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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Yeah, not many will volunteer for "the firing line."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Elon will fuck up and his money won’t save him from what comes after that.
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?
> By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't native.
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.
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.
Call that whatever you want.
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.
[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)
The nation will mourn his heroic patriotism. Then business will carry on as usual, only more so, with a more compliant leader.
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.
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).
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.
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.
It’s as if your car gained value with every mile driven.
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
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.
That used to be true. It no longer is.
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.
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.
Also, more people per satellite, so less capacity per person.
It’s either selling to the whole world or nothing. If you don’t want to go for slow GEO stationary.
Not North America or Europe.
In fact, it probably has similar coverage population-wise to what a USA based company can offer.
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.
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.
Starlink is a division of SpaceX. So what price it charges/pays itself is only an internal bookkeeping artifact.
>We can only hope competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX... about space debris.. and satellite [visibility]
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.
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.
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.
Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
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?
[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.
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.
By spending more money in absolute terms to achieve objectives, without a necessitative need of immediate profit?
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.
Pretty soon AI agents could reasonably take a crack at it.
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.
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.
You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give 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.
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.
Probably they are using GSAT satellites.
Obviously it will never have the bandwidth of a local cell site, but doesn't need to to still be useful.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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's like trying to diagnose WiFi next to a radar station remotely when you don't know the user is next to one
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
Sometimes I come here for a good laugh
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.
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-...
No, actually the burden is on the person making that claim (you).
Now that you’ve brought up political money and public and private interests, I’m starting to think you don’t like his politics and that’s about it.
I can think of any other business who doesn’t spend millions for politics and “commingle public and private interests” (whatever that actually means).
"Crony capitalism, sometimes also called simply cronyism, is a pejorative term used in political discourse to describe a situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, [...] In other words, it is used to describe a situation where businesses thrive not as a result of free enterprise, but rather collusion between a business class and the political class."
> I can think of any other business who doesn’t spend millions for politics and “commingle public and private interests”
So if cronyism is prevalent in US to some degree then a person who does that best shouldn't be criticisized?
You realize that prior to the latest election, the government generally was opposed to Elon Musk. He was investigated by the SEC, and attacked by politicians.
That sounds like the opposite of crony capitalism.
> So if cronyism is prevalent in US to some degree then a person who does that best shouldn't be criticisized?
Maybe you should start with some evidence first? Honestly, it sounds like you just don't like him and you're mad that others do like him.
And who knows what happened around starlink and military.
Tons of subsidies for Tesla. Tax cuts. All of his companies benefit hugely from tax money yet people see him as incredible self made billionaire.
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.
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.
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.
And regardless I made no claim that any of those other things aren’t important, so feel free to knock down your own strawman.
That latching onto smart people and ousting them out of their own achievements and replacing with yourself in public imagination is something to admire.
Your own bias is showing.
You've provided zero evidence to back of your claims of "grifter" (whatever that is).
It's not hard. Businessmen run businesses. Musk runs many and in a very successful way. You're entitled to your own opinions, but that's what they are - nothing more than your opinions.
I suppose it’s some deep personality trait difference that makes us right wingers appreciate his work and what makes leftists hate his guts.
You're ranking Musk above Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Disney, Toyoda, Walton, and Buffett?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
* Mbps
Yep. Tesla infamously doesn't have a Public Relations department ( I assume because he got rejected by a woman who worked there) and
“[email protected] now auto responds with [poop emoji],” Musk tweeted.
Ladies and gentlemen, the richest man in the world!
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2
https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-s...
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 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.
And ESA knows this - hence the spluttering of paltry funds towards cheaper vehicles.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps you missed the irony.
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.
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?
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.
Hence, the source for articles like this: https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/cheap-caliper-hack-keeps-em-...
But to answer your question, must they? No. Do they tend to be bad? Yes. Does their behavior get worse over time? Typically.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
China is deftly building something. Russia doesn't have a snowball chance in hell of building something like Starlink.
Swansat anyone?
https://web.archive.org/web/20080119080404/http://swansat.co...
Keffals and Fong-Jones
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.
[1] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/twitter-suspends-journ...
You're also arguing SpaceX should have waited for a Pentagon contract to deliver to Ukraine
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.
Which since 1991 has been and remains Ukrainian.
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
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.
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.
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.
> That's objectively just not true at all.
I'll clarify. For the purposes of doing business there no one cares if it's legally Ukraine.
> Of course, you can always find people who say something wildly at odds with the overwhelming international consensus
Yes I can find a Crimea full of them and probably half the world at large who will say it is legally Russia now.
I properly talked to one Crimean only in my life and he voted for Russia in referendum. he said most people did because higher salary etc. When war began he left the country tho. Maybe he realized his mistake but probably just didn't want to get killed.
International consensus is fluid and ephemeral (maybe even precisely because people like putler)
My assumption was it was simply the context I chimed in on -- in regard to the region's sovereignty status and the bogus 2014 referendum.
Will hopefully get to the other stuff later. But just to get that squared away for now.
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.
Don't forget over $15bln of tax money they got for doing barely anything so far.
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.
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.
It's a monopoly engaging in anti-competitive practices, and should be broken up.
There are multiple players working on constellations of low-orbit satellites competing with Starlink
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.
Starlink also has launch priority. Good luck with getting 50 launches a year as a customer...
To be precise: Starlink is a division of the SpaceX corporation, it's not a separate entity.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
But the parent comment was specifically celebrating a long term, unassailable monopoly.
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.
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.
> It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
> 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"
...any competitor. It’s over. And IMO it’s awesome.
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.
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).
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 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.