7 ms·

I don't believe the required billions of financing for this project has been obtained yet. I am skeptical of the utility, since most humans live in dense citie

by 7e 8y ago

I don't believe the required billions of financing for this project has been obtained yet. I am skeptical of the utility, since most humans live in dense cities, where it is both cheaper and faster to run fiber (even to 5G towers) than it is for millions of people to choke on a handful of satellites. This offering is only compelling for regions that have no people and no infrastructure (and therefore no money). All signs point to another Teledesic or Iridium.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nilskidoo 8y ago
Or another purpose altogether.
- 7e 8y ago
  Its purpose is to create launch demand for SpaceX, and ultimately to fund a trip to Mars. A solution in search of a problem.
  - cdumler 8y ago
    I can tell you any more choice in the US would be a good thing. Our infrastructure is pretty much bottom rung unless you are one of the very few who can get access to fiber. I have literally a Google fiber drop installed in my front yard, but they can't be bothered to give me service. Google is no longer deploying new locations in my city.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Similar to sexy electric cars stoking demand for lithium battery factories. HFT traders will be the first to sign on for StarLink to arbitrage between continents/across oceans, and the rest of the value chain will follow.
    - politician 8y ago
      This is an important point. Transit over StarLink looks like it will be faster than transit overland via fiber optic cable due to the speed of light being slower in fiber cable than free space. That means that this isn't just a stunt, but an actual upgrade to our communications infrastructure.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Honestly, I’d love to see StarLink keep the latency advantage to themselves and acquire an HFT firm to extract the profits from the advantage. What are you going to do as a competitor? Build and lift your own comm sat network? The laws of physics are a hell of a moat.
        politician 8y ago
        If they went this route, they could run the compute at the edge; that is, in space, perhaps in another sat in a higher orbit. Thereby avoiding one trip through the atmosphere improving their latency advantage even further. The real trick will be acquiring rooftop space at the exchanges for the uplinks.
        dx034 8y ago
        Acquiring an HFT firm won't be worth it. Just sell it to the highest bidder. It's likely they will pay too much anyway (winner's curse) in which case Starlink just needs to sell it to the next highest bidder a year later. Much easier money (and less regulation) than trading yourself.
  - dbasedweeb 8y ago
    Nothing about SpaceX except marketing hype has to do with Mars, can we just stop it with the Mars talk? It belittles what SpaceX actually is about, which is amazing in its own right. Launch demand, cheaper LEO/GEO/GTO, and a willingness to push the industry out of the 60’s is almost unbelievable, as is the journey they’ve taken to get this far. Throwing Mars into the mix makes it all sounds like bullshit, because anyone who actually understands the challenges of Mars beyond the big rocket portion rolls their eyes and sighs. I’d also add that competing with the likes of Comcast and Verizon could be very profitable in the long term. I don’t think we need to assume it doesn’t serve its own obvious purpose of being th first big step in getting that sweet ISP money. Edit api: It makes sense for a lot of things that a demand actually exists for, like heavy loads, launching a number of different contracts in one reusable rocket to save on overhead, defense contracts, and more. Those will actually make them money, and are all technically feasible today.
    - api 8y ago
      They are building a super heavy lift rocket that makes the most sense for sending humans to the Moon and Mars. Other roles can be served reasonably well by Falcon and FH. Outside manned tourism, exploration, and settlement there is little need for a rocket that big. Also... marketing hype for who? We think the Mars stuff is cool, sure, but we are not SpaceX's customers. Their customers could care less. They care if their payloads fly to the right orbit.
    - inflatableDodo 8y ago
      Don't forget that SpaceX was born out of Musk's failed attempt to buy ICBMs from Russia in order to land a small greenhouse on Mars. For SpaceX to stop the Mars talk would be to ignore the defining event underlying the creation of the company.
    - electriclove 8y ago
      Mars is the vision and it is going to take an incredible amount of effort to make that possible. We need to find uses for that technology here and now so that the costs for it can be brought down. It is not just a matter of having a human put their feet down on Mars and then be done with it. How will we move around (Boring and Tesla btw)? How will we communicate there and back to people on Earth? How will we feed ourselves there? Etc.. IMHO, Starlink (on Mars) is an answer to the communication challenges we will face there. By doing it on Earth, we prove it out, bring the costs down, provide a better internet alternative to what we have now, and have synergies with his other companies like Tesla (communication without needing cell providers) and SpaceX (increase launch demand).
- electriclove 8y ago
  1. High speed internet available to anyone on Earth. 2. Communication for Tesla vehicles which I think is currently dependent on cell networks. 3. Communication network for humanity on Mars.
  - nilskidoo 8y ago
    I was thinking along the lines of this: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see-through-walls https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see... It was always about surveillance.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Basically SpaceX is doing what Steve Jobs first wanted to do when faced with the stubbornness of telecom giants - create his own cell phone / data network. He was advised it would be too expensive. Maybe Apple and SpaceX should do a joint venture...
    - dx034 8y ago
      Can it really replace mobile networks? It's great for areas currently not served by 4G but would serving large cities (New York, SF, Seattle, London) really make sense via satellite?
hbcondo714 8y ago
Not billions but looks like Musk is raising $500M for this https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satellite-164330351.html https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satel...
vidanay 8y ago
As someone who does not live in a dense city, and is willing and capable of paying for a service such as Starlink, I resent the idea that it is not a worthwhile endeavor.
apatheticonion 8y ago
As someone who lives in a dense city (Sydney), I can tell you that I would use this satellite internet if it's faster than the ADSL2 and poop fibre most people get at home.
- ahje 8y ago
  Ditto in rural Finland. I'd happily pay for a service that can provide decent speeds _reliably_. There's definitely a market for the product. Whether they succeed at bringing it to the market at a decent price, well, time will tell...
pbreit 8y ago
One of the most short-sited posts I think I've ever seen on HN.
- louprado 8y ago
  I initially thought the same but he did write "All signs point to another Teledesic or Iridium" and I can't argue to the contrary.
  - nordsieck 8y ago
    One of the very real dangers is that all of the satellite constellations come one line at the same time, and none of them get to critical mass before they all go bankrupt. Mass adoption is the key to reasonable per-user costs here. Amazon, and possibly SpaceX are at an advantage here, since they have other revenue streams, so they might be able to wait out the rest of the field and grab customers from failed networks.
    - shaklee3 8y ago
      Amazon and SpaceX are nowhere near equivalent. SpaceX is relying on starlink to be a major portion of their revenue by 2025, far outweighing launch. That's all they have. Amazon has retail and aws, and satellites will be nowhere near a majority.
mrep 8y ago
Planes, boats, busses, trains, cars, and rural sites can all massively benefit from a much bigger bandwidth pipe with low latency. Add in the US military which has already given spacex $28.7 million dollars to see if they can put it on all their vehicles (planes in particular for that award) and I think they have a decent sized market. [0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-700m-raised/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-70...
blago 8y ago
You may be underestimating the resentment with current duopoly operators in the US. I live in a dense city and I would switch in a heartbeat even if Starlink didn't offer better/faster/cheaper service. Just being on par would be enough.
- pascalxus 8y ago
  For Sure. I know I would switch in a hearbeat, if there was an equivalent service that costs equal or less. And just imagine the possibilities. once you can get your ISP internet anywhere, you won't even need a data plan on your phone anymore (just hook it up to your ISP). In this case i would be willing to pay a bit extra for that.
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    It will not cost equal. It will be far more. Shotwell has hinted at this recently.
    - wurst_case 8y ago
      Source?
      - shaklee3 8y ago
        https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-million-its-most-promising-profitability-path-now-faces-internal https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-...
  - ancientworldnow 8y ago
    The steaklink receiver is not small (about the size of a pizza), last I heard it's similar to a satellite television dish. You won't be getting this on your phone.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  That's a very niche view. Almost nobody will switch isps because of a duopoly if everything is currently fine on price and performance.
s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
That's unfair to the millions of Americans living in rural areas having to cope with current slow speeds. Don't you want the world more connected? The problem with the current scenario is ISPs and wireless providers won't run lines or stand up towers for a low populated area. They know they won't ever make the money back for the project. With low orbit satellites this problem is solved. Would you rather those people live in the past just because they don't choose to live in the city?
- shaklee3 8y ago
  There are existing high speed satellite services.
  - jagger27 8y ago
    Latency matters. LEO gives us that.
    - shaklee3 8y ago
      It does for some things, and not for others. Streaming and web browsing hardly have a difference.
      - s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
        The caps, bandwidth, and latency are all awful for current solutions.
        shaklee3 8y ago
        They will be the same for SpaceX. What makes you think otherwise? Their constellation will not start out anywhere near the max capacity they've stated.
AngryData 8y ago
Once upon a time power companies refused to provide grid access to people outside of the cities because it didn't make money fast enough, the government stepped in and made it happen and now not being able to get a power hookup is a ridiculous notion. If this doesn't happen, the government will have to step in again, otherwise those people either become second class citizens or they get really angry at being excluded from society and take violent action.
- rayiner 8y ago
  It’s not at all similar. There is no alternative to wired electricity. There are lots of alternatives to wired broadband, and they’re getting better every day. A double digit percentage of households earning six figures has no wired broadband (cellular only), and that percentage is growing. Note that water is more important than broadband, and the government doesn’t step in to build/compel people to build water/sewer systems in rural areas. (I live 10 minutes from the capital of Maryland, and we just got city water/sewer in 2015, and I just have to drive another 5 minutes down the road before all you have is well water/septic systems.)
  - discordance 8y ago
    Solar + storage is an alternative to grid, although initial costs are high.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      If it had been in 1930, you likely wouldn’t have seen rural electrification be a government policy.
  - hedora 8y ago
    The government does compel you to have water and sewerage handling out in the country. You can’t build or get a conventional mortgage without both. Wells and septic tanks scale better in sparsely populated regions, so they require that in places that are outside of municipal systems.
- 8y ago
BurningFrog 8y ago
Yeah, but you don't need "most humans" to use it. 10% would probably finance it very nicely.
- vidanay 8y ago
  700 million people paying $100USD per month? I am imagining Elon doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into his bank vault.
  - awad 8y ago
    700 million people parting with $100 USD per month seems pretty high
    - XorNot 8y ago
      Think any company with remote assets it needs to monitor. Drones, backup internet etc. There's a very big market for fast internet access which just works anywhere on the planet. It would be worth a premium just to let large organisations consolidate to a single biller.
      - awad 8y ago
        Sure, I can buy the end revenue stated, just not the implication that 700 million end consumers is the way to get there.
        vidanay 8y ago
        I was just using the 10% number posited by the OP
  - apexalpha 8y ago
    Sure, there's a lot of potential customers but: a) no one pays $100 for internet. Maybe some in monopoly-internet USA have to, but literally no one else. b) most countries are poorer than the US and would definitely not have $100. c) Local providers can simply lower their prices, and SpaceX will have competition from Oneweb and possibly others.
ncallaway 8y ago
> since most humans live in dense cities 55% of the human population currently live in cities. That means 45% don't live in cities. 45% of 7B is one hell of a TAM.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  How many of those earn less than $50 per month, a reasonable ballpark for the price? I would bet about 75%, if not more.

by 7e 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nilskidoo 8y ago

Or another purpose altogether.

7e 8y ago
Its purpose is to create launch demand for SpaceX, and ultimately to fund a trip to Mars. A solution in search of a problem.
- cdumler 8y ago
  I can tell you any more choice in the US would be a good thing. Our infrastructure is pretty much bottom rung unless you are one of the very few who can get access to fiber. I have literally a Google fiber drop installed in my front yard, but they can't be bothered to give me service. Google is no longer deploying new locations in my city.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Similar to sexy electric cars stoking demand for lithium battery factories. HFT traders will be the first to sign on for StarLink to arbitrage between continents/across oceans, and the rest of the value chain will follow.
  - politician 8y ago
    This is an important point. Transit over StarLink looks like it will be faster than transit overland via fiber optic cable due to the speed of light being slower in fiber cable than free space. That means that this isn't just a stunt, but an actual upgrade to our communications infrastructure.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Honestly, I’d love to see StarLink keep the latency advantage to themselves and acquire an HFT firm to extract the profits from the advantage. What are you going to do as a competitor? Build and lift your own comm sat network? The laws of physics are a hell of a moat.
      - politician 8y ago
        If they went this route, they could run the compute at the edge; that is, in space, perhaps in another sat in a higher orbit. Thereby avoiding one trip through the atmosphere improving their latency advantage even further. The real trick will be acquiring rooftop space at the exchanges for the uplinks.
      - dx034 8y ago
        Acquiring an HFT firm won't be worth it. Just sell it to the highest bidder. It's likely they will pay too much anyway (winner's curse) in which case Starlink just needs to sell it to the next highest bidder a year later. Much easier money (and less regulation) than trading yourself.
- dbasedweeb 8y ago
  Nothing about SpaceX except marketing hype has to do with Mars, can we just stop it with the Mars talk? It belittles what SpaceX actually is about, which is amazing in its own right. Launch demand, cheaper LEO/GEO/GTO, and a willingness to push the industry out of the 60’s is almost unbelievable, as is the journey they’ve taken to get this far. Throwing Mars into the mix makes it all sounds like bullshit, because anyone who actually understands the challenges of Mars beyond the big rocket portion rolls their eyes and sighs. I’d also add that competing with the likes of Comcast and Verizon could be very profitable in the long term. I don’t think we need to assume it doesn’t serve its own obvious purpose of being th first big step in getting that sweet ISP money. Edit api: It makes sense for a lot of things that a demand actually exists for, like heavy loads, launching a number of different contracts in one reusable rocket to save on overhead, defense contracts, and more. Those will actually make them money, and are all technically feasible today.
  - api 8y ago
    They are building a super heavy lift rocket that makes the most sense for sending humans to the Moon and Mars. Other roles can be served reasonably well by Falcon and FH. Outside manned tourism, exploration, and settlement there is little need for a rocket that big. Also... marketing hype for who? We think the Mars stuff is cool, sure, but we are not SpaceX's customers. Their customers could care less. They care if their payloads fly to the right orbit.
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    Don't forget that SpaceX was born out of Musk's failed attempt to buy ICBMs from Russia in order to land a small greenhouse on Mars. For SpaceX to stop the Mars talk would be to ignore the defining event underlying the creation of the company.
  - electriclove 8y ago
    Mars is the vision and it is going to take an incredible amount of effort to make that possible. We need to find uses for that technology here and now so that the costs for it can be brought down. It is not just a matter of having a human put their feet down on Mars and then be done with it. How will we move around (Boring and Tesla btw)? How will we communicate there and back to people on Earth? How will we feed ourselves there? Etc.. IMHO, Starlink (on Mars) is an answer to the communication challenges we will face there. By doing it on Earth, we prove it out, bring the costs down, provide a better internet alternative to what we have now, and have synergies with his other companies like Tesla (communication without needing cell providers) and SpaceX (increase launch demand).
electriclove 8y ago
1. High speed internet available to anyone on Earth. 2. Communication for Tesla vehicles which I think is currently dependent on cell networks. 3. Communication network for humanity on Mars.
- nilskidoo 8y ago
  I was thinking along the lines of this: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see-through-walls https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see... It was always about surveillance.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Basically SpaceX is doing what Steve Jobs first wanted to do when faced with the stubbornness of telecom giants - create his own cell phone / data network. He was advised it would be too expensive. Maybe Apple and SpaceX should do a joint venture...
  - dx034 8y ago
    Can it really replace mobile networks? It's great for areas currently not served by 4G but would serving large cities (New York, SF, Seattle, London) really make sense via satellite?

hbcondo714 8y ago

Not billions but looks like Musk is raising $500M for this https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satellite-164330351.html https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satel...

vidanay 8y ago

As someone who does not live in a dense city, and is willing and capable of paying for a service such as Starlink, I resent the idea that it is not a worthwhile endeavor.

apatheticonion 8y ago

As someone who lives in a dense city (Sydney), I can tell you that I would use this satellite internet if it's faster than the ADSL2 and poop fibre most people get at home.

ahje 8y ago
Ditto in rural Finland. I'd happily pay for a service that can provide decent speeds _reliably_. There's definitely a market for the product. Whether they succeed at bringing it to the market at a decent price, well, time will tell...

pbreit 8y ago

One of the most short-sited posts I think I've ever seen on HN.

louprado 8y ago
I initially thought the same but he did write "All signs point to another Teledesic or Iridium" and I can't argue to the contrary.
- nordsieck 8y ago
  One of the very real dangers is that all of the satellite constellations come one line at the same time, and none of them get to critical mass before they all go bankrupt. Mass adoption is the key to reasonable per-user costs here. Amazon, and possibly SpaceX are at an advantage here, since they have other revenue streams, so they might be able to wait out the rest of the field and grab customers from failed networks.
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    Amazon and SpaceX are nowhere near equivalent. SpaceX is relying on starlink to be a major portion of their revenue by 2025, far outweighing launch. That's all they have. Amazon has retail and aws, and satellites will be nowhere near a majority.

mrep 8y ago

Planes, boats, busses, trains, cars, and rural sites can all massively benefit from a much bigger bandwidth pipe with low latency. Add in the US military which has already given spacex $28.7 million dollars to see if they can put it on all their vehicles (planes in particular for that award) and I think they have a decent sized market. [0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-700m-raised/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-70...

blago 8y ago

You may be underestimating the resentment with current duopoly operators in the US. I live in a dense city and I would switch in a heartbeat even if Starlink didn't offer better/faster/cheaper service. Just being on par would be enough.

pascalxus 8y ago
For Sure. I know I would switch in a hearbeat, if there was an equivalent service that costs equal or less. And just imagine the possibilities. once you can get your ISP internet anywhere, you won't even need a data plan on your phone anymore (just hook it up to your ISP). In this case i would be willing to pay a bit extra for that.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  It will not cost equal. It will be far more. Shotwell has hinted at this recently.
  - wurst_case 8y ago
    Source?
    - shaklee3 8y ago
      https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-million-its-most-promising-profitability-path-now-faces-internal https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-...
- ancientworldnow 8y ago
  The steaklink receiver is not small (about the size of a pizza), last I heard it's similar to a satellite television dish. You won't be getting this on your phone.
shaklee3 8y ago
That's a very niche view. Almost nobody will switch isps because of a duopoly if everything is currently fine on price and performance.

s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago

That's unfair to the millions of Americans living in rural areas having to cope with current slow speeds. Don't you want the world more connected? The problem with the current scenario is ISPs and wireless providers won't run lines or stand up towers for a low populated area. They know they won't ever make the money back for the project. With low orbit satellites this problem is solved. Would you rather those people live in the past just because they don't choose to live in the city?

shaklee3 8y ago
There are existing high speed satellite services.
- jagger27 8y ago
  Latency matters. LEO gives us that.
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    It does for some things, and not for others. Streaming and web browsing hardly have a difference.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
      The caps, bandwidth, and latency are all awful for current solutions.
      - shaklee3 8y ago
        They will be the same for SpaceX. What makes you think otherwise? Their constellation will not start out anywhere near the max capacity they've stated.

AngryData 8y ago

Once upon a time power companies refused to provide grid access to people outside of the cities because it didn't make money fast enough, the government stepped in and made it happen and now not being able to get a power hookup is a ridiculous notion. If this doesn't happen, the government will have to step in again, otherwise those people either become second class citizens or they get really angry at being excluded from society and take violent action.

rayiner 8y ago
It’s not at all similar. There is no alternative to wired electricity. There are lots of alternatives to wired broadband, and they’re getting better every day. A double digit percentage of households earning six figures has no wired broadband (cellular only), and that percentage is growing. Note that water is more important than broadband, and the government doesn’t step in to build/compel people to build water/sewer systems in rural areas. (I live 10 minutes from the capital of Maryland, and we just got city water/sewer in 2015, and I just have to drive another 5 minutes down the road before all you have is well water/septic systems.)
- discordance 8y ago
  Solar + storage is an alternative to grid, although initial costs are high.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    If it had been in 1930, you likely wouldn’t have seen rural electrification be a government policy.
- hedora 8y ago
  The government does compel you to have water and sewerage handling out in the country. You can’t build or get a conventional mortgage without both. Wells and septic tanks scale better in sparsely populated regions, so they require that in places that are outside of municipal systems.
8y ago

BurningFrog 8y ago

Yeah, but you don't need "most humans" to use it. 10% would probably finance it very nicely.

vidanay 8y ago
700 million people paying $100USD per month? I am imagining Elon doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into his bank vault.
- awad 8y ago
  700 million people parting with $100 USD per month seems pretty high
  - XorNot 8y ago
    Think any company with remote assets it needs to monitor. Drones, backup internet etc. There's a very big market for fast internet access which just works anywhere on the planet. It would be worth a premium just to let large organisations consolidate to a single biller.
    - awad 8y ago
      Sure, I can buy the end revenue stated, just not the implication that 700 million end consumers is the way to get there.
      - vidanay 8y ago
        I was just using the 10% number posited by the OP
- apexalpha 8y ago
  Sure, there's a lot of potential customers but: a) no one pays $100 for internet. Maybe some in monopoly-internet USA have to, but literally no one else. b) most countries are poorer than the US and would definitely not have $100. c) Local providers can simply lower their prices, and SpaceX will have competition from Oneweb and possibly others.

ncallaway 8y ago

> since most humans live in dense cities 55% of the human population currently live in cities. That means 45% don't live in cities. 45% of 7B is one hell of a TAM.

JetSpiegel 8y ago
How many of those earn less than $50 per month, a reasonable ballpark for the price? I would bet about 75%, if not more.