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According to some leaked info SpaceX is paying $2400 per terminal.
by asdfaoeu 6y ago
According to some leaked info SpaceX is paying $2400 per terminal.
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoThe leaked info is sort of wrong in both directions. (Or, the info is correct, but is widely misinterpreted.) The $2.4B they paid to ST Micro is not for terminals, as ST Micro doesn't manufacture electronics, they are a foundry and so they only make the chips. The $2.4B includes the costs for the chips for the first million receivers, but the assembly and non-chip costs add a lot on top of that. So in that sense, $2400 per terminal is a serious underestimate. But it's also wrong in the other direction, because the $2.4B didn't just include the chips, it also included the development and mask costs for those chips. This should be considered to be NRE and not considered as part of the price of the terminals, as SpaceX will not have to pay that for the next million terminals. So the real number is above or below $2400 depending on what costs more, the motors, pcbs, the antenna layers, the chassis and the assembly of a terminal, or 1/1000000 of the NRE of developing the ASICs for Starlink. Who knows.