Comment by adfgadfgaery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adfgadfgaery | Hacker News Reader

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>Satellite Internet is already a multi-billion dollar industry before you have inexpensive and low latency service provided by launch vehicles (and satellites) a tenth to a hundredth the cost.

It is currently a money pit. It is a simple fact that right now it requires huge expenses in launches, R&D, and subsidized terminals and makes practically no revenue. SpaceX has itself stated in internal communications that their current satellites and current launch systems are not viable.

I don't believe it ever will make any money—cellular networks do the same job better—but it definitely won't make any money in the next few years.

>But sure, buy into Musk pretending it’s desperate to try to motivate his workforce.

So it is your opinion that he was lying to his employees to coerce them into working overtime over the holidays out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see how that's an improvement. Either the situation is legitimately desperate or the work environment is abusive.

> SpaceX has itself stated in internal communications that their current satellites and current launch systems are not viable.

Yes, you’re commenting on the Musk email to motivate starship.

> I don't believe it ever will make any money—cellular networks do the same job better

No they don’t, because they don’t exist with good coverage in most of the geographic US. I live ~30 miles from a major city and my internet options are terrible cell backed plans that have gnarly data caps and poor throughput.

Your viewpoint is understandable but it’s completely out of touch with the reality of what exists today. I’m on the starlink waitlist and $100/mo for uncapped 50mbps in my location has absolutely no competition from the cell networks, terrestrial wireless, nor geo stationary providers.

> So it is your opinion that he was lying to his employees to coerce them into working overtime over the holidays out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see how that's an improvement. Either the situation is legitimately desperate or the work environment is abusive.

Yes, it’s likely the latter. Starship didn’t exist when starlink was started. The numbers didn’t change.

Musk is kind of bipolar when it comes to these things, he does run the company extremely aggressively in a growth mode leaving little margin for a breather (always charging into something more ambitious), and SpaceX does have a sort of reputation for burnout. Yeah, I DO think Musk was exaggerating the risk to try to get his workers to work harder. (He also pushes himself, which doesn’t totally change the fact that SpaceX workers are often at risk of burnout.)

Being a UK resident I often have to remind myself that the UK and continental Europe's level of cellular coverage is something of an outlier.

The whole of the UK is, after all, slightly smaller than Oregon.

>Being a UK resident I often have to remind myself that the UK and continental Europe's level of cellular coverage is something of an outlier.

You have it backwards. The U.S. is the outlier. All similarly wealthy countries have better coverage.

No, Canada does not either. Any countries with large rural areas suffer from the same issue.

> It is currently a money pit. It is a simple fact that right now it requires huge expenses in launches, R&D, and subsidized terminals and makes practically no revenue.

This isn’t a “fact.” “It” is the “satellite internet industry.” Viasat, just one such company, has billions in annual revenue and even manages to turn a profit. Starlink is far better positioned. Uses the industry-leading reusable launch vehicle workhorse which has a factor of 10 lower costs than traditional launch companies, with similar cost advantages for the satellite hardware.

Starship is a a factor of 10 or more better than that. Starlink is also entering the in-flight connectivity and the business/enterprise connectivity markets which are much higher margin.

Starlink already has 250,000 residential and business subscribers (worth around half a billion in annual revenue, including current prices, Starlink Business revenue, terminal sales, and special contracts), and they haven’t even filled out there first constellation yet. In 5-10 years, they will have millions of subscribers and billions in revenue. Potentially, tens of millions of subscribers and tens of billions in revenue, just like many other broadband internet providers.

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