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this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Enough Musk Spam
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I just generally doubt anything Musk does because of his track record. However, is there a particular reason why Starlink is inherently not viable? Could a competent person do it or it is fundamentally flawed? To put it another way is it cybertruck bad (yes people want electric cars but not a barely driveable dumpster held together with glue) or hyperloop bad (physics said no)?
It is closer to a hyper loop system. For the internet to have low enough latency it has to be put in quite a low earth orbit. That means we need more satlights to make coverage, ballooning costs. However that is not the part that kills it, it is that it is in such low orbit we can expect air resistance to significantly degrade orbits. There are too many satilights to reasonably boost them all, and when they start to degrade it will be too fast to reasonably replace them all.
That, and as they burn up upon re-entry, they're fucking up the environment:
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-reentry-pollution-damage-earth-atmosphere
And they first batches of the current network are at their end of life. That means that with the same level of investment, growth will slow down, which is terrible for venture capital.
And orbital mechanics is a bitch. You can't add more speed to a certain area (like a city with a lot of people) and less to the empty ocean. So there's a harsh density limit to your subscribes.
I mean, the need for internet satellite is mostly in low density areas. In big cities fiber will always be cheaper and more reliable (except maybe in the US where operators are allowed to fuck you). I hate Musk and I guess Starlink is squeezing their monopoly position right now, but I'm not 100% sure they are not profitable.
Yeah, the big problem is that by definition most people live in the places where most people live. Urbanisation is over 80% in Europe and the US (and European countries hold a much looser definition of "urban" than the US).
To increase service to most people, you need to upgrade the entire world, which is expensive.
I am. They're reporting a profit right now because theyre calling the cost of new satellites as "investment" and not expenses. In a few years, when every satellite launched is a replacement, those "investments" become running costs, and there goes the profit.
Maybe a better answer is WiMax.
You don't know what you're talking about, the satellites do "reasonably" boost themselves, they have propulsion on board.
After 5 years yes they trash them, but that nots not cost prohibitive for SpaceX. Starlink is brining in a significant amount of money, and it doesn't cost SpaceX all that much to launch a new batch to replace the old. You all seem to forget they are the cheapest and most impressive launch company to date.
What you and nobody else seems to understand is that every year SpaceX is launching more and more rockets and they will only continue to increase their launch cadence. In the next one or two years, they will start using Starship for Starlink launches, and that will significantly increase the amount of bandwidth they can add to the network per lanch.
I'm sure I'll get hate because I'm defending an elon company but everyone here is plain wrong and just making shit up.
☝️ spitting facts. people love to hate, and complain about the "other side" being delusional. turns out, we ALL can be a little delusional.
If you could actually dispute it without insulting the author then I would consider your input. But you can't, because the facts are correct.
I don't see anywhere where you did actually. Even tried to find another comment on your profile. Would you mind linking that for me?
Thanks
Yeah that's super weird. Maybe some weird federation behavior. I'll probably reply to that comment sometime tomorrow
The physics of it mean you basically have to be constantly launching new satellites to replace the 5 year old ones de orbiting. Further, it will also be disadvantaged to anything closer with ability to choose a cable medium. All this adds up to the most expensive infrastructure that exclusively targets very low population density areas and/or areas too poor to afford good Internet. The people that could afford to sustain this can afford to move somewhere with a bit more infrastructure or at least within reach of a terrestrial tower and have an even better result.
I mean...so what if the birds only last 5-7 years? My only real concern is that they're not made with environmentally damaging materials. Let them fall over the South Pacific and be atomized on the way down. It really depends on how cheaply you can launch them. All infrastructure has a finite life span. 5-7 years is lower than most terrestrial infrastructure, but this is all a function of launch costs. If those can be made cheap enough, the concept is perfectly viable.
It is a viable business product, latest estimates are Starlink will bring in a revenue of 12 billion in 2025 with about 2 billion being profit. Of course it's not a public company so we don't get official numbers, but you're flat out wrong.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growing-rapidly-as-it-faces-a-moment-of-promise-and-peril/
When it's all finished, and operating, that's when the next Democratic government should take it from him. One person, especially one demonstrated to be mentally unstable, should not control the world's Internet.
You keep showing how you don't know anything about this, there are no subsidies on these items. Starlink is owned by SpaceX, so it is essentially free to launch besides the fuel it costs to launch. They are going to spend the money on operations, no matter what. If you want to call that a subsidy fine, but it's a subsidy that's never going away.
Secondly, prices have not gone up for the most popular plan that normal folks have. Prices were only raised for customers that do not have a fixed location, such as people who use their dish on a boat or RV.
Third, It's funny how confident you are when the fact is that this is such a good business model that other companies are desperately trying to fill the space as competitors.
Amazon's Kupier just starter launching their network, and have significantly greater launch costs than starlink because they do not own the launch vehicles, still Kupier will print money for Amazon in 10 years. You are talking out of your ass.
I see you responding to many of my comments, it shows you are unreasonably upset about something that shouldn't upset you. Yes Elon musk is a horrible person that will hopefully die soon, doesn't change the fact SpaceX and Starlink are both incredibly successful and will continue to be in the future.
Also last I read the cost to manufacture a terminal was now lower than the cost they sell them at, and that will continue to drop as production scales up (because there is significant demand despite what you may believe)