 4 comments)
There can only be one Main Character, and Trump doesn’t share the spotlight with anybody.
Elon will fuck up and his money won’t save him from what comes after that.
Great fanfic material
Elon knows well enough to act as a supporting character. He can't run for presidency anyway given he's not a native, and no other political post would be interesting enough. There'll be no falling out.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that addressed Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and declared that they're only enforceable by Congress really opens a can of worms.
It sounds to me like the 22nd Amendment and the Article II natural-born citizenship requirement are also only enforceable by Congress. If you're making your plans based on a theory that Congress is able to do the right thing, or that the Supreme Court is not a hyper-partisan institution, I would have a strong C because plans A and B are pretty questionable.
Trump is not a native either, his family is German and Scottish (just checked). So far as I know a native has never held the presidency in the US.
What silly political posturing. Native-born is the specific reference, and a perfectly valid one. By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't natives, than vast parts of the world's population are also not natives of the places where their families have lived for centuries.
Why not go further and say that the "natives" also aren't natives since they also migrated to the Americas over the Bering land bridge?
People were here, and Europeans showed up and killed nearly all of them, claimed all the land as their “manifest destiny”, and proceeded to subject the few original inhabitants they didn’t kill to lives of desperation.
Call that whatever you want.
Are you suggesting that being born in a place makes one native? I'll accept that definition. Now go convince the rest of the world to update their definition of Native American.
And as you apparently agree, the term native, in reference to someone born in a particular place (regardless of ancestry) also has a standard meaning, which millions of Americans who are natives of the country meet. It also happens to be a good definition, because it helps fight against the kind of idiotic racism by which the descendants of immigrants (especially those who are non-white) still get labeled as foreigners despite being native born.
Again, silly, pedantic social justice posturing because the context of the comment about Musk not being native is obviously in reference to this, not native American history.
As the other reply above states, the first nations, as they're called where I'm from, often suffered terribly at the hands of white settlers historically, and there's no honest way to deny that, but it's a separate matter from discussions about what makes a person American today.
Parent didn’t say Trump is a Native American, just a native (of America, from context). That’s a perfectly normal use of the word ‘native’, and you don’t win consciousness points by pretending otherwise.
And this is why we can't have nice, cheap things. Instead we usually get that "cost" pressure solved by giving it on a silver platter to worker-rights-leading China.
There has to be a better way to prevent abuses in the market without crippling it. But following from that, at what point did we assume this kind of (monopolistic) abuse would happen automatically anyways? I haven't seen it yet, so let's maybe hold off till it happens?
Maybe one day X will host all sorts of government-unapproved content on satellites that are free from US jurisdiction and control? @Elon, do this now, they'll come for you eventually.
it is a fascinating outcome when a vertically integrated monopoly is the cheapest option, and best consumer value. The challenge is figuring out if the firm is really providing the best value, or just a local minimum.
My understanding is Standard Oil provided good service for low prices in most cases. It's not always the case that monopolies provide super expensive or bad service.
Yes, hence why it lasted for over a decade even with >>50% of the market in many jurisdictions.
> vertically integrated monopoly is the cheapest option
I would like to remind you that you can use google, gmail, google maps, google drive and a bunch of other services for free (and the best consumer value even if accounting for their data gathering).
Now that Starlink owner Musk effectively runs the US government from Trump's ear no divestment of any kind will happen that negatively impacts Mr. Musk
If China where to compete they also need LEO satellites that is just over China for a couple of minutes, that have to take a long round trip around the word to give a couple of minutes access again. That’s why you need a huge constellation.
It’s either selling to the whole world or nothing. If you don’t want to go for slow GEO stationary.
I suspect a China-based constellation could probably serve most of africa, much of asia, most of south america, and some of the middle east. Maybe Russia too.
Not North America or Europe.
In fact, it probably has similar coverage population-wise to what a USA based company can offer.
When Starship starts launching customer satellites, it's possible that even the price for customers would be cheap enough to launch and maintain a LEO constellation. But competing requires massive innovation in cheap and fast production of satellites which are very energy efficient and highly capable. Especially, the technology for starshield protecting against cyber warfare in space and the direct to cell capability. This would be the main reason for not emerging a viable competitor for some time. SpaceX has innovation advantage in the satellites, manufacturing, dishes, base stations, software apart from the launch capability.
Is it really required to be an LEO constellation? It would certainly be good, so that eventually the satellites deorbit and contribute less to Kesseler syndrome risk. But some nation state might chose to not care about that and deploy at higher and more stable orbits.
Higher orbits also mean more latency and slower speeds.
LEO means less RF power and lower latency.
Yes. We had satellite internet services before and they sucked bad due to latency. Space is big and light is slow.
Also, more people per satellite, so less capacity per person.
Yeah in theory China is the biggest potential competitor, having both a space program, a state deeply involved in business, etc. But their space tech is archaic in comparison, using really nasty fuels to blast stuff into space. The reusability of SpaceX's rockets is a feat that is years ahead of the competition - it's been nearly ten years since the first recovered Falcon 9 booster in a commercial launch if my quick fact check is accurate, and no other competitor, private or governmental, has managed it yet. And in a few years they will have a reusable vessel capable of launching 100 tonnes into LEO, at a fraction of the development and launch cost of e.g. the Space Shuttle.
Unless of course Musk's political fuckery ends up dismantling SpaceX. But, Musk didn't do the engineering on these feats, so the knowledge and patents will continue on if he doesn't.
PRC didn't take reusables seriously until a few years ago, really when strategic value of starlink became obvious. They're already making relatively quick progress, as in the expected faster than original catchup mode progress.
Ultimately the issue with simping for SpaceX is that it's still an American company working at American scale. People are conflating SpaceX doing cheap payload advantage at modest scale for actual scale. There's like <20 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink. People see 50% and 80%, but ignore that <20 is rookie numbers. Frankly no reason PRC won't have 100 reusables fleet _IF_ demand justifies it (TBH only real justification after megaconstellations is space weaponization). And then like with all PRC catchup, they'll put more than SpaceX lifetime aggregate payload in a few years, and then it won't even be close. Sure Elon can wank about starfactory building 1 vehicle per day, but if there's strategic reasons for it, PRC will be able to build 5 per day at less cost once they sort out the tech stack.
> But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites.
Starlink is a division of SpaceX. So what price it charges/pays itself is only an internal bookkeeping artifact.
It's not actually necessary to use reusable rockets to get at a similar cost per launch. Long March 5 is at 2.8M$/ton (so less than SpaceX commercial price).
Also, 15M$/launch is not widely believed to be correct. There is much creative accounting SpaceX could be doing with Starlink (is at-cost account for booster depreciation? If so how, since we don't know how much reuse a booster can be expected to give? Or is it just the cost of refurbishment?), and since the last statement where Elon claimed 1000$ per kg actual cost, SpaceX had to raise their prices, claiming it was due to inflation - is that accurate? Most estimates I've seen are that the cost is 20-30M/launch, which would instead give 1.1-1.7M/ton.
So, it's a big advantage but not an insurmountable one.
Boosters don’t depreciate. They are actually considered more valuable with more successful launches.
They do depreciate, even if the later launches are more valuable, that increase in value is marginal compared to the per-launch capital cost. Airplanes, cars, buildings, everything depreciates.
What do you mean by per-launch capital cost? Maintenance? The increase in value of a F9 booster after use is more than the near-negligible per-launch maintenance cost.
> The increase in value of a F9 booster after use is more than the near-negligible per-launch maintenance cost.
Do we have anything proving this besides the self-serving word of a privately owned company?
I'm not saying it's false, I have no idea either. But there's a lot of highly specific speculation going on here, based on no reliable source.
Yes, insurance rates for satellites launching on reused boosters go down the more flight tested the booster is.
"Depreciation" and "capital cost" reflect the fact the vehicle has a maximum life, even given maintenance.
Imagine if I buy a $200,000 Lamborghini which, with regular servicing, will survive 100,000 miles.
That means for every mile I drive, not only am I paying for fuel, and insurance, and tyres, and servicing - I'm also paying, on average, $2/mile in depreciation.
And sure, the "true" value chart might not be linear. Maybe there'll be a sharp drop when the car ceases to be brand new, or a bump in value when it becomes a classic. But so long as it's worth $200k at 0 miles and $0 at 100k miles, the average cost of a mile must be $2.
The statistics here are inverted. The main marginal cost of a launch is the risk of loss of payload which the customer must insure against. The risk of loss of payload actually goes DOWN with more launches, making costs cheaper the more a booster is reused.
It’s as if your car gained value with every mile driven.
> The risk of loss of payload actually goes DOWN with more launches, making costs cheaper the more a booster is reused.
I don't think that's true. All of the F9 failures[1] have been due to the 2nd stage. And that's new every time.
---
1. CRS-7, AMOS-6, and Starlink 9-3
This furthers the point, does it not?
The fact that customers launching exceptionally expensive payloads (the US space force, for one) tend to demand new boosters is not consistent with this.
But even then, it doesn't change that the booster has a maximum lifespan and/or eventually increasing repair and therefore depreciation - we are working on an amortized basis.
They don't anymore. They actually require the use of flight proven boosters for important payloads now. Astronauts too are usually sent up with reused boosters, for safety.
We don't know what the maximum lifespan of these boosters are. There are workhorses that have over 20 launches under their belt, and no sign of deterioration. Obviously at some point something will give, but we're not there yet.
> The fact that customers launching exceptionally expensive payloads (the US space force, for one) tend to demand new boosters is not consistent with this.
That used to be true. It no longer is.
https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717
> There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market.
Economics?
Competitors would have to match SpaceX's vertical integration: Satellite design, reusable launches at cost, its exiting armada of satellites, and its moving target of customer penetration. The latter is huge. Starlink is clearly not satisfied leaving any satellite demand on the table.
There is no military on Earth that has demand for satellite bandwidth approaching anything like SpaceX's, which is basically being designed to meet the needs of the whole planet.
Note that militaries (US, China, Russia, Europe, ...) have their custom means of communicating on planet, for unique reasons, but the vast majority of their communication is over commercial cell phones. This is no different.
If anyone was going to have a chance, it was Bezos. But neither his launch capabilities, or big satellite constellation plans, have amounted to much.
China will feel the need to try. But they won't have SpaceX's customer base to support a fraction of a comparable effort. (And I say that as someone who has tremendous respect for the multi-decade cadence of their space capability march.)
"SpaceX is really good and it's hard to compete with them" is not an economic reason for it to be winner takes all. Economic reasons would be, for example, regulations that either explicitly or implicitly prohibit others from competing, as are present in many terrestrial ISP markets. Some way for SpaceX to corner the market for some essential resource like spectrum or orbits and exclude competitors that way.
Vertical integration is definitely one. It's such a big factor it can cause regulators to break up a company. See Google/Chrome as an example from last week.
"SpaceX is vertically integrated" is also not an economic reason for the space ISP market to be winner takes all. Vertical integration doesn't cause breakups. Anticompetitive behavior causes breakups, with or without vertical integration. And vertical integration is not some kind of cheat code to suppress competition. It can be a business advantage but it can also easily be a disadvantage.
I'm no economics expert, but I gather certain industries are known as 'natural monopolies' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
I don't know what the precise defining lines are, but I can certainly see how you'd make more money running an electricity cable to a home with no electricity, than running a second cable to a home that already had an electricity supply in place.
And Wikipedia says "frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate [...] examples include public utilities such as water services, electricity, telecommunications, mail, etc" - starlink does sound like capital-intensive telecommunications.
Of course, even if nobody cares to take on Starlink in the broadband satellite internet market, there are a bunch of incumbent cable and cell phone companies. So it's not like starlink are on course to an internet access monopoly.
We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads
Unless you're in Brazil
https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/
Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.
It's not the same because there are plenty of companies that can manufacture cars at scale but only one company that can launch satellites cheaply. Arguably Waymo is ahead of Tesla FSD and they have access to the mature Hyundai and Zeekr supply chains.
It is the same. In both cases people are doubting the ability of the free market(and non-free markets) to detect and respond to an opportunity. How long do you think it will be before a, say, Chinese SpaceX catches up while being unfettered by environmental restrictions and backed by government subsidies?
Space is quite important and as the world deglobalizes there will be intense pressure to compete. SpaceX is breaking new ground and giving other competitors plenty to copy.
Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced.
Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain.
SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.
If what you are saying is true, why would Waymo not then pivot to a cheaper sensor system like Tesla? They have extensive experience with deep learning and plenty of training data. Surely this only buys Tesla a few years of lead time?
You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give up.
Game that out for us. How government innovation competes with a private sector launch company whose main differentiator is lower cost.
China is going to do it for sure. It doesn't have to be as efficient as SpaceX if it is massively subsidized for defense purposes. And China is pretty good at building things cheap.
On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. There are other up and coming private launch competitors too.
The issue is that space launch has some huge economies of scale.
And {world space launch demand} is >> {one country's space launch demand}
The argument for China overcoming SpaceX would be:
- China needs to get within functional (not cost) technological parity with SpaceX ASAP (i.e. which means reusability, albeit for cadence/capacity reasons)
- After that, they need to incentivize global demand to launch on Chinese rockets (likely heavily subsidizing prices to attract demand)
- After that, they need to continue to out-innovate SpaceX on technological and economic fronts
Of those, convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law.
I don't think China needs any third-party payloads. Even if they only launch Qianfan it should be enough to bring costs down.
The issue is that SpaceX, unlike any space company since some never-realized 1960s hypotheticals, is a flywheel company built around scaling.
They create demand so they can scale manufacturing that they can use to decrease prices that creates more demand... etc. etc.
You can't beat a company doing that by just getting "big enough" unless the scaling company (a) runs out of increased demand or (b) cannot convert increased volume into cheaper economics per unit.
Neither of those seem very plausible.
"convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law."
Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
For countries that aren't on the US' shit list (e.g. Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or Thailand), why would I take a chance on Chinese legal agreements instead of American ones?
The American private company might be prohibited from launching military assets for you, but once a launch contract is otherwise signed, you know it's going to happen.
In contrast, a Chinese legal agreement is worth what, if the central government decides to get involved?
This is an interesting comment because Russia and China have been sending satellites for many countries over the years .Do you have an example of a Chinese company refusing to launch a payload for a foreign customer ? I'd love a link so that I can get educated more
American Gov is far, far more fickle and likely to "get involved" / abuse export controls / fuck over friendlies due to domestic politics. Space is ITAR heavy, there's less guarantee that private American company can honor agreement than CCP verbal contract. This is 2024, JP steel just happened, US "rule of law" means nothing when strategic interests involved, never have. Can't say the same about PRC, granted they're to high end capabilities export. Ultimately, going with PRC likely will get you ITAR tier tech access bundled with cheaper launch, see state of military drones sales.
> On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches.
[citation needed]
Sure, New Glenn is designed to be a partially reusable rocket.
But it's far from clear that they'll even successfully launch on their debut, not to mention recover the booster.
And even when they've sorted all that out, word on the street is that the rocket was not designed to be inexpensively manufactured. It's not clear to me just now low reuse can help drive down their launch price.
Nothing is impossible but it takes time.
Based on current disclosed plan, they will have same number of LEOs as SpaceX have today by ~2030; and SpaceX is not slowing down either.
China is very good at copying things but this is one they'll have trouble with given the strict employment requirements.
And adding onto this it's not just cost, they also have the fastest turn around and the highest reliability.
It's vaguely analogous to the early automobile market where Ford was dominating by every single objective metric so competitors were left to compete on subjective metrics like styles. Incidentally this era is where planned obsolescence really took off.
Unfortunately for competitors I'm not sure coating a rocket in a chrome finish and running a sleek ad campaign is going to beat out price+speed+reliability.
blink
By spending more money in absolute terms to achieve objectives, without a necessitative need of immediate profit?
With respect, I’m not sure you understand the scale of what we are talking about. No other organization — including national space agencies and military contractors — has the life capacity to compete with Starlink at ANY cost. Even if money were no object, the other contenders literally don’t have the launch capacity and can’t reasonably scale up.
It’s as if Intel released the Pentium Pro back in the 50’s when everyone else was working with vacuum tubes. Yes, in theory there is room for competition. But the gulf is so large in practice.
This is already available in iPhone with their text based coverage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930
Probably they are using GSAT satellites.
Apple's feature is not comparable. It is extremely low bandwidth and requires special hardware and holding the phone pointing in a certain direction. Starlink acts as a regular (albeit low bandwidth) 4G tower in space.
Starlink DTC is also very low bandwidth in this generation, it’s is a fundamentally similar RF link budget
Starlink DTC bandwidth is orders of magnitude higher than Apple's.
Starlink allows calling (Apple's can't) which requires a higher bandwidth by definition.
Obviously it will never have the bandwidth of a local cell site, but doesn't need to to still be useful.
You have no idea the margins at which Elon Musk operates.
If you read his biography he is obsessive about cost cutting like no else in the history of mankind. There are plenty of examples where Musk brings down the cost of a component by 90%.
No other leader takes risks like Musk and hence he will always push frontiers.
His companies never get lazy or bloated even if it reaches $10T market cap.
Musk methods can't be replicated because it is the anti-thesis of every management practice.
I disagree too, but because it will no longer require military budget to start a SpaceX competitor.
Pretty soon AI agents could reasonably take a crack at it.
I’m sure LangGraph has Elon quaking in his boots.
My family had starlink installed at a remote house we own for internet access. While we could get it up and running, the connection wasn't reliable and we encountered many issues. When we tried to contact Starlink for help, support was non-existent; sent us to multiple dead ends, and often wasted our times with repairs promised weeks into the future, over and over, which never surfaced. After 8 months of pain, we ended up getting rid of it and moving back to our 6mbps.
Starlink is like Elon's other companies. Engineering marvels—where the customer's are merely an annoyance and the means to an end. They are basically hostile to the customer every step of the way; and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top.
Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.
2023 in the Pacific Northwest. We were given the argument that tree cover was a problem quite early on in our attempted troubleshooting. The house is a waterfront property, with a clear view of sky to the east. Anyways, the suspected issue continued to evolve, and we were not able to get to the bottom of it with the support we received.
Certainly, our experience could be an anomalous. But I certainly hear this happening all the time with Tesla, with the manufacturer trying to void warranties and evade liability for vehicle defects.
I just.. wouldn't be bullish on any of Elon's companies in a crowded market; which I suspect will define more his companies in the future. His politically obtuse behavior and lack of respect for authority is enough to turn off ethically minded consumers; and that's before the general crummy experience of being his customer. My best friend has a Honda EV that broke down twice, one time being potentially out of warranty-and the dealer repaired it, no questions asked
It can be counterintuitive because the user terminal is shaped like the kind of satellite dish we’re mentally prepared to understand, the kind we’ve had for the last 50 years, but it’s fundamentally different. The “clear view of the sky to the east” is the source of your problems. Starlink satellites move quickly across a the sky, and the dish needs a comparatively massive 100+ degree view angle to ensure continuous contact. If you look around online you can see comical configurations with Starlink mounted on enormous poles to get them above the tree line. This issue is the #1 cause of problems we see with new installs.
Realistically Starlink is not going to diagnose RF issues at your site. Microwave either works, or gets expensive fast (because you need an expensive person with expensive test equipment to properly investigate). A wild guess based on the available information is that reflections off the water surface are the cause.
Yeah I'm not really sure what issues you could reasonably expect a satellite internet provider to be troubleshooting at all. It's very much a 0 or 1 situation.
Then tell the customer that, rather than string them along for 8 months promising fixes (software or hardware), that never come in
If they don't put people on the ground they don't have the insights required.
It's like trying to diagnose WiFi next to a radar station remotely when you don't know the user is next to one
Again... the logistical structure of the company is not something that the customer should have to be privy to when trying to figure out if the product is going to workout for them, or not. If the product is not going to be working, the company should not be charging the customer $100 a month for 8 months promising a fix that will never come in.
I don't disagree.
Just pointing out that there's things you can't diagnose without being physically present. And these kinds of issues aren't only existent in Telecoms or SATCOM in particular.
The user should ask for a credit/refund. The product was almost certainly working. But not meeting expectations. If not it wouldn't have been on for 8 months. Can't tell me you ran 0 bytes over it
Did you try a different wifi hotspot, convinced the one they ship with it sucks from my experience with it. Couldn't handle a connection maybe 8 meters away and one floor up, no walls.
Would be interesting to measure the amount of Ku-band ghz noise near your property.
Generally, sky to north is what matters. I've done a fair bit of boondocking with starlink and found it to be very sensitive to tree cover in the wrong part of the sky.
I don't think that starlink's support or documentation is particularly great, but it still seems better than my experiences will cell phone and internet service providers.
You…wouldn’t be bullish on the most successful businessman in the history of the world?
Sometimes I come here for a good laugh
> most successful businessman in the history of the world
You're ranking Musk above Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Disney, Toyoda, Walton, and Buffett?
IMO it depends on what you see as the point of business and entrepreneurship. I don't see money as the goal, but rather on creating great things. So Buffet wouldn't even rank for me, while you would have omitted Musk's closest competitor - Thomas Edison.
Put another way, if in 30 years Musk has 10 trillion in wealth would seem, to me, to be much less relevant than if he succeeds in making humanity a permanently multi-planetary species.
Advancing humanity in so many different revolutionary fields all at once is something that had not been achieved in a very long time.
I get what you're saying, but I also think you're being reductive in devaluing wealth creation.
Why is a company worth more today than it was five years ago?
Because it's generating more revenue, has more assets... is better at doing whatever {company thing} is.
One can argue that (a) {company thing} isn't good for humanity at all and/or (b) a company which generates more money isn't really more successful, but merely a side effect of capitalist valuing.
And maybe...
But I'd say there's a pretty strong argument that Buffett is worth what he is because BH made multiple companies very much better at doing what they do. In the same way that Ford or Walton made their money by building companies that did what they did better.
And I'd add in the perspective that science and discovery without engineering into mass application is... a hobby with limited impact. The real litmus test is "Can you use this to improve many people's lives?"
And when you do that in a capitalist society, you usually have a chance to make a lot of money.
Many people don't have any real understanding of how wealthy people have been in the past. The Walton family is a fun case. Split the fortune among the family and there are still billionaires in the mix.
Edit: should add that Elon is still valued at a good percentage of the US gdp. So, not unreasonable to say that is incomprehensible, as well. By that measure, is similar to Rockefeller, I think.
I wouldn’t use the Waltons in this example, considering Walmart is eclipsed by a few companies, and even by 50% by one business that Musk has a significant share of.
Silly comparison, all told. Walmart is the single largest private employer. 1.6 million in the US. Literally 10x what Tesla and SpaceX have. Such that it is clear valuation is tough.
Look, Elon is worth a lot. Walton family is worth as much, as well. Just split among several people. None of which should be scoffed at. None are made more impressive by pretending the others are less.
This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go.
Inflation-adjusted I believe Rockefeller was worth more than $400b at the peak of his wealth.
The Walton estate now is worth over $350b, but it’s not a fair comparison as it’s had much longer to compound.
The other thing is that while SpaceX is incredibly successful, the other companies he’s started aren’t. Tesla (despite its massive growth) is in a market of rapidly growing competitors, and he’s on record saying the company lives or dies on tech his own engineers have suggested in court isn’t coming (FSD).
Google Search says Elon is at 334.3 gigadollars so not that far off and he's not dead yet.
Elon is successful yes but why do other men feel the need to stroke him off online all the time? Strange behavior. Are you expecting a kickback?
I find your view even more perplexing. I get that it’s entirely motivated by anger and contempt, but it’s still weird that someone would get upset over the respect someone else is getting online.
I suppose it’s some deep personality trait difference that makes us right wingers appreciate his work and what makes leftists hate his guts.
I think this is a psychological thing. Humans during evolution were highly rewarded for seeking and keeping powerful allies. So by imagining that Elon is my friend (because I'm his friend) and Elon is really intrinsically powerful (instead of just a lucky, well positioned grifter that can fall from grace at any moment) I can feel better about my own safety. I can feel more powerful by extension and the indirection somehow muddles that fact that it's all made up. The same mechanism works in religious people.
You might be onto something but we need a proper "evolutionary theory of bootlicking" before we get carried away.
Its pretty clear that the all-too-common in space and time hierarchies, oligarchies, command-and-control pyramids etc. rely on trickle-down privilege to sustain.
But the feeligs of disgust and disbelief at how a person can diminish themselves in the hope of some crumbs falling their way must also have strong evolutionary basis?
I’m not sure I understand your viewpoint.
The OP said “the most successful businessman in the world”.
Sure one can argue about how OP came to that conclusion, by what measure, etc, but the man produced a highly successful car company, in a field nobody has really been able to do it, under terms where everyone was counting down the days until it went bankrupt.
That alone is an amazing feat.
Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Then he started a satellite company that pushed the boundaries of communication for the average person.
I’d say all those feats are worthy of praise and make him a person who stands out significantly from any other businessman in recent history.
So saying he’s the “most successful businessman” doesn’t seem like an absurd or overly hyperbolic statement.
And how you got “stroking off” or the even more absurd “bootlicking” from that statement is just bizarre. I saw zero evidence of either.
I’d say your comments are the odd ones here and say more about you than the OP.
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism [1],[2].
The Economist made a feeble effort to rank countries in this respect [3] but it does not even include the tech sector in the "crony-prone" sectors (eyes rolling).
[1] "situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regulatory environment, direct government largesse, and/or corruption. Examples given for crony capitalism include obtainment of permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other undue influence from businesses over the state's deployment of public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works" etc.
[2] Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here? https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/15-025_c6fbbbf7-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony-capitalism_index
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism
No, actually the burden is on the person making that claim (you).
> Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Look closer into how the sausage is made. For example the Moon grant for SpaceX to the tune of about $3bln was awarded by a person who wrote it in first person singular and after she did it, she promptly quit and went to work for SpaceX.
Musk is definitely successful, but a grifter not a businessman.
> [...] man produced a highly successful car company
Musk is claiming to posess and even selling non-existent technology to both investors and consumers (pre-orders never fullfilled) for almost a decade now. Other people (Theranos, Nikola) who tried to replicate his success in this field but didn't have pants padded with hundred bln$ are curretly serving very long prison sentences for investor fraud. While Musk got off on the grounds that what he says is widely known to be pure puffery and no-one of sound mind should expect what he says to be accurate. Funny how billions "in the bank" can change how justice percieves you.
Musk is now basically so full of hot air that when he stumbles he falls up.
As the British would say the proof is in the pudding.
I do know we didn’t have self-landing rockets nor a massive reduced cost of space cargo until SpaceX.
Whether Musk hired the author of a Moon grant is irrelevant to that fact.
Same with Tesla. We had multiple, massively funded car companies try and fail to mass produce an electric car consumers wanted
Whether Musk overpromises FSD isn’t relevant to that accomplishment.
We also used to not have have LLMs, bipedal and quadrupedal robots, ubiquitous GPS maps, cell phones, miniature cameras of insane quality, ridiculously fast mobile internet connections, residential fiber and many other useful things.
Many smart people make things happen all the time. Regardless of whether there's some singular rich grifter in that specific that can latch onto them soon enough to claim credit or not.
That depends on how you define successful businessman.
If we look at valuations, then yeah. If we look at how much money all of his ventures make ? The picture is very different.
SpaceX - may or may not be profitable in the last year - it's hard to know. Until recently definitely no profitable
Tesla - really profitable since 2021, with great 2022 / 2023. Trending in the wrong direction recently
Twitter, xAI, boring, neuralink - all are money furnaces.
> SpaceX - may or may not be profitable in the last year - it's hard to know. Until recently definitely no profitable
SpaceX is very much in the same position as early Amazon.
If they wanted to, they could be profitable today. But they are investing heavily in the future.
IMO, that's a good sign for SpaceX. Many large companies have run out of ideas of what to do with money, so they accumulate it in bank accounts, or do dividends/stock buybacks.
Your experience is not typical. Starlink has been working flawlessly for me for the last few years. It revolutionized Internet access in my remote area. HughesNet was the only game in town with speeds under 3Mbps and 10GB monthly data cap. Now everyone has Starlink with over 100 Mbps speeds. Never heard of issues.
I stated in a neighboring comment that our experiences could be anomalous. Based on how frustrating it was talking to them on multiple occasions with multiple different service reps I assumed it was endemic to their culture; a la Comcast. At the very least, Telsa seems to be trailing tens of thousands of angry customers online who are struggling with defective vehicles.
Tesla has some of the highest customer satisfaction scores among car brands. I'm not sure what you are referring about "tens of thousands of angry customers", you need to look at percentages and not absolute numbers. Tesla has had quality issues and problem with services but overall people are very happy as far as car brands go. And you have to be reasonable with your expectation for customer service of an internet service provider. There's only so much you can do to help an individual customer. Maybe it doesn't work in your area for some specific reason, you can't expect their engineers to spend time investigating that single case. If it was a broader issue i'm sure they would look. Did you try getting new Starlink receiver?
I appreciate you have had a bad experience, but to then think that's the overall experience is myopic. There are many highly remote areas where people can't speak more highly of Starlink.
And not that remote.
Internet provision not all that far out of major Australian cities can be abysmal. I'm only 30 minutes drive from the centre of Perth and my options are currently 5G (operating at about 4Mbit), Wireless Broadband (performance promise - the download speed will reach 25Mbit at least once in any given 24 hour period!) or Starlink, at a pretty stable 120/20.
I'd love to not have to pay for it, to use what local/national companies can provide, but so far nothing comes close.
I am informed that the wireless system is due to be upgraded to support much higher speeds, but that was supposed to happen this year and there's not a lot of this year left.
I would think 5G could really improve that situation. In the states we have the 600 MHz spectrum on T-Mobile and can pull down decent speeds 30-150mb through trees 15 miles from the tower. Upload is not great.
It could, if there was decent signal here.
At least in part that's been delayed because of someone in the area raising a band of nutters and giving the council hell about 5G killing her grandchildren. Sigh.
Might happen before too much longer - she managed to get the project to build the new antenna on private land killed (I'm sure much to the annoyance of the landowner, who was going to pocket a nice chunk of ground-rent). But now the local authority have given the go-ahead for one to be built on their land, and they're going to get the rent. She is apoplectic, which brings me great joy.
Absolutely, I've had 5G modems within the metro area of an Aussie city and it was horrible.
It may or may not be relevant to your case, but every time a story like this comes up I will remind people in general that fiber-optic cable is 50 cents per meter (probably $1 per meter Australian), wireless links cost equipment and a regulatory approval fee and are easier in less densely populated areas, and there are tons and tons of stories of people dissatisfied with their ISP creating a better competitor, your neighbours are likely as frustrated as you if they use the Internet, and there is no minimum size to an ISP.
If you set up a wireless ISP, you become a carrier and that is expensive.
TIO membership, the carrier licence fee, telecommunications interception and data retention obligations create recurring costs in the thousands of dollars a year before you serve a single customer.
I'm not sure there are tons of stories about people creating their own ISPs in Australia are there?
I know of companies that set up competing wireless infrastructure, and even one suburb around here that is served by a private network rather than the national network, so I guess they did it, but they have (at minimum) hundreds of customers.
At that price I might be looking at $1k-$2k just in fibre-optic cable, before we talk about any of the necessary equipment or the price of actually installing that cable underground. That covers starlink for quite a while.
I use Starlink in Italy and it's been flawless. To be honest it's like magic with how easy it was to setup and use.
One my colleagues tried Starlink at his cabin in the PNW and he had to return it. He just couldn't get a clear and wide enough line of sight through the tree cover. I wonder if that was your issue?
I think this is quite perceptive. Musk is a narcissist, and the driving motivators of narcissists are a bottomless need for praise and attention and contempt for others.
Musk is famous for being contemptuous of his employees, and he's starting to show more and more contempt for Rest of World. Cybertruck and X both reek of it.
Everyone here is assuming Musk is rational and SpaceX and Starlink will continue to develop rationally.
I don't think they will. He appears to be becoming more and more unhinged, and that's going to have negative effects on his fledgling empire.
how is cybertruck contemptuous lol?
It is contemptuous of all the smart people who HAD to have told Elon it was a terrible design.
i think it looks cool!
I was an early user of Starlink, starting with the original terminal (today I have the 3rd generation high performance terminal). Being in a very rural area in MT where there was never congestion in my cell and I have a very open view of the sky, it has worked well for me since day 1 and has only gotten better with time.
Personally, I monitored latency more than speed, as I always had enough speed to do whatever I wanted. When I first started using SL, latency averaged around 100ms (which compared to my previous provider HughesNet was amazing, but was high compared to ground based connections), but today averages around 35ms which is still technically higher than ground based connections, but for all practical purposes for me, is indisguishable from any other internet option, even for online gaming and live video streaming.
Although I did not monitor speed as regurarily, it averages around 300Mbps for me. Sometimes it exceeds 400Mbps (I just ran a speed test and got 420Mbps), and it is rarely less than 100Mbps.
I have contacted support twice, and always received quick replies. However, based on my monitoring the Starlink Reddit forum, customer support during their beta period did appear to have often been poor. And there was also a period of time where performance was poor in many populated regions as they started opening up the floodgates a bit sooner than they probably should have, resulting in slow speeds for people in many regions, until their satellite launches caught up to demand.
However, my impression is that both of these issues have improved significantly since Starlink left beta. I do still see some complaints about customer service, but anecdotally it appears less frequent. My impression is that they have the ability to remotely troubleshoot many hardware issues, and will quickly send a replacement if they can confirm a fault. I do worry about this though, as even a quick reply and a quick hardware replacement means several days of downtime.
Speed complaints are almost certainly less frequent than they used to be.
I have no doubt that your customer service hell story is true, and if that happened to me I would be just as turned off, but I think that, especially today, that is not the norm.
I have considered purchasing a spare terminal as a backup, but I do have some concerns. I have heard that terminals that stay unpowered and unconnected for very long periods of time get too behind on FW updates and essentially become bricked, I don't believe that is the case today but I am not 100% sure. Also, back when there used to be a queue for signing up, it would not have been practical to just set up a new account for the new terminal, but now that the sign up queue is gone, maybe it is an option today. I have not fully researched my options for this redundancy idea.
> moving back to our 6mbps
* Mbps
"and from what I've seen from Elon—I think this attitude comes right from the top."
Yep. Tesla infamously doesn't have a Public Relations department ( I assume because he got rejected by a woman who worked there) and
“press@twitter.com now auto responds with [poop emoji],” Musk tweeted.
Ladies and gentlemen, the richest man in the world!
You think it’s awesome that there’s a monopoly? And it’s owned by a single, politically derelict insane man?
I agree the pace of change is amazing. I marvel at everything spacex does. The starship catch was ridiculous.
But no competition always leads somewhere really bad eventually
A (temporary) monopoly is not as bad in something that wouldn't otherwise exist. If Elon Musk concentrated only on cars, or SpaceX had had another couple of launch failures and gone bust, this functionality might be 40 years away.
Not to say you're wrong, we all benefit from competition in the long run. We get it from a level playing field and preventing natural monopolists from locking the gate behind them.
I agree a (temporary) monopoly is totally OK. Normal in fact.
But the parent comment was specifically celebrating a long term, unassailable monopoly.
If you read it uncharitably. If you read it charitably, the “it’s awesome” can be referring to how quickly they made something work that otherwise wouldn’t for many more years.
> Starlink has a constellation two orders of magnitude bigger than any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome
I feel like you are being overly charitable. The ‘it’s awesome’ comes directly after the ‘it’s over’
But TBH I’m pretty cyclical at the best of times.
Odd. You seem to be overjoyed at the possible birth of a monopoly situation?
I think your emotions and tribal instinct would be better served towards something more benign, like football or baseball ...
Lest your voting intentions become equally malignant.
Perhaps they merely mean it's awesome to have one global satellite broadband service, and one semi-affordable launch option, instead of zero which is what we had before?
This part could have been phrased better in that case.
> It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
A more charitable interpretation would obviously be that the OP is very happy with the products and services that these companies build and provide and if the alternative is between this never happening and the companies becoming monopolies, at least in the short-term, they are OK with it.
More to it, monopolies eventually get broken up by regulations.
EU will step in eventually and regulate if it becomes too great of a concern, right now it's quiet because it hasn't reached critical mass yet.
Musk's empire is already being dismantled and the trend will continue, either by direct competition of laws.
You seem to have a lot of creativity in your judgements as none of this follows from his comment.
Can you read this sentence and tell me how none of this follows from it?
> SpaceX and Starlink have the same owner, both are private companies, with SpaceX launching 80% of the global space payload last year and rising, and Starlink has a constellation two orders of magnitude bigger than any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
It says: "It's a private monopoly, and IMO it's awesome"
It's litterally the last sentence:
...any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
The European Union wants its own satellite network to counter Starlink. It will be build by SpaceRISE, a consortium that include Airbus, Thales, Deutsche Telekom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2
https://www.spacerise.eu/
https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-s...
Any consortium that includes Deutsche Telekom is doomed to failure.
We've seen that when Germany introduced the Autobahn toll, it was a complete disaster.
If I had to guess who's going to have a Starlink competitor up next, I'd point to China.
That's not going to happen.
Remember when the EU wanted to build it's own internet browser? Or it's own search engine? Or it's own sovereign cloud?
None of these initiatives panned out. This is just political posturing when they have literally zero plans on how to achieve that.
But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) panned out and that's a closer analogue.
It took roughly 20 years for the EU to deploy 30 satellites.
How long do you think it's going to take to deploy 300 or so of them when the Ariane 6 had only one launch (with a partial failure) in the last 14 years?
If you want to build a constellation, you need the means to send payloads in space at a relatively low cost. The EU can't do that so it will be an expensive and slow endeavor and by the time those 300 satellites are up there, Space X will have deployed 10s of thousands of them.
You can say, that the EU does not want to compete with Space X or that their goals are not the same but either way, it's just too little too late IMHO.
I agree with your overall point, but that's a super deceptive metric to use. First Ariane 6 was scheduled for 2020 and only the first one ever launched.
Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use? Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others? Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson? The world's largest passenger aircraft? The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine? The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?
> Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use?
It actually is. But yes - that project was a shitshow for a long time.
Galileo HAS now offers 30cm accuracy with less than 100s convergence time not needing additional correction servers/stations.
Also spoofing resistant thanks to cryptographic signing (Galileo Open Service Navigation Message Authentication).
Both free for use. Forever. Classic GPS doesn't offer this.
My impression is that the US system does, but the higher accuracy is still reserved for military use?
The magic of the military GPS codes are AFAIR the extremely broad signals and use quasi non-repetitive codes. It's very difficult to jam and spoof.
Galileo HAS service is free for anyone to use.
> Or when they built their own GPS system and it ended up being far more accurate than any other system in use?
It took 20 years to deploy 30 satellites. You can call that a success I guess.
> The world's largest passenger aircraft
That is an Airbus project which is not an EU project. Airbus is the result of a merger between multiple companies and was not initiated by the EU.
> The weight loss drugs keeping American celebrities thin?
This drug is manufactured in Denmark by a Danish company. It has nothing to do with the EU.
> The first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine?
You mean the Pfizer vaccine? That's a German company, not an initiative from the EU.
> Or when they built the world's most powerful particle collider and discovered the Higgs boson?
They did build the CERN ... in 1954. Which we can agree was a long time ago. Since then the ability of the EU to deliver big projects such as for example Ariane 6 has gone down rather quickly. Also you ll notice that when the CERN was created, the EU as we know it today did not exist.
> Or when they built their own Earth observation system and it was also better than anyone elses? Or when they built their own weather monitoring constellation and forecast model and it ended up superior to all others?
Ok and so what? Does that invalidate my arguments? A few successes amongst a ton of failures. That does not inspire any confidence.
That is why I am skeptical but I am prepared to eat my own words if the EU has a complete up and running constellation of 300 satellites in orbit by 2035.
The EU has some great companies for sure but these companies did not get there because the EU helped them or because the EU decreed that such companies have to exists.
Expect it to be worse than OneWeb for more money
So between the US, the EU, and China's version of starlink how many satellites will that require? I see Starlink will use 42,000 when fully completed so that is 3 * 42,000?
Which is precisely why it will not be built. Too many cooks in the kitchen and too many known grifters with their own vested interests.
SpaceX, as much as there is to dislike about its founder, has the advantage of being one company with a founder at the top who has made it very clear that only his vision matters and intra-company political bullshit just Does Not Fly.
That constellation doesn't even play in the same league as Starlink.
It makes some sense for Europe, but it will likely be more for government use and a few large European commercial uses. This has no chance what so ever in the larger global consumer market.
And the claim that it will exist by 2027 is utterly hilarious.
But even this small constellation is way beyond what European industry can currently do, they need to basically mobilize every European space company to do this, and all of them working together to get this working. Lets see them pull this off first.
I'm sorry but if you think this has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding you need to learn more about the launch and satellite comms industries. This is political posturing, not a plan.
I don't want to spend hours typing on this so let's just say this; Arianespace is on the "team", so it's going to launch on Ariane 6, a rocket that was obsolete before it launched (and it was not a successful launch).
The idea that you can launch mass on Ariane6 to challenge Starlink is like saying you can win NASCAR on a horse and buggy. I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally the price differential between Starship and the rest. This initiative is a joke.
A6 maiden launch wasn't completely successful but that hardly matters in a debate involving SpaceX.
What matters more is that it won't launch again until 2025 and will never be cheap to launch due to the expensive SRBs.
And ESA knows this - hence the spluttering of paltry funds towards cheaper vehicles.
Naturally, as every other carrier elsewhere in the world save for Falcon.
The EU's one skill is to turn my tax money into shit ever better than my socialist government. If any private company was as reckless with its customer's money as European governments, they would be fraudulent.
> there will be no competitors
Define the time frame. 1 year? Quite likely. 10 years? nothing is less sure ... But in 50 years, I bet SpaceX doesn't even exist anymore. Companies rises and falls and it's always been like this (and the same applies to Empires, Countries or .. Species). It's always a matter of timeframe
It'll be interesting for sure. similar to requesting Chrome to become separate from Google, there might some law enforcement scenarios where they'll have to split things.
There will be several competitors in 5-10 years. Due to immense military capability of this technology. Same thing happens with GPS.
Yes, being able to manufacturer and deploy your satellite services at cost is an insurmountable competitive advantage. There is one other player in this space, Rocket Lab. They are 5-10 years behind SpaceX, but are the #2 launched rocket in the USA and 2/3rds of their revenue is from satellite manufacturing. I think something like 25-50% of the non-SpaceX satellites in-operation have a Rocket Lab logo somewhere on the craft. The next step in their vertical integration plan is to launch their own constellation and provide some sort of space-based service. Although it's several years away and pending the scale-up of their medium launch vehicle test flying next year.
Their CEO has come to the same conclusion as you. The major space companies of the future have to be vertically integrated if they want to compete. The founder has a pretty cool story. From New Zealand. Built a rocket bike and a rocket pack, but didn't go to college. Being a foreign national without traditional education meant he couldn't work in the space sector due ITAR. So he started Rocket Lab in 2006.
Their small lift vehicle (300kg) was the fastest vehicle from first orbit to 50 orbital launches, and tracking to be the fastest to hit 100 orbital launches. Their medium lift vehicle (13,000kg), if it makes orbit next year, will become the most capital efficient ($300m spent) MLV developed, and the fastest MLV to go from announcement to orbit (5ish years).
After Rocket Lab and SpaceX, the competition is pretty thin. Blue Origin is launching their HLV (40,000kg) New Glenn for the first time in early 2025 and there are a couple of startup and traditional defense contractor projects, but all unproven.
SpaceX is so insanely far ahead of everyone else. They will hit 100+ launches in 2024, Rocket Lab is at 15ish with their 300kg vehicle, and planning to scale their 13,000kg vehicle to 3 launches in 2026, 5 in 2027 and 7 in 2028. New Glenn will be on a similar ramp.
If you are right and Starlink will have no competition, then why would it not be regulated? Generally speaking, monopolies are regulated to prevent price gouging, including natural monopolies. And if its not a monopoly, then clearly the game is not over.
Starlink mostly does have competition but they are seeking out specifically underserved customers which is an ever decreasing market. 5 or so years ago I signed up for the waiting list because there was no reasonable internet, 6mb DSL. Before I got the invite there was 4G for $50 a month. Now there's two 5G service providers and Fiber is suppose to come very soon.
In the market for internet service, Starlink is a disruptor to existing ISPs. Especially for those servicing rural areas. I don't understand a reflexive reach to encumber a nascent business model with additional regulations. What problem are you trying to solve?
Because it is not abusing its position. Monopolies are not an inherent bad, they just tend to start abusing their position, and when they do then they get handled.
This is more common with public companies than private companies though.
Founders have their own life, honor, ethics, desires, etc. which usually help strongly keep the company on a positive track. e.g. Valve Corporation.
This is the American model of anti-trust, very much not the European model (which explicitly targets competition for its own sake even when consumers are not harmed by the monopolistic behavior).
Just because you like a company (and as a consumer, I like Steam) doesn’t mean it’s not acting monopolistically.
Valve is certainly abusing its position. It charges extremely high rents for the services it offers because of its dominance as a marketplace.
It does provide a host of services and does them well, but whether they are value for the platform fee is another question. Using those services creates lock-in and friction to port to other platforms. By providing them as part of the package, Steam has extinguished companies that used to provide those services, meaning that it’s even harder to provide the same functionality elsewhere.
Companies always abuse their position. Its basic capitalism; markets only thrive and are fair when both buyers and sellers have multiple options, and it would be odd to assume this time is the exception.
So start drafting up the policies if they need time, but don't enact them yet. I'm not a fan of the owner, but if the product is good and the price is fair, leave it be until it becomes a problem. Let's not punish innovation.
Because it's owned by the second most powerful man on the planet, who has power over all of the would-be regulators. Politics matters.
What people sometimes don't understand about monopolies, specially of a new product, is that the competition, in additions to all the competition that already exists for internet, is simply not having it.
SpaceX can just asked for an absurdly high price, because if they want to sell into the broader consumer market, people aren't going to pay 1000s of $ a month to watch Netflix.
That is called the monopoly price:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_price
Are you Elon? Also monopolies are never awesome.
Perhaps you’re not aware that SpaceX sued the US government to break ULAs monopoly on national security launches and brought down costs.
And perhaps you’re unaware just how many national telcos world wide have a national monopoly and for the first time ever may have to compete with Starlink?
Perhaps you’re also unaware of the grip that Russian rocket engine manufacturers had with the RD180 engine on the US launch sector until recently and the positive impace SpaceX has had on that.
On the one hand you’re arguing that SpaceX is awesome for breaking monopolies. On the other you’re saying it’s awesome that “it’s over” and they own the market now.
Perhaps you missed the irony.
There's no real non cost barrier here
Honest question because it's something I've internally debated over. Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?
No, organizational slack and a willingness to spend on r&d is required for labs to exist. Monopolies can afford expensive r&d.
> Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?
The implication here is that Bell Labs was a good thing. While I find it hard to say I wouldn't have loved to have been a part of something like that, I think we may have been better off without it, considering what it squashed.
A research environment like Bell Labs freed from the behemoth of AT&T would have been a great boon to society had it stayed around in a similar form to today.
AT&T was heavily regulated (common carrier) through much of it's history and was a big part of the reason that BellLabs was so influential. Not true of SpaceX and Starlink.
Would we have had a single lab that became famous for so many things? No. Would we have got thousands of smaller labs that added up to more innovation? Maybe.
Must a monopoly always be bad?
For example: Mitutoyo seems to have a monopoly on producing accurate digital calipers that have battery life measured in years (using one dainty little LR44 alkaline cell). They use approximately fuck-all for power whether switched on or off.
Certainly, the market is open for others to produce an actually-competitive product with similar performance. All it takes is for the competition figure out how to do it and put them into production, since any necessary patents expired long ago.
But they simply have not done so.
So here we are today, wherein: The free market has decided that Mitutoyo has a defacto monopoly on tools of this capability.
Is that... is that implicitly a problem, somehow?
>For example: Mitutoyo seems to have a monopoly on producing accurate digital calipers that have battery life measured in years (using one dainty little LR44 alkaline cell). They use approximately fuck-all for power whether switched on or off.
metrology is vast. I am a fan of Mitutoyo too, but this is a poor example of a monopoly.
I have literally 3 different brands , including Mitutoyo, on my desk, and the Mitutoyo unit offers the worst value-to-dollar ratio and it's the hardest to read at a glance; it's only there because it's the coolant-proof unit I have on hand at the moment.
i'd gladly give up a bit of battery life for a backlight and some bigger character display; thankfully the market responded by offering this from about numerous other manufacturers..
>So here we are today, wherein: The free market has decided that Mitutoyo has a defacto monopoly on tools of this capability.
well, no.
Mitutoyo is great, but American shops, especially any DoD affiliated ones, push American made Starett like crazy. All of my less-discerning maker friends use Amazon/Harbor Freight/Chicago no-name Alibaba glass scale calipers and they're perfectly happy with them. My German friends often use Vogel/Hoffman/Mahr.
But anyway, whatever. I love my Mitus, and I even have a pair of their very first electronic scale calipers in a drawer somewhere ; the battery life was great even then.
All of my less-discerning maker friends use Amazon/Harbor Freight/whatever calipers and complain about the battery life.
Hence, the source for articles like this: https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/cheap-caliper-hack-keeps-em-...
Mitutoyo isn't a monopoly, not even close. Just because a company offers a product that is arguably just slightly better in one aspect than others does not make it a monopoly. (I say this with a 10 year old pair of harbor freight calipers on my desk that easily have a 2 year battery life with regular usage. Also, Dial Calipers.)
But to answer your question, must they? No. Do they tend to be bad? Yes. Does their behavior get worse over time? Typically.
Yeah I should think so. edit: I don’t use this category of tools so for the sake of argument I will assume your assertion on Mitutoyo’s monopoly is accurate.
Without serious competitors, Mitutoyo has little reason to push the boundaries of performance or reduce costs further. Monopolies can result in complacency, where companies become gatekeepers rather than innovators.
In this case Mitutoyo may have a fine product but the monopoly introduces a systemic risk of lack of innovation or price gouging.
You’re assuming the market has chosen rationally but economic conditions, patent legacies, and lack of competition might simply be symptoms of market failure rather than optimal outcomes.
Thiel and Masters make the case eloquently in Zero to One.
if you don't want monopolies then you need to create regulations that make it easy for new startups to compete
I agree, but given Elons current position there is basically no chance that’s going to happen in the next four years.
The future of the US: 90% of cars will be Tesla (other carmakers will go bankrupt), internet access and space exploration will be monopolized as well.
Attempting to make Ford disappear would be a political suicide.
Yes, Ford will be on that 10% left.
There are dozens of satellite launch systems around the world. Its hardly a monopoly.
There is a difference between having a monopoly and having a lower cost per unit of mass put into orbit.
For the monopolist they are!
Historically they have been even better for consumers than monopolists.
They are when you can regulate the crap out of them to benefit everyone after they’ve benefited from government contracts, FCC governance, an educated population, etc.
I can’t think of anything less likely to happen in the coming years.
SpaceX has no qualms launching competitors constellations, it has done so with Kupier already.
Sure the prices might not be quite as good as what Starlink gets but definitely comparable in big-O notation (especially compared to other launch providers).
> It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome
It’s not over precisely because it’s vertically integrated. Buyers want to maintain leverage. SpaceX wants to avoid forced divestiture. Hence the airlines inking deals with AST Mobile, and SpaceX lofting their birds.
I would even go to say that the reason Starlink exists is to use up SpaceX excessive launch capacity. With its idea of building assembly lines and reusable rockets, can launch more stuff than there is market for. So they create their own market. Starlink launches are almost free besides the fuel, as they have rockets lying around that are already paid for.
A state-funded competitor could come up though. China for instance may want their own satellite internet for strategic reasons, and fund that. I am sure Russia would be interested too. This in turn, will pay for development of a reusable rocket program.
Lets cool down a bit. Falcon 9 launches cost much more then 'just the fuel'. Estimated launch price is still 10-20 million $. The Upper stage is an expensive thing to build. Operations cost are also not that low. Fuel cost are only like a couple 100k$.
China is deftly building something. Russia doesn't have a snowball chance in hell of building something like Starlink.
> SpaceX and Starlink have the same owner
To be precise: Starlink is a division of the SpaceX corporation, it's not a separate entity.
What a ridiculous comment. You must still be holding long on IBM?
>Folks it’s game set and match, the trophy has been handed over and the crowd has gone home
Has this ever been the case in the history of business?
It won't be easy, but forever is a long time.
>I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks
Swansat anyone?
https://web.archive.org/web/20080119080404/http://swansat.co...
Well competitors are going to have to use SpaceX rockets to get their satellites up. So no matter what SpaceX is winning
Even if you like Elon and his companies monopolies are still bad. He is not going to live forever, somebody else will be in charge sooner or later and that person/group may not adhere to same principles.
Monopolies due to the State granting permissions to only one company, or gaining advantages due to coercion or lobbying are indeed terrible.
But monopolies due to excellence in the development of the product, like Starlink, are not bad at all. In any case these are extremely rare and tend to last very little time.
No. They have already allowed Starlink competitors to launch on Space X rockets.
There are multiple players working on constellations of low-orbit satellites competing with Starlink
While you're technically correct, the parent is more correct. Competitors have to pay normal launch rates. The competitive service needs to include those costs to end users.
Starlink "pays" for launches at cost. While we don't know what SpaceX's cost margins are, they are not trivial. To setup a low orbit constellation is extremely expensive and competitors lose millions per launch that Starlink gets to reinvest.
There's been 136 launches of Falcon 9 for Starlink. ~US$62m per launch? If their margins are 20% that's that's $1.6b in savings. And I bet F9's margins are closer to 50% - supporting Starship and more.
Sure, but Starlink launches are at-cost, which is much, much cheaper than the cost for external customers.
Starlink also has launch priority. Good luck with getting 50 launches a year as a customer...
Musk is similar to Henry Ford in that he currently has an advantage due to the innovative nature of his business. However, over time, his ideas will likely be replicated by other businesses or even governments.
I'm not entirely convinced that becoming a strong political figure by aligning with one side is a wise long-term strategy. This election was a loss for the opposition, not just because of their poor communication of achievements but also due to the ordinary cycles of politics. People often place blame on those in power for any problems during their tenure. The pendulum of trust will eventually swing back to the other side. Musk's political aspirations also pose a risk for him, as they could jeopardize his relationships with allies within the currently dominant party.
What I’m suggesting is that monopolies like this often collapse when they become too politically entrenched, threatening the very power structures that initially enabled their rise and powet accumulation.
US tax dollars at work.
SpaceX bought up competitors like Swarm Technologies to kill them.
It's a monopoly engaging in anti-competitive practices, and should be broken up.
Swarm wasn't a competitor to SpaceX at the time, Swarm and Starlink wasn't aiming at the same market at all. And they didn't exactly kill Swarm. They launched Swarm satellites for a while and there was talk of integrating Swarm transceivers on Starlink satellites. I think once direct-to-cell became a reality, the idea of Swarm was subsumed into that project since it should do everything Swarm did but better. It's worth noting that the Swarm founders are now working on the direct-to-cell project.
I’m sure they have the official MAGATEL licenses ready to go for the FCC as well.
You don't need LEOs to have text direct to cell. You can cover with a lot fewer satellites in higher otbits. China had this since last year, though through special protocols, not LTE, so you need new hardware. But the hardware fits into a regular cell phone.
It’s awesome but also worrying. Elon is a political timebomb. I wouldn’t put it past him to selectively deny people usage based on political alignment, sex etc. At least for now there are much worse geosynchronous competitors, but some future state where one doesn’t exist is worrying.
Musk is at least a named individual, somewhat accountable for his decisions. Yes him having the ability to cut people off is worrying, but I'm less worried about him doing it than e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation, or whoever cut off Kiwi Farms (where we still don't really know who's actually responsible).
>(where we still don't really know who's actually responsible)
Keffals and Fong-Jones
Allegedly. Even assuming they were the people who wanted that to happen, we don't know how/why they have the authority and who to vote out if we don't like their decision, whereas Musk is expected to be appointed by the duly elected president who made it clear to the electorate that this was his plan.
>we don't know how/why they have the authority
Oh we know damn well. The good old "scream so loud the issue cannot be ignored anymore" issue. Especially with Fong-Jones' background in tech with access to a lot of vocal influencer figures in the field.
Not to mention the big amount of brain-melted teens who immediately assume anything said about anyone who dares to express negative opinions about what the aforementioned teens believe as true and create a supposedly warranted lynch mob against them.
Wouldn’t put it past him? Can you offer even a single example?
There are countless examples of Musk selectively banning people on Twitter based on political belief, such as this one [1]. And of course, he banned the @elonjet account, even after specifically saying he would not [2]. More specifically to StarLink, he banned Ukrainian forces from using them around Crimea [3].
[1] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-suspends-journ...
[2] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456
[3] https://archive.is/jfdy4
2022, cut out crimea.
Not true and still off today.
I've not seen anyone claim they used to be able to use equipment in Crimea at some point in the past and now it doesn't work.
I believe by the time Starlink arrived in Ukraine Crimea was already occupied and post "referendum" and providing service there would be like providing service to Russia, no?
No, because the "referendum" was meaningless and had no effect on the peninsula's sovereignty.
Which since 1991 has been and remains Ukrainian.
my question was rhetorical.
it is nonsense to say it was sovereign and at the same time belongs to ukraine since 1991
what it is, is an occupied territory of ukraine fully controlled by russia with russian military on it
that's whom starlink service in Crimea would benefit
I didn't say "it was sovereign" (all by itself). I referred to "its sovereignty", in terms of who it belonged to (both in 1991 and now). The two contexts are entirely different.
what it is, is an occupied territory of ukraine fully controlled by russia with russian military on it
And yet -- still entirely under Ukrainian sovereignty. It seems you're a bit unclear as to what the term means. It doesn't mean "military control".
Point mean: just because the Russian currently military sits on the Crimea, doesn't mean it's "part of Russia".
And no, it's not just a symbolic difference. It's a hugely, hugely important one.
my question was rhetorical.
Indeed, it looks like you're shooting into the wind here. I'll have to leave to explore these topics on your own.
Whether to provide Crimea with Starlink or not depends on who sits there. Similar reason why all Crimeans got under sanctions immediately after annexation. Not just Starlink but every other Western company respecting sanctions stopped doing business with Crimea. Same with Donetsk and Luhansk.
No one cares if it's "legally" Ukraine. People care about the "effectively".
Legally always depends on who you ask. Some will tell you that Taiwan is part of PRC for example. Maybe at least half of the world will. However Taiwan is not under sanctions because effectively it isn't under PRC.
> Indeed, it looks like you're shooting into the wind here
I am just trying to reduce you some confusion by explaining some basics. Starlink was not yet in Ukraine when Crimea was annexed and the world mostly sat and just watched it happen. Therefore the musk-man could not "cut out crimea". There's nothing to argue about. Just don't spread misinfo please, there's enough of it.
No one cares if it's "legally" Ukraine.
That's objectively just not true at all.
Legally always depends on who you ask.
Also not true at all.
Of course, you can always find people who say something wildly at odds with the overwhelming international consensus, and in any case completely lacking in any intrinsic substance.
But that doesn't mean what they're saying is even potentially valid, and that the matter "depends" on what they say.
See also: "Nothing is true" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42244709
Therefore the musk-man could not "cut out crimea".
I never said anything about Musk or Starlink. If you think I did, then we're definitely talking past each other.
You have it reversed. It’s fair, it’s hard to tell if you haven’t worked in the launch industry. But drive out to Mojave and go talk to the dozens of companies out there. Many of them have reusable designs. But also if you look at the financials, I think many would laugh at the funding many of these companies get when you compare to Silicon Valley. Clear vaporware frequently gets bigger investing.
The problem with launch companies is that you have nothing to launch. It’s a vicious coupled system, because it also means you can’t bring prices down to increase the number of launches. You need scale to bring prices down. You can’t implement the Silicon Valley model of run all your competitors (ULA) without dumping 10x down the drain compared to your Uber or Netflix.
So the reason it works is because SpaceX is its own customer. You are bootstrapping. The satellite internet idea isn’t even new. I was pitching this to a company I worked for in the early 2010’s (inspired by the brand new planet labs), but what helped was I even found white papers by Qualcomm and others that clearly had the exact same idea. My boss dismissed it because the failures of Celestri, Teledesic, Iridium, and Globealstar. I’m sure this is why I was able to find those white papers too, and very clearly so did SpaceX.
The difference here is that SpaceX is a launch company AND has the funding of a billionaire that is willing to take the risk [0].
Imo, the real question is who pitched Kuiper and did they do it before Starlink? It’s a good and obvious idea, so I’d put money down that someone did. I’m pretty sure they’re fucked now as there’s legitimate reasons you want LEO satellite mega constellation to be handled by a monopoly. You just can’t have a dozen of those companies running around.
[0] side rant: why the fuck are more billionaires not willing to take big risks. Especially those with at least a billion liquidated from their stock. What’s the point of that money? You’re so wealthy it’s effectively impossible to go broke. The real exception is if your wealth is mostly paper and you’re defrauding people. At 10 billion it basically will not happen even then. If you can stash (not even) 50 million, you never have to work ever again to live in high luxury.
I would not count China out.
There is nothing “awesome” about monopolies
Angela Merkel is upset that Elon owns 60% of all satellites in space now: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/22/angela-merkel-...
The conpetition is there already. In Europe you can get satellite Internet for around $40 a month. It’s slower than Starlink (transfer is decent, but the latency is in the hundreds), but much cheaper.
> The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink.
Don't forget over $15bln of tax money they got for doing barely anything so far.
Barely nothing? Are you out of your mind?
pLEO, Starshield, SDA, NSSL, Commercial Crew, Commercial Cargo?????
Only HLS is in view. And it's less than 5 billion.
Everything listed above is delivered and has more expensive alternatives.
I don't know about everything else but 3bln out of that 15 were supposed to fund entire Moon mission and he burnt through that cash delivering a handful of suborbital empty metal pipes ... sorry, the last one was containing a banana to add insult to injury.
That's ridiculous. There's no extra money coming. This is a firm fixed price contract. And the original plan was 2028 before Trump changed things.
Most of the 15billion is for already delivered deliverables. (You have absolutely nothing to stand on) Blue Origin is also going to the moon and received more money for a smaller lander.
Where's their rocket?
The Moon lander contract is less than what SpaceX will make from starlink alone in 2024.
I think it's important to recognize the irony in how much SpaceX and Tesla benefit from government programs and funds that he now wants to turn off as part of DOGE, but you can't say SpaceX has barely done anything.
All he has to do is go to the Florida Space Coast. He'll feel what they do multiple times a week.
It's none of that, it's the willingness of Starlink to run at a massive loss.
Yeah but if they were like, "Lemme tell you how to provide Internet for boats and Iranians in the most expensive way possible," it doesn't sound like that exciting of a business anymore now does it?
If anyone from Starlink or SpaceX is reading these comments here’s what you want to do: Sell your own branded trail cam with solar charging and LTE from orbit. You can charge $25-$40 a month for unlimited pictures sent from the cam. This would open up hunters, nature enthusiasts, and researchers to be able to place their hardware anywhere in the field without worrying about connectivity. Here in SWVA we have deep hollows that can’t get LTE without dense tower coverage that we don’t have the population to justify, but you can grab a satellite connection.
After writing this out I’m beginning to doubt the market would be big enough but I know at least 20 people with 2 or more LTE cams for deer season.
I work with researchers that deploy all sorts of solar powered sensor equipment in remote parts of New Zealand. Realistically Starlink would need to support NB-IoT and LTE-M which is what these kinds of devices are moving towards (if they need cellular connectivity). These are low power variants of 4G and 5G.
Even if you have solar and a fixed platform, you usually want to deploy as little solar as possible. Especially if you need to carry the gear on foot. So minimising power consumption is really important.
Ridiculously niche comments from experts like this is why HN is so special. Thank you.
No problem. It’s also why I love HN.
> This would open up hunters,
Christ what more do you guys need to shoot a rabbit.
Hunters observe wildlife. They don't just shoot wildlife whenever they feel like it.
i guess they were confused by the giant rifle attached to their "observing" scopes
Agreed. As an avid hunter/angler I've been trying to make things more difficult the last few years instead of easier. At some point the trail cams start making people look more like butchers IMO. Similarly in the fishing world, tools like Livescope are becoming deeply embedded in the community.
For me, the draw of the woods and rivers is the chance to disconnect from technology and reconnect to nature.
My in-laws live in your county, and Starlink is the only Internet that actually works. Thankfully the TN side runs fiber on the power poles.
Additionally, Starlink was a complete lifesaver during Helene.
Isn’t tree cover a problem for propagation of wavelengths used in satellite comms?
>Direct to Cell works with existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky.
No new antennas implies we're in the 1-6 GHz region. Should be fine?
Having had starlink before, yes. I needed a direct line of sight to the sky to receive service.
This service uses a different radio link using LTE. That’s why you don’t need the dish. They had to launch new satellites with the extra radio gear. So your past experience is not necessarily representative.
Lte antennas of almost arbitrary length exist
Interesting idea. I can build this and open source it. I imagine there is equivalent hardware over LTE already?
In Finland, i get 5Mbps LTE uplink for EUR 4 per month, for a trailcam, with unlimited use (at least in principle). So $20 per month sounds expensive, but obviously there are places where one has no earthly LTE and then it could be justified.
In general, having low-bandwidth Starlink IoT connections globally accessible would be just great, I can see lots of usage.
Finland is fairly flat and has _excellent_ LTE coverage. Being in Norway myself, which isn't flat, but still has fantastic LTE coverage for political reasons, I do often find myself thinking like you, and need to be reminded of how abysmal coverage is in rural North America (and even in for example rural Germany).
Current US mobile coverage and prices are like europe in 2002
$25-$40 is insane. Spypoint offers 250 pics for free a month and 1000 for $6 a month. As long as you can connect to a cell tower (1 bar is enough). That probably covers 80 % of hunt properties.
https://www.spypoint.com/en/spypoint-experience/plans
At least in the Western United States, most hunting is done on publicly owned land, and there's enormous swaths of public land with absolutely zero cell phone coverage.
This could also be a hardware startup. If only there were some entrepreneur types around...
Presumably there's a market for this in other niches, e.g. weather monitoring, defense/border monitoring, etc... The question is whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Where's the really valuable data?
I recall not too long ago a startup advertising exactly this idea for farms. It was some box with various sensors (and output lines) that you could configure to do a multitude of tasks
As long as it doesn't need near-real-time viewing (or if it does, said viewing can be billed for as a separate per-user fee), it wouldn't cost anything extra to SpaceX in the sense that those cameras could use free capacity, only transmitting when nothing else is.
Surf cam would be amazing too. Just tie a solar, starlink cam to a pier and check in.
I see a lot of surf cams online, are those usually custom hardware?
Ten years ago I installed one cam for Surfline and at that time it's was an off-the-shelf but expensive outdoor camera (stock firmware) connected to a locally-based broadband.
The only one in my area wants a subscription fee :-(
I guess they need to contract with businesses or parks? It would be cool to buy a cheap one and just tie it to a tree or something.
Off grid cabins could use this too.
Nah, those should use a proper Starlink dish.
Direct to cell bandwidth is obviously very limited.
A proper starlink dish requires real power, which isn’t reliable in an off grid situation.
You need very little bandwidth because there is typically not a lot happening at a remote cabin.
iot is coming next year so you can do all you want then
I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands
One space based cell plan for the whole world
It’s not going to work inside buildings, and they would need to charge you a fairly astronomical fee per minute.
However, a Starlink mini dish can let you cheaply make calls from basically anywhere with some minor setup.
> astronomical fee
Compared to what?
Traditional satellite phone corporations used to charge something like 8 USD/min.
Compared to leveraging the existing cellular networks and using satellites for rare edge cases. ~8$/minute or say 1$/minute averages out to a more reasonable number when less than 5% of calls use it.
Not for somebody whose job is outside the existing networks, such as sailors.
Sailors can make calls using the ships Wi-Fi via full sized Starlink dishes, they need coverage on land.
But even ignoring that the contention is low in the middle of the ocean and satellites have hardware either way, driving down the market rate for calls at sea.
The setup cost for Starlink on a boat is still massively higher than on land.
Yes, but compared to the setup for equivalent satellite services it is very cheap. The Inmarsat antennas need active compensation and they sit inside big radomes, while the Starlink antennas are smaller and do not need to move thanks to being phased arrays.
The bandwidth, latency and stability that Starlink has is also leagues better than geosynch based solutions, for a much lower monthly price.
Even without considering the better performance, the price makes it viable now to have a internet connections in places it did not make financial sense before.
250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean and unlimited on waterways, higher demand is cheaper per GB ex: 1TB for 1,000$/month. https://www.starlink.com/boats
Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute allowing a 24/7 conversion for for a full month for 250$, or more realistically mostly sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls. The actual hardware installation is relatively trivial compared to operating a boat.
Is the reason that Starlink charges so much more for boats is low competition? Or is there something obviously much more complex / expensive about beaming gigs of data from space over the ocean vs land? I don't write this post with any spite; I am genuinely curious.
Starlink is normally a single hop from a home to a satellite and then down to a base station hooked up to fiber. To work over the ocean you pass messages between satellites potentially several hops and then eventually down to a base station, but that’s inherently constrained as with all mess topologies you get far less bandwidth than initially seems possible.
So in part it’s overhead to deal with inefficiencies and in part it’s a limited customer base for a lot of hardware, but it’s also just what the market will bare.
When it launched there was no inter-satellite connectivity at all.
> all mess topologies
all mesh topologies
It’s priced based on value. 8oz of Coke costs vary at a supermarket shelf, gas station and an airplane.
There are plenty of YouTube videos showing Starlink on basic sailing yachts.
It takes a day at most if you want a simple setup.
My friend is a boat captain in Florida.He says that Starlink on his boat changed his life.
I think OP is pointing out the pun in this case.
I concur, and I appreciate the pun :)
Terrestrial fees
Hope there are no hidden Extra Terrestrial fees
LEO fees?
Yep, definitely beyond sky-high prices :)
Well it's n̵o̵t̵ rocket science.
The inside buildings part would be mostly solved with VoWiFi. At least anywhere with a network you'd be comfortable connecting to.
Could future versions work in buildings? What’s the issue there? Just that it’s father away than a cell tower is?
Starlink signals are essentially line of sight right now. The bump up in power to penetrate even a single layer of drywall is almost certainly way outside the power budget of a Starlink satellite.
Whether a material is opaque to it. Buildings are transparent to lower frequency radio. Imagine that the satellites transmitted in visible light, doesnt really matter how powerful it is if you're in a room with no windows.
My 5g doesn't work inside of many buildings.
because providers retain their more penetrating frequencies on the 3G or 4G signal to maintain universal coverage
keeping the close-by phones on 5G to ease congestion and letting the fringe sit on 3G or 4G makes sense
Definitely on T Mobile, then
Could Starlink receivers not act as a mesh like network and broadcast LTE themselves, gaining inside coverage.
Starlink is used in low density areas. You could setup LTE towers at a remote mine and use Starlink for the back haul, but for their customers using WiFi calling gives the same benefit without extra hardware.
Starlink would need to license LTE spectrum in every country it operated. Much easier to work with local carriers and piggyback on their existing bandwidth.
> license LTE spectrum in every country
I think this is the biggest reason. All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers. Why? Preventing losing national capabilities, government revenue (taxes, licenses & other domestic carrier fees, lobbying, kickbacks, bribes, etc) and, most importantly, losing the ability to snoop at will on calls and data (at least metadata if not full-take). Even in countries where the major carriers are all based in other nations, existing towers being land-based creates jurisdiction for the government to control and tax.
While many westernized democracies like to proclaim their commitment to freedom, rule of law and individual human rights - in practice there are currently zero governments on earth free enough to not consider loss of that absolute control over citizen's private communication an existential threat. Even in places where existing laws don't currently make it illegal, as soon as technology enables it - it will certainly be made illegal (by any means necessary). I assume SpaceX is smart enough to understand this reality.
> All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers
The ITU is pretty overt about how frequency allocation governance works. Absolutely no one wants a free-for-all frequency regime, for a multitude of reasons - not even SpaceX.
You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei.
1. Pretty much every country on earth with a government regulates how radio spectrum is licensed for telecommunications, not for the purposes of control as an end, but coordination and preventing interference.
- "...without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse..."
Well, how did those predictions of the future perform?
- "The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/21/...
Thank you for further buttressing my point: granting a foreign company with military links access to your telecoms infrastructure is a bad idea, for tangible reasons. Worse if there's no local oversight.
> You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei.
Radio Free Europe has been doing something similar successfully for what, 70 years? Of course being in violation of a given country's laws is a tradeoff.
An example is flying over India. Satellite internet service is not permitted. It cuts off the moment your flight crossed land in India and usually re-actives immediately after leaving.
Would they? Given the satelites are in space I would assume pirate radio loopholes apply.
Pirate radio is a lot less fun to run if you need it to be two-way.
Because you need your customers on the ground to run their own pirate transmitter (which can be located and penalized by ground authorities), and your satellites need to receive signals from the ground - which ground authorities from first-world countries can make arbitrarily difficult, deciphering a multitude of <1W transmission from customer cellphones is kinda difficult when a modern electronic warfare radar transmitter is tracking your satellite at the same time.
I can’t imagine satellites being able to compete with cell towers in bandwidth or capacity.
There are millions of cell towers.
During a major event, cellular companies set up portable cell towers (COWs) and even these are not enough.
And a cell tower that is right next to you still pales in comparison to a single cable in bandwidth.
Yup. Small cell size is actually a feature for cell phone communications. You have to share bandwidth with everyone in your cell - the smaller the cell, the less crowding.
This is a general starlink issue, which is why I don't understand how is it economically or physically viable in crowded areas, such as cities, where the majority of human population lives.
It's not. They don't have the capacity to cover densely populated areas and it will always be cheaper to build out infrastructure on land in those areas than to launch something into space.
Honestly try as I might, I have failed to undestand your reply. Who is 'they' in your post?
Aren't you actually agreeing with me in actuality (in that cells are better than satellites for densely populated areas)?
It's not a matter of agreeing accidentally, they just plain agree with you.
They aren't trying to compete with cell towers. SpaceX is partnered with traditional carriers in each country where LTE service will be available and the Starlink service is intended to supplement those services by providing service where existing cell towers can't.
I suspect the primary reason they took this approach is that licensing for these frequencies is astronomical if you want to cover the entire US. That would bleed them dry as they build out the constellation and try to ramp up user count.
Partnering with a national carrier handles the licensing aspect and if the tech pans out the economics could shift to allow them to buy national spectrum and offer direct service.
It's not acquiring the spectrum that's an issue right now. It's it not interfering with terrestrial networks. Euro carriers already pushing back against relaxing emissions restrictions for DTC specifically: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10930985930353/1
Help me: Is DTC "direct-to-consumer"? I tried to Google for it, but I didn't find anything obvious. Else, hat tip for this FCC find! What a great share on HN.
“Direct to cell”
Adding to this: I wish I can just buy a 4G modem for my cubesat and get 24/7 access through Starlink without waiting for my cubesats to be in view of my groundstation...
Have you looked into AWS Ground Station? I don’t know if it’s economical, or has enough locations for 24/7 access, but it might be better than once an orbit.
All ground station as a service are limited by radio licensing, you need to apply for transmit license to the country that the groundstation is located to legally transmit to your cubesat. Its not as easy as spinning up an EC2 instance
Some regulation horror: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/Pages/API.aspx . Worst case you need to wait 7 years! to get your radio license
Compare this to a 4G modem / smartphone, its amazing that you don't need to file spectrum license to another country version of FCC everytime you travel. It. Just. Worked.
That sounds super fascinating. Can you tell us more about your cubesat?
i wouldnt need more than 1MBit to ssh into my servers comfortably, and pull directions to the nearest "full power downlink" if i want to listen to music while i work or something
There's IDRS that does this for satellites.
At first I thought you misspelled TDRSS but then I found out that IDRS is a thing: https://www.idrsspace.com/
Its too big and power hungry to fit inside 10x20x30 cm cubesat though :( More reason to go bigger
>"One space based cell plan for the whole world"
And a single entity to decide who gets disconnected if they do not behave
Direct to Cell has pretty low bandwidth. The total bandwidth is 4Mbps per cell, with each person getting kpbs. If they do offer internet, it will be like 2G or dialup.
Thanks Ian.
I was looking into the bandwidth (apparently most important parameter in cellular service) offered but nobody is mentioning including the Starlink landing page for the service. Sure it mentioned LTE but it can be anything from 1 to 100 Mbps and LTE+ can be well into Gbps.
Here is the previous post last year on Direct to Cell by Starlink and the main complains is about the puny bandwidth [1]. But if you are outside the town in remote places or in the middle of ocean any communication albeit a few bytes is most welcome, beggars cannot choose. For most IoT services it should be adequate but if you're inside tropical jungle or Amazon forest it will not work need to climb tree for the reception to work.
[1] Starlink Direct to Cell:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37848212
Others have already touched on the technical and regulatory issues, but also think of pricing. Would they price is like the US carriers do, or would they price it like a Scandinavian carrier?
If they want customers all over the world, they'd need to match the cheapest offering, as it's hard to argue that the service for some reason is more expensive in the US. I tried finding the price for a US cell phone plan, I can't actually do it. AT&T is impossible to navigate and always seems to bundle a phone. Mint Mobile tries to push 3, 6 or 12 months, which isn't even legal and the plans still come in at $40 for what is a $25 plan here in Denmark (with no additional fees).
If Starlink launched a world view subscription, at competitive prices they'd immediately crash the US cell service market.
For travellers, they only need to match other global esims, which are quite expensive
I was curious about this! I wish this was a perk of owning / purchasing a Tesla or a more expensive option of Starlink terminal.
It’s kind of crazy Tesla hasn’t partnered with SpaceX to provide Starlink as an option.
Kinda not. Generally if you got road you got reception. Only wilderness areas don’t. For few people who go camping, etc the standalone miniterminal makes most sense.
> Generally if you got road you got reception.
Er, if you got highway, maybe? I assure you there are plenty of roads that have poor cell reception.
Yes there are, but I my guess is 95%+ of car miles are in areas with good reception. If you are building roads putting cell reception there is trivial.
100% speak to A German high speed rail traveller and she will tell you all about the white spots
Any idea of the etymology for calling it a "white spot"? Assuming this is a German thing
Terra Incognita — the part of a map that is blank and therefore white: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei%C3%9Fer_Fleck
I think the fact that they haven't may be kind of indicative. Last I searched it had supported maximum local device density of just handful in miles.
That can't be true. I've stayed in campgrounds with dozens of Starlink dishes deployed.
The cells are large, dozens of dishes in one location are not a problem if there's few other dishes for miles in any direction.
Max density for dishes and phones are obviously different
That reminds me, I wonder what they did about the Subaru Starlink trademark.
Subaru filed in 2021 to have SpaceX's Starlink trademark cancelled. The case is still pending.
> One space based cell plan for the whole world
The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly; and hence the partnership with MNOs. With 5G (after Google & Meta got involved, the designs took on a Cloud/Internet-heavy focus), Starlink very well might have "slices" carved out exclusive for its own use world over.
See also: Cloudflare's Zero-Trust SIM (2022), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982697
> The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly;
That is exactly what this is about, direct from standard handsets to starlink satellites.
> The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly
It turns out they do.
They do, but only with very low bandwidth. The initial service is just sms messages, nothing else.
> One space based cell plan for the whole world
And then one day: one censorship for the whole world.
No, thank you. The availability of different providers in different jurisdictions is crucial for thwarting world to function. I speak as a person from a country with government censorship implemented.
Doesn't T-Mobile come close to that? I've heard that T-Mo works in most countries across the globe.
I see where you're coming from, but I prefer to have the relationship with a single entity (my cellular carrier) and get access to both. Simpler to deal with.
Agreed on the potential complication if/when I'm in another country, but, well, everything can't be simple...
It will happen over time
> It will happen over time
I'm optimistic.
I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if it's limited to low bandwidth applications like text and voice).
That's still many orders of magnitude too little.
We're currently talking data rates on the order of (optimistically) 5 Mbit/s for a cell with a diameter of 15 square miles, i.e. something like 0.1 Mbit/s per km^2.
In very rural areas (which is the use case!), that's infinitely better than nothing, but anywhere people live, this is effectively nothing, and there is currently no way around ground-based infrastructure.
Not really feasible. The only reason Starlink DTC works is because it's not trying to supply coverage inside dense cities.
Musk mentions this in the very first announcement of Starlink. https://youtu.be/AHeZHyOnsm4?t=191
That was 9 years ago and a lot has changed since then. They're moving to 3rd generation devices which have higher bandwidth and now have thousands of satellites deployed. Once Starship is able to deploy payloads, they'll increase the number of satellites even more quickly.
A lot has changed, but the calculus of fiber vs. satellites hasn't. Fiber (and fiber-served cellular) is good for high density, satellites are good for low density.
Are you planning to be in direct line of sight to a Starlink satellite 24x7?
Starlink's certainly planning on that, more or less.
Unless they can remove buildings from this world, that isn't going to be a reality.
ah, people live in cities with hi-rise buildings. silly me.
> ENGINEERED BY SPACEX
It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another.
xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch).
His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
The closest comparison I can think of is Berkshire Hathaway (one person/group controlling multiple wide ranging private and public companies).
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation.
Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo.
He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard. But he also delegates to experts he brings in to run his businesses.
It's obviously not the same as PE, but there are distinct similarities. With each of his companies he clearly can't take an active role all the time, but what his team are experts at is identifying the areas he needs to be on top of, and they will quite literally fly him in for it. It seems to me it's always the start of something, be it a new company or project. He will be there 24/7 getting it off the ground, but then hand over to lieutenants to run.
It's a formula that seems to work again and again. We're (well those of you in the US) are in for an interesting time over the coming year as he has a new project to kick start.
I agree with you, yet in a somewhat different way.
He is an investor investing in science fiction. This isn't even implied, he comes out and says it again and again.
I'm reminded of xerox parc's "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and I think that's his philosophy.
As to "businesses he knows well" I do not agree. He didn't go into electric vehicles, rockets, robots or neural interfaces as "business he knows well".
Just read about musk going to russia to try to get a launch vehicle going and coming back insulted and frustrated. So he broke down the problem and learned how to solve it.
Also "Private Equity" has a connotation of rent seeking nowadays, like "buying all dentists and monetizing to extract profit".
I don't see him that way philosophically. I see him as a pure creator, not a rent seeking wealth extractor.
With Twitter/X he definitely did act like a PE firm with deep cuts and a simplified operating model (eg. no moderation.)
Although strangely he destroyed the revenue model at the same time, which is something a PE firm would be careful to avoid.
I see twitter as sort of frustration thing, like hyperloop.
With hyperloop - he was frustrated by the way high speed rail was being handled in california, and hyperloop came into being as his cost + engineering sort of optimization. But with hyperloop he wasn't forced to buy it.
With twitter he just got in too deep and had to buy it.
(though I probably don't know enough about the details of twitter and could be wrong)
I’m curious why this is being downvoted (seems to hit the nail on the head)
Well, it's certainly how Musk likes to market himself.
12 children, 3 billion dollars companies, "advising" the government on cutting millions of jobs", yet he is "very hands on"
And hundreds of tweets per day.
don't forget his diablo IV streams
Seriously though, if he's primarily in a delegation mode these days, good for him, I think he's earned it
Bias disclosure: I feel like I could be a Musk if I actually had zero laziness and a few extra connections. We are similar in intelligence and interests and worldview (other than his edgy tweets of the last 1-2 years)
Don't let your dreams be dreams.
A temporarily embarrassed Elon Musk
It’s not being downvoted due to any inaccuracy, but rather the implied positive sentiment about Musk’s involvement with the government.
A more pessimistic view might be: Musk’s businesses have technological advantages but are financially over-leveraged. Their present success relies on heavy government subsidies while their future success depends on complete privatization of government functions.
While your overall question is valid, Starlink is simply a division of SpaceX. There's no "relationship" to consider. They are one and the same.
While it's true, SpaceX will raise money by making Starlink (the less important / easier business) public and keep SpaceX (the real business that makes it possible that Starlink depends on) private.
＞ His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
It's not unusual for large companies to have a large web of corporate entities, but what's problematic is that they have different ownership rather than the same owners/owned by each other. (I started to say that one is public and others private, but it would be the same issue if two were public, as they would obviously not have the exact same set of owners.)
When xAI makes a deal with Tesla, if xAI is getting the better end of the stick, that is a self-dealing problem that the SEC can investigate on behalf of Tesla shareholders. The assets of Tesla belong proportionally to its owners, so Musk or another large owner can't make deals that give their private company an advantage at the expense of Tesla owners.
If Tesla gets too generous of a deal, that's something the non-Musk owners of xAI if any could raise an issue with, but when the public company is allegedly getting shortchanged, the SEC gets involved too. Moreover, even if you are trying to do it right, there is always the opportunity for someone to challenge you.
Recall that Elon re-domiciled from “activist” Delaware to… whatever you call Texas and it’s reputation for corporate governance.
And now, he’s becoming some sort of circus act to disrupt the bureaucracy of the Federal government. So I wouldn’t count on the SEC doing anything.
If it ends up creating more Elon musk style success stories it can only be good for America.
> His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
My understanding is that, given Tesla is a public company, any collaboration between Tesla and other Musk companies needs to be approved by the board (or maybe by other C-suite executives) without Musk in the room. Musk can come up with the idea for a collaboration, but then the decision that it is in the best interests of Tesla and all its shareholders to proceed with the collaboration needs to be made independently of him.
By contrast, I don't think the rules apply as strictly to his other companies since they are privately held. The law cares a lot more about protecting shareholder rights in public companies than in private ones.
Collaboration is handled by the executive team. The Board of major companies is not so active as to negotiate deals. One may be an activist board member and hold sway over the CEO, but ultimately it's the CEO's job. The Board simply picks the executive team.
The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
If law was applied equality to billionaires as it does to regular people, he would be in jail for fraud.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies.
AFAIK, Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chair, had no particular association with Musk prior to joining Tesla’s board. She is an Australian business executive with a history of working in senior finance roles in Australian and US firms. She was recruited on to Tesla’s board by another (now former) Tesla director, Brad Buss, who to my knowledge has never been that closely associated with Musk either. Musk obviously trusts and respects Denholm, but I believe their relationship is more professional than personal - Denholm lives in Australia and travels to the US for Tesla board meetings.
Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive? Robyn Denholm excecised and sold $35M worth of TSLA in the past month.
If receiving stock based compensation is grounds for not being independent then wouldn't most companies have an independence issue with their boards? It just seems like a crazy claim on it's face.
> Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive?
Has a court accepted that argument? I mean, you can come up with all sorts of grounds to claim an independent director isn’t really independent, but unless a court with jurisdiction accepts the argument, it doesn’t really count for anything.
> Has a court accepted that argument
Yes, a Delaware court. It’s why Musk’s pay package is contested and why Tesla redomiciled.
HN is a court of law: some things may fail to meet some legal test, but not that in no way means it automatically becomes subjectively "right". I am adding a datapoint on what's arguable and leaving the judgement of cogency to the reader.
My previously-unstated opinion is: remunerating directors like executives blurs the distinction between those 2 roles in ways that are likely detrimental to long-term shareholders.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
My uncle had an inimical board that tried to remove him, but he somehow replaced them all one by one before they could. Needless to say he replaced them with people who didn't want to remove him ("buddies"; but what kind of a leader surrounds himself with people that want him to fail?). He's never told me how he did that despite my asking several times.
> This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
No it's not.
Competent CEOs hire boards that align with their world-view but are independent enough to provide useful advice. And almost all startup boards will have investors who definitely will not rubber stamp the sort of thing going on at Tesla.
> And almost all startup boards will have investors who definitely will not rubber stamp the sort of thing going on at Tesla.
Uh why would the Tesla board object to management creating more shareholder value than any other car company ever?
Some companies have board governance rules that mandate a majority of the board seats be of "outside and independent" individuals, but of course this can easily be gamed and, of course, these rules themselves can be put to a vote during shareholder meetings.
Still, it's always worth considering these structures before one invests--especially in med-to-large-cap public companies.
Alternatively, in private small-cap and venture-boards, the seats are nearly always filled by founders and lead investors and I would argue that's a "good thing".
If shareholders are happy, what business is it of yours? If they aren’t happy, they can sell the shares.
SEC destroyed
Following the law should be above the shareholder gain. Mentality like yours is what got us in this situation where people are blatantly abusing the government for personal gain.
It's not enough to just do a poll and say that most shareholders are "happy." If there is even one owner, which there will be, who objects, you need to be able to show that decisions were in the best interest of the company. That doesn't mean said owner has to agree with them, but if there are deals that arguably favor outside companies then you will hear from either the SEC or that one shareholder.
The other comment saying "the law is above shareholder gain" is kind of missing the point thought--the law in question is specifically to protect the interest of shareholders.
This is how you end up with another Enron
Wasn't Musk pulling Tesla engineers to go work on Twitter?
Starlink has always been a SpaceX project.
I don't see what's confusing about it.
You're describing a corporate conglomerate, in style of pre-modern to early industrialization era.
Starlink and SpaceX have an even closer relationship than most other Musk companies; Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
> Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
Starlink is not a separate entity — it's a division of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
From Terms of Service[1]:
> Your order for two-way satellite-based internet service (“Services”) and a Starlink antenna, Wi-Fi router and mount (“Starlink Kit” or “Kit”) is subject to the terms (“Terms”) of this Starlink agreement for the United States and its territories. These Terms, those terms incorporated by reference, and the details you agree to in your online order (“Order”) form the entire agreement (“Agreement”) between you (“customer” or “user”) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (known as “Starlink” in these Terms).
[1]: https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1020-91087-64?r...
I didn't realize SpaceX was just a nickname for Space Exploration Technologies Corp, TIL
So the Terms of service is with SpaceX but apparently there is such a thing as Starlink Services LLC, but I'm just going off Wikipedia, all this corporate structuring is opaque to me.
> SpaceX was just a nickname for Space Exploration Technologies Corp
It's slightly more than that: it's a legally recognized nickname for the actual entity, technically called a "Fictitious Business Name" (aka DBA, "doing business as") registered with the state.
> there is such a thing as Starlink Services LLC
One might register a bunch of shell companies in various jurisdictions, holding various assets and contracts during the course of business, for tax reasons, to limit the blast radius of liabilities and facilitate business (for example, retail gift cards, e.g. Amazon, are often issued by a separate legal entity.) I think there's a qualitative distinction there with what Berkshire Hathaway or perhaps Alphabet Inc. do with their separate businesses that are hands-off subsidiaries. It appears at the moment Starlink is very much intertwined with SpaceX and user contracts and the trademark are actually directly owned by SpaceX, so not sure what they are using that particular LLC for.
It's for users outside the USA
Outside the US, for Internet, your agreements are with Starlink Services LLC. Not with SpaceX
Starlink isn’t a company. It’s a product offered by spacex. Just like Falcon, Starship, and Dragon.
Starlink Services LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
Berkshire is very different, they are a hedge fund/holding company and their main business is trading companies.
Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of subsidiary of SpaceX.
samsung family I think is the closest
In the context of OP, the corporate structure of SpaceX et al. is about as far from interesting as it could possibly get. The obsession some posters have with rich people (and Musk in particular) is really unhealthy!
Isn't the Tesla supercomputer completely separate from the xAI supercomputer?
I feel so, so mixed about this.
It’s going to be unambiguously good for wilderness rescue and disaster response.
But I like camping and hiking in remote areas in order to remove myself from the world. And I think the lack of connectivity discourages unprepared people from taking on more than they can handle in the wilderness. If the wilderness becomes fully connected, will it spoil that feeling? Will it lead to the last few truly remote places in the US suddenly being overrun with TikTok crowds? I honestly have no idea, and it’s a little scary.
But it feels like an anachronism that we don’t already have worldwide connectivity, and I guess this was just bound to happen.
There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous. It is good that rescue services can help you if accident happens (and it can happen even to the adequatly prepared).
„There are no unconnected places in most of Europe“ Then you haven’t traveled with the German railway yet!
Or, like, any space outside of a dense city :D
Definitely. But when Apple released their Satellite SOS feature, I expected that to remain the cutting edge for a while, and for all devices to eventually gain very limited satellite emergency call capabilities. Instead, it seems like we’re going straight from most devices having zero connectivity in the (US) wilderness to all devices having connectivity everywhere in the world, as soon as next year. That’s a lot of change to come all at once.
Sounds like the future. And a good one at that. The pros far outweigh the cons. If someone can't disconnect purposefully to be with nature, then that's on them.
>There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous.
eg. 50.30819551805026, 16.50959758078629
Why that example? It doesn't look very remote to me.
Sorry, forgot to add the crucial details. Such is the life while close to quitting work for the day.
The location, despite not being remote, has NO connectivity. It's the closest thing I can think of in my proximity that is completely unconnected. You're lucky to get GPRS there in terms of data, and most likely you won't even be able to place a call.[1] There is no broadband/fibre or any other sort of physical network connected to the buildings in the area.[2] The only way of connecting the place aside from Starlink that I've found is other satellite options[3], and it's most likely going to be 6 times as expensive and 50 times slower.
[1] Anegdotal evidence, based on many devices on two of Poland's most prominent carriers when it comes to infrastructure - Orange/T-Mobile (shared NetWorkS! project) and Plus [2] https://internet.gov.pl/map/?center=1839972.2603685544%3B649... [3] https://www.dostawcy-internetu.pl/Dwukierunkowy-Internet-Sat...
I doubt it is going to work very well so just hold your breath for the moment. Also the space junk issues are becoming formidable, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is all gone in 5 years, if it exists at all. Or else I’d like to believe.
There’s something of a parallel with the last hikers who walked in unmapped territory. We may be the last hikers to walk in unconnected territory.
Satellite phone and communicator devices have been around forever.
And they’ve been very expensive, subscription-based, and limited: no direct access to the internet, just location pings and text messages (which sometimes have to be preprogrammed). Nothing at all like what Starlink is talking about.
Honestly, lack of connectivity completely makes these places you speak of inaccessible for a lot of people.
Garmin InReach has existed already for years. It didn't take the feeling away from me and I felt more comfortable having it in my backpack just in case. Wilderness adventures shouldn't be life or death experiences.
Starlink here, which includes data, is a huge jump from emergency SOS on Inreach. I do think we'll lose some of the magic of outdoors experiences when we can check nytimes.com and Reddit in the backcountry.
With Garmin InReach you can text actively. And I didn't. It is a mindset IMHO. If a person cannot control him/herself from using a phone while camping it is on them. No tech can change that and they will end up watching offline shows on their downloaded shows.
SMS texting on Inreach is so different from full data/internet. It's like smart phone vs. dumb phone. One is vastly more addictive.
It is okay for weakminded people to not to enjoy nature. Let them suffer who cares.
Satellite phones are not some special new thing anyways
People have been making TikTok videos in the wilderness this entire time, they just wait until they get service to upload them.
Sure, and people were making YouTube videos in the wilderness before that, but the accessibility that came with TikTok and Instagram created a phenomenon increased demand tenfold at many parks. That’s why you have to win a lottery to hike Angels Landing in Zion now.
Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
My guess is there will be some more wilderness livestreams streams, largely made by the people that are already going out to these places to produce content.
Are you particularly worried about a group of people that so far had no interest at all in taking pictures or videos in the wilderness but will now show up in droves to make competing bits of strictly-live content? Who are these users??
It was an example, and maybe not a very good one.
My point is that this will allow anyone to be an active content creator while they’re in the wilderness, which makes it quicker, easier, and much more appealing to create that type of content.
In another comment you pointed out overtourism but in this comment you seem to be saying your concern is that it will be easier to create content… for the people that are already there? Who cares if people make content or not while they are there?
Your issue is either not wanting people on their phones in parks — which you cannot control — or not wanting people in parks at all, which not only can you not control but that would also be a downright insane desire.
The reason why parks exist and are maintained is that people go to them. If nobody goes to a park, there is no incentive for upkeep or staff. Much (or virtually all) of the wilderness that you have enjoyed in your life is available to enjoy because people before you enjoyed it and made it accessible to you in some way. That is how parks work
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
Encourage others to explore the wilderness?
or like most other tech - do the opposite “why would I explore in person when I can watch it from my couch”
How more demand for national parks a bad thing?
The crowds are completely unmanageable in some parks, and it’s destroying the ecosystems and natural features that the parks were built to exhibit.
Ever heard of Fossil Cycad National Monument? Designated in 1922, and by 1957 all the fossils had been taken. There was nothing left to see. The national monument was abolished.
That’s what’s at risk from overtourism.
If you’ve never been, I’d recommend visiting Lake Louise in Alberta. However, when I last visited in 2019, the lake base was packed nearly shoulder to shoulder at 7am. Hiking the trail to the tea house was like walking a sidewalk in NYC at 9am, just a little rougher and steeper. I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse since Covid.
Is it selfish to want to be able to enjoy one of the most beautiful spots in Canada without it being crowded? Absolutely. But the sheer volume of people makes in a completely unenjoyable experience, not to mention the dangers of erosion/wilful destruction/litter/etc that over-toured nature spots eventually succumb to. The nice thing right now is that there are many, many places to go that most people won’t, due to lack of accessibility, lack of cell service, etc. By breaking down barriers, you open the floodgates.
I used to despise gatekeeping, wanting everyone to be able to experience as many joys as possible. But when seeing what happens when the masses get access to delicate niches, my opinion shifts. Maybe I’m just getting older and grumpier though, so take it with a grain of salt.
Do you think that, if “the masses” were cut off from Lake Louise, you in particular would still be able to go to it?
Not sure honestly. I've been to lots of remote areas, only accessible by multiple days of travel on foot or canoe, so probably? But I live on the other end of the country, so the effort likely wouldn't be worthwhile if it were truly inaccessible.
surely there are other wildernesses? is demand so high that there aren’t any left?
I was all excited and was thinking I should switch from ATT to T Mobile so I can access Starlink. Then I read it was for T Mobile for Business. You need 6 lines to qualify for T Mobile for Business?
https://www.t-mobile.com/business/industry-solutions/connect...
AST Spacemobile has contracts with ATT and Verizon to do the same
so just wait
I am skeptical AST will be able to really compete. SpaceX has a massive cost advantage.
I hope that they will, but the engineers at SpaceX have made me a believer. If the gen 1 direct to cell sats don’t perform (it seems like they do), they’ll just launch another batch a couple weeks later. I don’t think AST will have this ability, so I hope they get it right.
After seeing this post, I went over to the ATS subreddit to see how they’re tracking the news. The denial is palpable.
What do you mean compete?
In the US SpaceX just announced a contract with Tmobile, AST has contracts with Verizon and AT&T
For service it works, and for business viability AST just has to launch more satellites, which they will
for a business case thats their only overhead cost and they dont need cellular partnerships in a bunch of countries to be viable
They have to raise capital for more satellites but it all looks possible
They have contracts for now and cash flow. My concern is how much better/worse it will be than Starlink. Consumer pressures will dictate whether Verizon/ATT renew those contracts based on performance.
It takes longer with the dollar amount being so large, but SpaceX has a real advantage of 1) being vertically integrated 2) having customers buy the rockets and 3) having expertise and ability to iterate very quickly on satellite designs. I don’t know of a single company that can compete with them on #2 and 3 right now.
My prediction is that SpaceX satellites will perform better in the real world due to the density they’ve built up, and they will be able to partner with 3rd parties for much cheaper. I’m not saying that’s what will happen, but I’m pretty blown away by what they’ve been able to do so far.
Tangent: my understanding is the Zuckerberg wanted to do something similar and even paid SpaceX to launch a satellite (which was unsuccessful).
It seems Musk liked the idea so much that he decided to do it himself.
To me, this (along with Zuck's issues with Apple over the app store) explains a lot about why Zuck 2.0 has been so focused with avoiding platform risk with recent endeavours.
If that's actually how events played out, one hopes that Zuck would at least be able to appreciate the irony of his idea being stolen by a vendor he hired to implement it.
I heard that Google's project Loon was having issues with LTE time outs due to the distance of the balloons LTE antenna from the ground. How does this square with the much larger distance of LEO satellites?
I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
Rocket Lab and Peter Beck are your best hope!
I think the potential comptetitors in this business (low latency satellite internet megaconstellation) missed their opportunity.
Starship is very close to being able to put next gen Starlink satellites into orbit ("very close" as in most likely within a year or so). Once that happens, it's over, there will not be competition for at least a decade. Before Bezos and others (and/or EU/China) build their own Starship copies (and if you've seen recent EU/China concepts, you can't call it anything else...), it's going to be the 2030s.
Not to mention that the existing Starlink fleet is about to be old technology. The larger satellites launched by Starship is projected to dwarf the terminal speed available now (gigabit+ downlinks to consumer dishes).
I don't think so.
Listen to the most recent RKLB earnings call. Constellation on the way, Neutron launching in 2025. There will be competition.
Why do you think Kuiper is dead in the water?
Not sure if they are dead in the water or not. However, they have until July 30, 2026 to deploy half of their fleet or they lose the FCC granted frequencies. The fleet is 3232 satellites.
So far they launched 2 test satellites. They contracted most of the launches to either new rockets or ones in development, like New Glenn, Ariane 6, ULA Vulcan. They actually had to contract three Falcon 9 launches to help out with that. In reality, I think SpaceX will end up launching a lot more than that.
Unless FCC is willing to be lenient, 50% of the satellites will be hard to accomplish by the deadline.
The quick maths indicates that to achieve this, they’d have to launch 22.5 satellites per week every week for the next 18 months until that deadline. SpaceX seems to be launching at nearly twice that rate, having launched [1565 satellites](https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/10/30/live-coverage-spacex-t....) in the first 10 months of this year.
Keep in mind that Kuiper satellite is 600kg, while Starlink is 260. So you would have to adjust the math.
I am sure it's doable if all the space providers work together and there aren't any showstoppers.
> I am sure it's doable if all the space providers work together and there aren't any showstoppers.
Are you living in a different world that me?
NO company or Government on Earth outside SpaceX has the capability to launch more than about 15 orbital rockets per year. Most are in the 5-10 per year range.
Who the heck is going to launch all these sats?
That's why I said "if all the space providers work together". That obviously includes SpaceX - they would be doing the heavy lifting here (mind pun intended).
> NO company or Government on Earth
Not that it's a possibility for Kuiper, but China had 67 launches in 2023.
The FCC will be lenient, they have no reason not to be unless Musk is leaning on them.
Look who just joined the incoming administration...
I doubt that very much. Gwynne Shotwell stated multiple times that they will work with whoever. In addition, SpaceX is already contracted for 3 launches of Kuiper.
They will ask for a variance
Honestly not sure why they would want to.
The world is continually moving towards being centred around cities where it makes sense to simply rollout fibre.
Especially with gigabit speeds being the new standard.
And even in Australia they are starting to move remote areas onto fibre.
I think Starlink has caused rural fiber deployments to accelerate because a friend's property in rural Oregon just got fiber, but the challenge remains: after you get fiber to the corner of your 22 acre lot, how do you cover the rest of the 21 acres? With fiber and using wifi as your backhaul you have to get a chain a bunch of nodes to get Internet to each building/area you want wifi. Starlink (business) lets you just stick a starlink mini dish in each place without having to worry about all that.
Centurylink ran fiber down the nearest highway to my rural Oregon property a couple of months before Starlink became available. AFAIK the timing was more coincidence than anything, but you're entirely right about the logistics of fiber being non-trivial. As usual, last mile is the hardest part. Even with fiber at the highway, the only service Centurylink would offer us was 10Mbps DSL. I bet they would have tun fiver to my house for $$$$$, but Starlink is plenty fast and it would almost certainly take a decade or more to recoup the one-time costs of getting fiber installed all the way to my house.
you're probably right about the timing being coincidental. it would have been nice if they'd gotten there before buying the Starlink hardware
There are long-range e.g. 20km WiFi transmitters/repeaters.
It's a solved problem.
that solution isn't without issues. specifically, you have to climb trees and run power or do solar, and then if there's a heavy storm you can have issues. those aren't insurmountable problems but being able to get Internet anywhere there's liner of sight to the sky is easier (or harder!) depending on the terrain.
Aren't these the same problems for Starlink?
Climbing one tree to get Starlink to see the sky is less work then having to climb multiple trees to align a dish and a repeater so it's entirely terrain dependent so all we can say in the general case is we have to take a look at your land/situation before saying which would be preferable to you.
You are right for on-grid systems. If you can get power from the grid, it is easy to get fiber. I have friends working remotely from very rural zones in Brazil, and they got fiber for a lower price than it was for buying up the transformers/posts to route power to their farms.
But, there are still niche use cases, like ships and planes, that would pay a premium for fast LEO satellite connections. For people I know who live on islands, going from barely being able to use WhatsApp to entirely using the internet (YouTube / Netflix) is game-changing.
Are the also rolling out fibre to ships and planes?
If Starlink is a technology just for ships and planes then that's great.
But I assume we are talking about use cases beyond tiny niches.
Does this mean they can track the location of specific IMEIs from orbit?
HawkEye 360 has been doing this for a few years.
This is really interesting. Based on their wikipedia I can see they collect a lot of RF traffic - are IMEIs identifiable with the raw data captured that way? I'm surprised they are not encrypted. I say this as someone who knows nothing about the space.
In 2G/3G networks, IMSI is unencrypted in the initial handshake process while the handset gets a TMSI, so it can very trivially be passively observed, but only at specific points in time.
In 5G this is somewhat fixed - the handset uses its Home Network Public Key to encrypt the device-specific IMSI (producing a SUCI) which only the Home Network can decrypt. The MCC and MNC (carrier information) are still sent in the clear to allow the encrypted SUCI to route to the correct Home Network for decryption.
Which means military has been doing this for decades
They always have been...
It’s interesting as Apple randomizes the MAC address but not imei number.
spacex? No, the direct to cell sats require much larger antenna to pick up cell signals. The regular Starlink sats aren’t capable of that.
Does this allow the ability to circumvent LTE networks in countries like China? Do we have the capability to send messages to any/all phones in China if we (USA) wanted to?
For that, Starlink would have to use the frequency band that the phone (and, therefore, the relevant operator) is using. Such frequencies are assigned by states to operators, and using them from space would be extremely easy to detect. That is why Starlink either has to make a deal with in operators, or acquire a licence to use a frequency band in every country it wants to operate.
I assume that if Starlink was trying to do this without agreement, in violation of the interational treaty on radio regulations, the USA would have to prevent them from doing so. If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation.
As a side note on the technology, since Starlink satellites orbit 340km from earth, I wonder if they emit a directed signal. If they don't, I don't see how they intend to respect borders when sending messages down.
> If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation.
Except China, does any other country have the ability to do this?
With US government permission, Starlink could ignore the radio licensing rules of Iran, South Africa or even the EU.
> Except China, does any other country have the ability to do this?
Any country capable of launching satellites or even sounding rockets could almost certainly do enough damage to majorly disrupt operations. Certainly the EU or Iran, possibly South Africa with the recent resumption of rocket launches at OTB.
It then turn down to "soft" warfare. Iran will give some guy a missile to shoot your cargo ship. I'd like them to do that for countries that can't do anything though (ie: some countries in Africa). Good for the citizenry and no side-effects.
> It then turn down to "soft" warfare.
Violating RR is already "soft" warfare.
Does the US/China have the capability to shoot down satellites? I mean, Starlink has a lot of satellites; could they really all be destroyed?
China has demonstrated ASAT weapons. They don't have enough in stock to take out the entire Starlink constellation but just the threat would be enough.
If you take out a few, the debris will take a bunch more.
- "I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation."
They absolutely do not have tens of thousands of anti-satellite missiles, or any other credible (non-nuclear) way to dismantle a constellation of that size. If you look at their own news media[0], they (Chinese defense) consider it a major weakness, and priority.
[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3178939/chin... ("China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists")
- "Researchers call for development of anti-satellite capabilities including ability to track, monitor and disable each craft The Starlink platform with its thousands of satellites is believed to be indestructible"
There aren't tens of thousands of Starlink satellites over China, and I suspect the issue would be solved or escalated way before the whole constellation gets down.
- "There aren't tens of thousands of Starlink satellites over China"
Sure there are; that's how orbits work. These aren't geostationary satellites.
I understand how orbits work, but the current count for the whole constellation isn't at tens of thousands to begin with.
Honestly you probably only need a shoot a few before the debris is a huge challenge for the rest of the constellation.
They're not as impregnable as the military's new LEO obsession makes out.
Yes, the beams are highly directional.
The regular Starlink, which requires a dish, doesn't even operate in China (it could technically but no regulatory approval). Obviously China would not allow this either.
Technically, yes. But there's no way they would actually do that. Good question about the emergency message feature...
Regardless of technical capability, do you think Elon is going to risk angering China?
Technically yes.
Can anyone explain how upload would work? How can an unmodified cellphone upload data to a satellite?
There are a few factors that make this possible:
1. As others have pointed out, the link budget (how much energy loss a particular radio link can handle before it is broken) for D2C satellites assumes a nearly direct line of sight from your handset to the satellite. This is much easier to achieve with satellites in space than it is with traditional cell towers that might have numerous walls/buildings in the way.
2. The D2C satellites use massive phased array antennas that are able to point a very narrow beam very accurately to the ground. This provides a substantial amount of antenna gain that further helps the link budget. The gain from the antennas allows the satellites to pick up even relatively weak signals from a handset.
There are other tricks as well, but these account for the largest differences. Of course, doppler gets in the way, but it is a solvable problem.
So the satellite can point a narrow beam. How does it handle multiple connections. Can it aim 1000s of beams at once?
In theory, yes. Phased arrays can steer as many independent beams as the connected electronics support. I real life, it's probably going to be dozens or maybe hundreds of beams.
I guess the narrow beam, covers quite a bit of area on earth.
I guess the "narrow" in the current context is the beam widening to hundreds of miles on earth.
IIRC the current Starlink beams are of order 10 miles on the ground. So much narrower than you guess.
My thinking is that you can think of Starlink satellites as LTE towers that just happen to be ~350 miles away from your phone. It happens to work because while they are far away, the satellites have a very clear line of sight (directly down) with few (no) obstacles.
The complication is that the base stations will be moving much more rapidly than traditional terrestrial towers.
very slowly, with the radio at maximum power, and no obstructions
Yeah, this is going to decimate your battery life. It's great to have in an emergency, don't get me wrong, but I'd probably leave data off otherwise when out remote.
Your cell phone uses the nearest base station, the base station will handover to the satellite infra.
Why do you need satellite if you can connect to a base station? This makes no sense.
No, they claim direct phone to satellite link.
No, that’s just satellite backhaul for a cell tower. That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
This is direct from handset to satellite, it’s clearly explained in the link.
> That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
Or a directional microwave link to the next station in sight.
Aren't those satellites going to generate simulated cell tower signals so you won't require any modification whatsoever?
This is supposed to launch in New Zealand during 2024, in partnership with a local carrier. Was being heavily hyped a year or so back, but I haven’t heard much recently?
The Commerce Commission charged One NZ for making false claims around Starlink: https://www.teslarati.com/starlink-criminal-charges-new-zeal...
There are a few stories in the last week. Seems like it's in testing but has been waiting for lower satellites with appropriate capabilities: https://www.interest.co.nz/technology/130898/telco-one-nz-be...
Probably not happening until next year:
> But in September the telco (and Optus across the Tasman and other Direct to Cell exclusive partners) removed “launching 2024″ references from its website. -- https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/commerce-commission-take...
Is this a flying imsi-catcher network? Could it spoof cell phone carriers in foreign countries to MITM their calls, sms and data?
I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.
Initially I thought the same re: hiking, skiing etc. The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
Good news: people who pay more still get all those benefits.
And now, other people have some access (if non-optimal) to rescue services, despite the fact that they didn't (or couldn't afford to) pay more for inReach.
I see this as an unqualified win.
Same. Done a few trips to alaska and had to coordinate pickups and food drops via garmin inreach. Battery life on those is way better and more durable.
Yea. My inReach device stays charged for months when it is off.
Modern smartphones can hold the battery for over a week with minimal usage. You could just turn data on when every few hours or so. It's not automated though.
At least my work S24 says ~16 days in airplane mode + power saver. Not tested.
I take my inreach kite surfing and I don't have to worry about it getting wet.
Turn off your phone?
With an inReach I have the option of periodically tracking my position and uploading that to a site my loved ones can check. Even whilst doing this I can leave the device on for a multi-day trip without worrying about battery drain. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with a cell phone, but the inReach is just a more robust solution for a safety critical application.
> The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
I think it depends on the application you're using it for.
If you're constantly using the gps - yeah, I'd definitely agree with you.
But if you're using it purely for emergency communication, you can just turn off the cell phone, and it should be fine.
It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
> you can just turn off the cell phone, and it should be fine
Cell phones are far more sensitive to temperature issues than dedicated devices.
And when you do have an issue no external battery is going to help you because they are also sensitive.
> It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
Or, as I have done on multi-day trips, a solar panel and a battery.
ah yes, let me just trust a glass screen with a cold sensitive battery during an emergency
Why switch carriers for that, you can get the same functionality built-in to iPhones and it's not dependent on carrier.
If you aren't on an iPhone already, switching carriers might be easier.
That's a fair point. I did make some assumptions.
iPhone sos does not allow you to just text random stuff to arbitrary people. It’s emergency only and a preselected “family group”
If you have zero signal, modern iPhone allows you to connect to satellite and text using iMessage. I just used it this week multiple times during massive Pacific Northwest blackout.
Works surprisingly well. You have to be outside and hold iPhone in the specifics position pointed at satellite, it tells you where to turn iPhone to to get signal.
Did they get rid of the limitation of having to setup a special family group in advance?
You can initiate a conversation with anyone while you are connected via satellite. But you do need to set up an emergency contact and/or Family Sharing Group if you want to connect via satellite and receive messages that were sent to you while you were offline.
(I’m referring to the "Messages via Satellite" feature that launched two months ago in iOS 18. This is different from the "Emergency SOS via Satellite" feature that has been around since 2022.)
That is not true. If you don't know, don't guess.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930
I'd still carry an old-school PLB (not a satellite messenger subscription service) for the enduring battery-life, ruggedness, and reliability when it matters. And use LTE-Starlink for the basic non-urgent but super convenient communication needs.
The inReach is basically indestructible. A cell phone, not so much.
this is how i feel. especially in the cold. for a lot of the stuff i do, i'm not gonna trust my life on a glass screen with a battery that doesn't work well in the cold.
A quick glance at these comments indicates the majority are excited about Starlink. I must be in the minority. Is anyone else here on HN very unhappy with the prospect of having no place to escape internet access? I love the idea of no-rescue zones. https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/hike-at-your... Not trying to change anyone's mind, just wondering if I'm a complete outlier.
You already have the option of escaping internet access, anywhere in the world – by turning off your device.
Heroin addicts have the option to escape heroin any time they want. Just ignore the heroin.
Funny how while you mean it ironically, it still is true.
Its time people take responsibility of their actions.
I don’t understand how such fundamentally uneducated and unkind comments like this seem to be on nearly every HN thread these days
Because I think that "but I need a place to disconnect, I am undisciplined to do it on my own when I am under coverage" is a poor reason to justify advocating for stopping progress.
Comparing it with actual drugs and calling for the same "deny this to everybody so I dont have to use my willpower, please" is what grinds my gears.
Well good for you, except for the fact that I’m not advocating that folks not have access in general.
>Comparing it with actual drugs and calling for the same "deny this to everybody so I dont have to use my willpower, please" is what grinds my gears.
I literally said this nowhere. The fact that it’s going to be difficult for a great number of individuals to disconnect from the internet _is reasonably comparable to drugs being present around an addict that is trying to quit_.
Next time I’m in the Tenderloin I’ll wander around telling people to just have will power because someone online said that’s all that’s required.
I don’t know about denying earth-wide internet access from ordinary cell phones, nor of the utility of denying you the internet; but I am fairly certain you would probably benefit from going on a well-led backpacking trip away from technology given that I doubt anyone who’s done that would continue to hold your dismissive and unkind position.
… says one of HN’s most prolific users with more points than just about anyone who probably has zero desire to ever be away from the internet for more than two seconds
And you’ve already had comms in most places in the world including the polar regions for some time now. This is about lower cost and ubiquitous access.
But we don’t have the option of opting out of trains of satellites in the sky ruining the view.
So true, its depressing...
Gee, thanks, I hadn't thought of that. (Seriously, did you read the article?)
Just don't take a phone with you or turn it off.
Just because there's cell reception, doesn't mean they won't still have no-rescue zones.
What it would allow however is you to get in-touch with family to come get you should the need arise.
Is iot useful if it needs a clear view of the sky?
Also why does my cell phone not need a clear view of the cell tower? It works in my brother in laws walk in closet just fine. Same frequency.
Because you aren't 350+ miles from the cell tower.
Direct to cell is only possible because it's an almost entirely unobstructed view.
This is the nomad dream. Have a single phone service and wander anywhere on the planet with it. No more having to swap SIMs out on every border, being unable to use text-based 2FA, forcing friends to contact only via messaging apps, system messages in a foreign language, etc.
It's not the coverage; that's mostly good. It's not the price; mostly SIM cards and plans are cheaper when travelling than they are at home. It's the hassle of swapping SIMs every time you cross a border.
Starlink isn't meant to be your primary cell service, and likely will never be, considering people are rarely within direct line of sight to the sky when they need to use their phone.
I've been using data-only plans since 2015 combined with voip.ms VoIP numbers (for Toronto and SF). This means I could travel and pop in a prepaid SIM card whenever I went anywhere and not have any problems using data-based messaging services (Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage).
As of this year I ditched my T-Mobile prepaid data SIM and exclusively use prepaid eSIMs (esimdb.com has a great comparison, but Nomad makes it very easy with their app). So I still have to "swap sims" but it's all done on the iPhone itself, no need to bring a sim ejector/paperclip.
What's really funny is that last week my eSIM ran out (I forgot to top up) and my 16 Pro connected to the satellite network (since it assumed no service was available I guess?), where I was able to use iMessage (in the limited way (to individuals, not groups)).
There are already services like Firsty[1] that use an eSIM to achieve this.
1. https://www.firsty.app/
There are travel SIM cards already. Many work in most countries, some even on planes and ships.
Personally, I still buy SIM cards (or, more recently, eSIM plans). Not so hard, but way cheaper, and you can get a local number and use with local services that require one.
Most nomads don't really care for cell phones? This is the facsimile of the idea for people that want the benefits of travel without the negatives of no fixed relationships.
Which isn't really a negative to this. Indeed, if you have the means, I'd say go for it.
It's been possible to solve these problems by using Google Fi for many years now.
You need to activate the plan in the US and return to the US every 90 days (or lose your mobile data). So it’s not really an option for people outside the US.
Google Voice crowd still waiting for an annoucement that they're either going to start supporting RCS or shut us down.
Direct to Cell is not usable LTE service. It doesn't have the bandwidth. It is effectively 2G or satellite phone, with messages, voice calls, and slow data.
I'm afraid that you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about. Look at the recent FCC issues around interference to benchmark current bandwidth and latency.
google fi for the past decade has given me exactly this, with top speed data connectivity at $10/GB no matter where.
If you live in the USA, sure. If not, can't get it.
Would it require a starlink terminal to work?
No
So they now offer direct cellular coverage whereas before only offered internet?
This is great for regions that need to be connected and the power elites, but for the rest of us it wouldn't change much.
I disagree with almost all of Elon's "politics" but Starlink still has huge potential. Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much and focuses on making the world more connected, in the hands of the us government and given away like GPS it could be the way to go to get the whole world connected.
> Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much
The best possible outcome for Starlink is that he gets distracted with something else and doesn't meddle in it whatsoever.
> This is great for regions that need to be connected
That's at least a billion people. I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
I'm writing this from an Ayahuasca center in rural Peru connected with Starlink. Before, internet was a ten minute drive into town away. We're now connected when at one side of the center. It would be nice to have it all the way into the jungle. And when you want to be disconnected, just turn your phone off or leave it behind.
> I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
My understanding is that the monthly cost for Starlink varies pretty wildly across the world. Presumably the same would be true for this cell service - idle satellites have the same huge fixed cost and don't generate any revenue.
> That's at least a billion people
a) Based on what we've seen in China, India etc many of those will shift towards densely populated cities or will stay and those locations will become industrialised, densely populated cities.
b) In densely populated cities it doesn't make sense to use Starlink when fibre is far cheaper, has limited congestion issues and can provide gigabit speeds at a minimum.
c) It's great that you're writing this in rural Peru but that is a declining use case and should not be extrapolated to the rest of the world.
All those points are true, but it doesn't change the fact that Starlink will be quite profitable for SpaceX.
Currently, each launch of 23 Starlink satellites costs SpaceX around $50 million. To get 1,000 direct to cell satellites in orbit, they'll need to launch 44 times, costing them $2.2 billion. Due to the low orbits, air resistance causes the satellites to reenter within 5-10 years, so to maintain the constellation they'll need to spend $220-440 million per year. These costs will be much lower when they switch from Falcon 9 to Starship.
Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell. That's still 80 million people. If SpaceX charges cell companies $10/month per user for the service, that's almost $10 billion per year. And that's not counting the money they make from selling Starlink Internet, which currently has over 4 million subscribers. At $100/month, that's $4.8 billion per year in revenue.
So Starlink is profitable without direct to cell technology, but since they're launching the satellites anyway, they might as well collect more revenue by adding cell capability. DTC only becomes unprofitable if the cost of the extra hardware and mass is less than DTC subscriber revenue.
> Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell
Why not 5%, 10%, 100%. It's just made up numbers.
Will it be a good business for Starlink, sure. Will it change the world, probably not.
If someone is rescued in the wilderness thanks to direct to cell connection; if children can attend online classes despite living in the rural; if science expedition can stay online even in the most remote places, then that’s changing the world.
It's not gonna decline to zero.
There's just a really strong tendency for people all over the world to focus on their own experience. And you can actually reinforce this by zooming out too far. If you live in San Francisco, this seems like a pet use case and you can be like "What is it, 10% of the population?" But "the population" is quite the fucking denominator.
I mean, it's already happening and obviously Starlink has run the numbers. So I'm largely just reacting to the tone here.
No one is saying it will decline to zero.
But it will decline such that Starlink is likely to be more of a niche product similar to how satellite internet services are today.
Niche? Millions of airline and cruise passengers have been using Starlink. Industries, militaries and governments are Starlink customers. Millions of users in the rural areas. That’s some interesting definition of niche.
Are you really that ignorant?
0.07% of internet users are on Starlink.
By every definition that is niche.
I’m writing this from starlink ten minutes from Silicon Valley.
Until recently, most of what you wrote applied to us too (our previous options were 128kbit theoretical dsl, 1 sec latency, or extremely flaky cellular).
Now that a double digit percentage of people on our street have starlink, the phone company finally ran fiber to the home.
Being able to make emergency calls from the many dead spots around here would be nice.
> Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much
Haha, good one.
Am I the only one thinking I need to upgrade my TV before they start including cell modems that use this to upload surveillance data and download ads?
Unless you have no cell coverage at your house, they can do this right now. I assume ads aren't economically viable unless the viewer pays for the traffic here.
Does your house not have a roof?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENodeB
this is listed under the "business" section. must not be planned for direct-to-consumer initially.
T-Mobile is claiming it will be available to anyone who has a SIM/eSIM from them: https://x.com/TMobileHelp/status/1860715395851882683
Cause it’s going to be incredibly expensive
If we consider President Javier Milei’s perspectives on monopolies, as articulated in his address at the World Economic Forum [1], we can apply his reasoning to the case of Starlink’s potential dominance in direct-to-phone satellite connectivity. In his statements, Milei challenges the traditional view that monopolies inherently lead to market inefficiencies. Instead, he assumes that monopolistic positions, when achieved through “innovation” and “without government interference,” can drive significant technological advancements and economic growth.
Applying this to Starlink, its emergence as a leading provider in satellite-based mobile connectivity could be seen as a result of substantial innovation and investment. Such a position enables the company to offer services that were previously unavailable or limited, particularly in underserved regions. Considering Milei’s argument suggests that in the absence of government-imposed barriers, a monopoly like Starlink’s can maintain competitive pricing to deter potential competitors, ensuring consumers benefit from both advanced technology and reasonable costs.
Milei emphasizes that market failures are often the result of state intervention rather than the natural outcome of market dynamics. In the case of Starlink, minimal regulatory interference could allow the company to operate efficiently, maintaining an environment where innovation thrives, and consumers receive enhanced services. Its the potential drive of the market (competitors) and innovation to keeps them in check with pricing and perceived consumer value. [2] [3]
[1] https://www.hoover.org/news/market-ourselves-argentine-presi...
[2] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/special-address-by-j...
[3] https://lexfridman.com/javier-milei-transcript/
Yes because when I look for rational management of a sovereign country my first thought is Argentina.
What a warped world view. Libertarianism today just means supporting massive concentrations of private power, I guess.
Awesome proposition, but good grief what a terrible website. It looks like some dodgy knockoff site and scrolling is broken. Not really inspiring confidence.
How can it be that a LTE smartphone, costing ~$100 and doing all the things a smart phone can do, and being designed to connect to a cell network via a tower a few miles away, can somehow also function as the pizza sized $500 Starlink dish?
It doesn’t. The throughput here is multiple orders of magnitude lower than what you get from Starlink
I keep coming back to the comments waiting to see how many orders of magnitude lower. 1 Mbps would be quite different than 10 kbps. Is this for facetime while camping, or send an SOS if your car breaks down in the backroads?
It's much closer to the SOS. They start with text messaging, which is much easier because it's low bandwidth and tolerant of delays. Voice can also be done at low bandwidth but its a bit harder to ensure things sound smooth. And then data, but I think this will only ever be low bandwidth like internet browsing, not tiktok or facetime. There's probably a reason they aren't boasting about the bandwidth they can achieve...
It will start of with text messaged only. That should give you an idea about the throughput.
It uses a different transceiver on the satellite which is broadcasting a ~standard LTE signal, at a miniscule data rate
Do you have to have line of sight? Are trees a problem? Valleys?
How will ISPs respond to this level of leverage. Will it still need ground station amplification?
Can anyone explain how it's possible given that Starlink satellites are at 500 km altitude while LTE tower has coverage radius of only around 5km?
I am by no means an expert on this, but I think it works because satellites at 500 km altitude have a much wider line of sight than ground-based LTE towers. Throw beamforming and steerable antennas into the mix and I think you’re then getting to why. It’s a “cell tower in space” optimised for wide coverage, not urban capacity.
Dunno if that’s maybe a typo?
Could be that the signal strength is really weak so they have to use a very directional antenna to transmit and receive signals. I would bet that receiving a signal from a cell phone is the hardest part. You can always omf up the transmit power, but to receive you really need to have a sensitive and directional antenna
Starlink: Direct to Target
Which bandwidth can a phone reasonably expect given nobody around for kilometers? Are we talking kbits or mbits? Is there some kind of theoretical maximum?
My question is how the laser backhaul works. If the satellites are constantly moving how do they adjust since lasers require line of sight?
The constellation is subdivided into orbital planes, with ~20 to ~60 satellites in each plane chasing each other around the planet.
The following is somewhat speculative:
The bearing to the next satellite ahead or behind you in the same plane should be roughly constant; likewise, the bearing to satellites in adjacent planes orbiting in the same direction will change slowly during most of the orbit.
Near the poles the required slew rate will likely be too high to keep the side-to-side links working but that's also a part of the planet where subscriber density will be low so losing that capacity for periods of a few minutes when near the poles likely won't matter.
Does the laser pointer have azimuth and elevation as free parameters like ground receiving antennas?
Starlink, Starshield and X.ai together sounds like Skynet.
There's the Tesla Optimus bot too..
so they are copying https://ast-science.com/ space mobile
Site doesn't work on iOS (lockdown mode)
How do I get this with cricket wireless?
Heh, you don't. This will be one of the benefits of using a real carrier.
IOT coming soon. Nice!
Lots of people in the comments are talking about Starlink as if it was a civilian project, it's not, it's military. Similar to mercenaries and perfidy it's not presented as military, but it is.
And as such it's an action against every other state. Much like the War on Terror, some NSA activities and so on it's the US making aggressive moves against everyone else.
Imagine butthurt of US hawks if this were China or Russia based product, think about American Exceptionalism.
All three of them pose an actual security risk but I'm more than sure I'd want the American one out of the trio as a 1st world country citizen.
Whats the latency lmao
Really good. It’s faster to send a packet from NYC to London via starlink than fiber because the speed of light in air/vacuum is c and the speed of light in fiber is roughly 2/3 c.
Even just going straight up and back down to a ground station within the same cell adds minimal latency.
350 miles * 2 / speed of light = 4ms
Pretty low. Maybe 20 ms higher than normal cellular.
I would be surprised if it is worse than the audio latency in any of the standard video conference software. I expect it would have a ton less processing and less hops.
I love how libertarians are willing to use a communication network controlled by a billionaire oligarch who bought a presidency to further his business and personal ideological interests, but are worried about government overreach.
What's your concern with people choosing to use Starlink?
I'm not concerned that people are choosing to use it. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of libertarianism.
In the 90’s, libertarians were against any consolidation of power (including corporations) that could infringe on individual rights. (This was roughly in Ron Paul’s time.)
That’s been replaced with corporate libertarians, which are against any government power that could infringe on the rights of corporations. See also Rand Paul, and the corporatist movement (which is sadly mainstream in the US, an offshoot of fascism, and essentially indistinguishable from modern libertarianism).
Anyway, they are many things, but I wouldn’t say they’re hypocritical.
It's massively hypocritical, even if the people don't realise it right away.
If you take libertarianism to its logical conclusion you wind up with feudalism, which is anything but free.
Whenever libertarians try to take their philosophy through to its logical conclusion in practice they just wind up reinventing government only worse (or reinventing banking only worse in the case of crypto).
Well, yeah, that’s the point of corporate libertarianism.
You can’t grant absolute power to corporations without also implementing feudalism.
Of course, there are voters that think they are voting for individual libertarianism, but are voting for corporate libertarianism instead.
(Similarly, there are progressives and moderates that end up voting for corporatists.)
Do you have any examples of libertarian candidates that did not support individual rights?
In the United States, the libertarian caucus in power since 2022 has several leaders that could be said to be against individual rights, especially if you look within the Free State movement, oddly enough. However, they narrowly avoided their candidacy in this last election. The whole thing is a mess.
What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?
It's not very likely.
USC students just broke the non-government, non-corporate rocket launch altitude record, reaching 143.25km[1]. But that is still a long way from the ~500km that Starlink operates at.
On top of that the person would have to develop a guidance system and payload capable of targeting and sufficiently damaging one of these satellites - not an easy feat.
Finally, it seems unlikely that a single hit would cause a chain reaction. There aren't that many satellites that are part of Starlink. Imagine 6000 cars spread over the surface of the Earth. Except that they're even more sparse than that because many of them are at different altitudes.
Additionally, SpaceX has already had to deal with the result of the debris field from the Russian Cosmos satellite that was destroyed by a Russian anti-satellite missile.[2]
Starlink has a lot of protection compared to other constellations since the satellites occupy such low orbits that most debris spontaneously deorbits in 5-10 years.
---
1. https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2024/11/usc-student-rocke...
2. https://spacenews.com/starlink-satellites-encounter-russian-...
Height is not the issue, you need to reach near orbital velocity, which is much harder.
To disable a satalite would you actually need to hit orbital velocity? Couldn't you just shoot your rocket up to altitude and time it such that the satalite hits it?
If you can make a rocket that reaches a Starlink Satellite then there are many other targets the same rocket can hit that would be more damaging.
Rockets are a military technology, and are treated as such.
Lot's of conspiracy theorists have become quite wealthy with the raise of Bitcoin, as it was very popular among them early on.
Military tech or not, its just atoms. Very interesting people are quite rich now, they will have access to precision machining advanced materials and chemicals if they have the motivation.
This is such an unhinged take, what if a super villain decided to build missiles to attack satellites? You understand that’s something nation states struggle with, that billionaire status doesn’t even guarantee success on.
Some bitcoin bro with a net worth in the millions is not building orbit reaching guided missiles in their garage. And if they were the satellites would be the least of our concerns.
At the level of nation-state funding, sure thing that's possible.
They don't fly sun synchronous orbits, so a giant vertical laser cannon near equator running 24/7 can kill them all in matters of days. I think. Carrying this out likely also constitute a de facto declaration of war against the US.
Why near the equator? How much energy do you think it'd take to destroy one, over what period of time. Do you think you can aim your laser at something the size of a desk moving 8km/s at 500km-1500km away?
Its expensive to build rockets. Most rocket startups require at least 100 million $ to get a rocket into orbit. But a rocket into orbit is a far cry from an anti sat weapon. That technology is gone run you another 10-20 million $.
And then that kills 1 sat. SpaceX has many 1000s of sats.
So a small rocket like Electron cost around 8+ million $, lets say 6 million $ in cost. Plus lets say 1 million for the anti sat.
So you need to invest a couple 100 million $ into the development and produce many rockets. So you can calculate 7 million times * 6000, that gone be around 42 billion $.
Of course you would need to launch them from somewhere without a government that can stop you. Taking out vital infrastructure used by the US military tends to make people a bit angry. And neither China, Russia or Europe will want you anywhere close to them. This is likely gone make this much more expensive. Maybe you can make a deal with the Taliban? But they likely don't want that heat either.
So this is just a pure fantasy scenario.
> Maybe starting a cascading effect?
That's not gone happen. Far to low in orbit. As soon as they don't have propulsion they will drop lower. Until then the others can slightly raise their orbit.
There is not even a single nation state who has the capability to take out Starlink.
And no amount of people who burn down 5G towers could ever pull this off.
The overlap between people who are irrationally afraid of 5G and are capable of building orbital rockets is probably pretty low.
I doubt there is enough overlap between people able to build a rocket capable of taking out satellites and people who are afraid of 5G.
Could perhaps melt them with a powerful laser?
> how plausible would it be for a conspiracy nit to create a rocket to take out the satellites?
not plausible at all. Most /countries/ aren't able to launch a rocket to orbit.
Those countries just don't have the motivation to do such a thing. Those who have the motivation had done it despite embargoes.
I'm sure that the only thing preventing Liechtenstein from having their own space program is motivation.
Doesn’t Globestar still have more satellites in orbit? With Apple supporting them, hoping there will be some consumer choice. This looking like regular cellular will become the new landline company.
Globestar have 48 Satellites in orbit [1]
Starlink has 6,426 [2] (Though that number is likely out of date by the time you read this)
[1] https://www.groundcontrol.com/knowledge/calculators-and-maps...
[2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology, but he's probably still wrong quantitatively.
To put some numbers to it, it looks like SpaceX started launching direct to cell satellites at the beginning of the year[1], and by July they had over 100 in orbit. Not sure how many are in orbit right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to 200.
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1. https://spacenews.com/spacex-deploys-direct-to-smartphone-sa...
2. https://www.satellitetoday.com/connectivity/2024/07/03/space...
> I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology
Ah, thanks, I missed that.
Wait another month, there will be at least another ~500 in orbit.
Staking has over 7,000 now
They plan to launch 34,400 satellites
> With Apple supporting them
Oh, no. Apple owns them at this point. 20% ownership, and they have 85% of Globalstar's current satellite capacity for themselves. GSAT isn't really putting new customers on the constellations and Apple is funding all the replacement hardware.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285347/apple-globalstar...