Hacker News Reader

Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

Sure, there are competitors. Starlink (or any other proposed LEO constellation) offers a fundamentally better product as a result of low latency (ballpark 640ms vs 20ms). Which they get as a result of being in low earth orbit instead of geosynchronous orbit. Starlinks costs per unit bandwidth are almost certainly far lower, meaning the ability to out compete on price.

I don't see the existing constellations remaining competitive for long.

View on HN

This is completely incorrect. There is no evidence whatsoever that starlink costs are "almost certainly far lower".

> Starlinks costs per unit bandwidth are almost certainly far lower

Interesting, how do you know that?

It's not true. LEO systems are far more CAPEX intensive than GEO, and neither Starlink, Oneweb, Telesat, or Kuiper will be cheaper than Viasat-3 and will not be able to compete in terms of cost per Gbps.

Do you have any good sources on that? Not that I doubt you, but would like to read more on the subject.

See the cost of phased array, which Leo needs to work. They're significantly more expensive than standard parabolic dishes, and there's no evidence SpaceX has changed that.

Based on Elon's standard playbook, I'm guessing he's going to try to bring down unit economics with much larger scale in phased array manufacturing than we've seen in the past. If he didn't think he could do this, I don't think they'd be launching Starlink.

That said, I know almost nothing about phased arrays, so I don't know if it's expensive due to some fundamental reason, or if it's partly because it's been a niche/low volume device before now.

Right, Elon needs that to come down to work. The satellite part is very cool and all, but the ground station cost is where the uncertainty is.

Well, look at Oneweb as an example. They have raised 3+ billions, still need more funding and their total system throughout is not that much larger than Viasat-3's,which has a cost of ~1 billion (?). I don't think that Starlink is gonna be significantly (maybe a factor of 0.5x) cheaper in terms of cost per Mbps.

It's an opinion based on:

- Number of satellites launched at once

- Stated bandwidth numbers of satellites

- Lack of concern over intentionally deorbitting satellites for testing and sending experimental prototypes to space with an apparently expected not negligible failure rate.

- Stated cost of the phased array groundstations (in the hundreds)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com