SpaceX launch costs are an order of magnitude lower than those of the launches that deployed Iridium and Teledisic's satellites.
Someone explain the downvotes here. It's not popular among Musk fans to know the true history of the company?
Starlink is a profitable business segment. The majority of revenue comes from consumers, a minority comes from a combination of enterprise and government customers. Saying it’s subsidized or dependent on golden dome is simply not true.
Re:Starlink Mini 2
by VanTheBrand on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:12PM
(#50449357)
I think the core issue is that even if the subsidy you are saying got it this far ended, they’ve reached a point where they could keep going without it. So even if what you are saying is true, it’s still wrong.
Your comment history is uniquely obsessive. Like, almost identical to what these accounts have posted (before getting banned):
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kidme5
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=georgeg23
Do you have some alert on anyone who posts about Golden Dome?
Honestly you seem very obsessive. What is your stake in this?
Your writing style is obvious. If you copy-and-paste excerpts from your original comment into the search bar at the bottom of the site, it starts pulling up the accounts I named. You all say the same stuff in almost exactly the same way, on the same threads with the same submission history. Even if you wrote differently, it would be trivial to cross-reference your comment history.
My stake is trying to point out ban evaders. Feel free to audit my comment history if you want, it's pretty banal.
Lol
Let's see an example of what you're talking about
How would a Hacker News ban even work?
Same was true for Iridium and Teledesic as they thought they'd win new Strategic Defense Initiative contacts in the late '90s, but that didn't happen and they all went bankrupt when that gold pot disappeared.
With the midterm election results, the same is probably happening soon with Starlink. Dems won't fund Golden Dome and Starlink satellites only last 5 years before burning up.
Read about Pete Worden and Michael D. Griffin and how they started Mars Society for the history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin