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This money is being spent to improve things here on Earth. This is about providing internet to underserved communities on Earth. Now you could argue that Spac

This money is being spent to improve things here on Earth. This is about providing internet to underserved communities on Earth. Now you could argue that SpaceX has made it clear that they created Starlink to increase their funding for settling Mars (developing Starship etc) but at the same time StarLink stands to be a huge boon for people in communities that don't have access to high speed internet currently and that seems like a win-win. According to the article, Charter Communications made even more money ($1.22 billion) from the FCC as part of this deal, I don't see anyone on here complaining about how Charter chooses to spend the profits from this deal, it's certainly not going to go to settling Mars.

rlt 6y ago
Indeed, this is a great example of space exploration benefiting life on earth. If Elon didn’t want to colonize Mars he wouldn’t have started SpaceX which then wouldn’t have developed reusable rockets that make a LEO broadband constellation economically feasible. And that’s just the beginning of the technology needed to fully achieve his ambitions.
joecool1029 6y ago
>This is about providing internet to underserved communities on Earth. Anytime lines like this get written, be suspect. >I don't see anyone on here complaining about how Charter chooses to spend the profits from this deal, it's certainly not going to go to settling Mars. I complain all the time about the cable companies, but this is a thread about SpaceX. As irrelevant as that comment is, it's even less relevant arguing that using funds to build a LEO/VLEO satellite ISP (that will probably get divested at some point) will somehow help them get to Mars. Commercially there's no point in going to Mars so it takes political willpower and nations to finance it on a scale that's many orders of magnitude greater than anything done at the moment (more than even the JWST).

rlt 6y ago

Indeed, this is a great example of space exploration benefiting life on earth. If Elon didn’t want to colonize Mars he wouldn’t have started SpaceX which then wouldn’t have developed reusable rockets that make a LEO broadband constellation economically feasible. And that’s just the beginning of the technology needed to fully achieve his ambitions.

joecool1029 6y ago

>This is about providing internet to underserved communities on Earth. Anytime lines like this get written, be suspect. >I don't see anyone on here complaining about how Charter chooses to spend the profits from this deal, it's certainly not going to go to settling Mars. I complain all the time about the cable companies, but this is a thread about SpaceX. As irrelevant as that comment is, it's even less relevant arguing that using funds to build a LEO/VLEO satellite ISP (that will probably get divested at some point) will somehow help them get to Mars. Commercially there's no point in going to Mars so it takes political willpower and nations to finance it on a scale that's many orders of magnitude greater than anything done at the moment (more than even the JWST).