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To be fair, a non vertically integrated geostationary-satellite-owning company like intelsat, ses, eutelsat or arabsat or similar has little to no control over

To be fair, a non vertically integrated geostationary-satellite-owning company like intelsat, ses, eutelsat or arabsat or similar has little to no control over how much Boeing charges for a fully equipped 702 series satellite bus, or the disposable rocket launch costs.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
It’s incredible to behold. Can you imagine either being a satellite comms service provider or space vehicle provider trying to acquire or raise capital to acquire your compliment to vertically integrate and reap higher margins? You’ll get laughed out of the board room or the investment bank office. And instead, SpaceX knocks it out if the park with reusability such that they say to themselves (or rather, Musk tells the board) “well, we’re about to cannibalize the launch market and we’re running out of TAM, can we launch our own satellite constellation and consume another TAM with these F9s we’ve got laying around not being productive?”
- shaklee3 4y ago
  geo companies don't care much about launch cost since it's infrequent, and SpaceX has not shown starlink has a path to be profitable. I know it's the cool thing to do to love SpaceX, but separate the launch from the satellites. the latter hasn't shown it's sustainable unless there's a large influx of government subsidies.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    I'm just going to throw some numbers out here. edit: MASSIVE miscalculation fixed! Let's say they have 12k satellites. With oversubscription at 10? and a third of time over land? but 20gbps capacity for 200mbps connections, you get 333 users per satellite. 12k gives you 4 million users, at $100/mo or $1.2k/y. I'm going to drop that to $80/mo because Starlink need to pay for backhaul, so let's say $1k/y because it's round. So $4 billion annually. Over 12 years of satellite lifetime that's 48 billion. Satellites cost $300k to make, so subtract another 4 billion for production (44 remaining). Sats are launched in batches of 50, requiring 240 launches. Internal costs are somewhere between 30 to 60 million, it's unclear because of reuse, let's say 50 million for 12 billion launch costs, leaving 3 billion a year. And then there's some operational costs which they pay from that. So Iunno, it doesn't seem as extremely profitable as my first calc, but it's still probably pretty profitable. And any improvement they make to the satellites over time just adds on top. (Also I don't think they actually have $50 million internal cost per launch.) edit: Terminals "reportedly cost around $1000 to make" and are sold for $500, so nbd, subtract another 2 billion per customer-lifecycle.
    - plq 4y ago
      I came across this guy recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be Looks to me that you forgot about the consumer-side terminal.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        Yeah they make a loss on it, but probably not a huge one. Call it half a year to a year of fees. Can you tl;dw? I'm not watching 40 minutes of a video that has DEBUNKED in the title.
        plq 4y ago
        He claims the terminal costs at least 3× the retail price and will never make a profit because of it He also claims that its product offering brings nothing new to the table compared to hughesnet and viasat which is wrong imo as offering 1/10th latency of these products is a gamechanger. Sorry, I'd do better but I'm on mobile, I think it's worth a watch at 1.5×
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
        Of course the terminals will not make a profit, they're a loss leader. And yes, um, read comments on /r/starlink of people switching from Viasat. It's pretty unequivocal. (I'd say "read comments on /r/viasat of people switching from Starlink too", but, well, all you can find on that sub is people switching to Starlink.)
        JoshCole 4y ago
        Your source is a liar. Some examples: - After lying about SpaceX launch costs, he later posts screenshots of articles. One of those articles had the true launch costs. The image was photoshopped to remove this launch cost. - When posting pricing information for competitor services, he uses their lowest cost tiers for their highest cost service provision. He also falsely implies that SpaceX and other satellite providers are providing comparable services despite the latency difference. This is all part of his effort to mislead with regard to demand. - When quoting speed test results, he uses outdated alpha information. He argues that speedtests would not improve, but at the time he posted the video the speed tests results did improve. He knew this. You can tell because he claims there is a government conspiracy to favor SpaceX for funding for rural internet. This reveals he knows that they qualified for this. Which reveals that he knows his speed test numbers are out of date. - He lies about the number of launches SpaceX will have to do, double counting replacement launches. I might think these sort of things were an honest mistake, but the pattern of behavior is clear. Given any information, he distorts it and attempts to paint a bad narrative, going as far as photoshopping or proposing government conspiracies. It is obvious he did a great deal of research - so it is absurd to give him the benefit of the doubt with regard to ignorance. TL;DR - Watching that video will make you uninformed and delusional, not informed. It is not worth watching. The person who made it is not trustworthy. You are linking, not to a skeptic, but to an Elon Musk conspiracy theorist.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

It’s incredible to behold. Can you imagine either being a satellite comms service provider or space vehicle provider trying to acquire or raise capital to acquire your compliment to vertically integrate and reap higher margins? You’ll get laughed out of the board room or the investment bank office. And instead, SpaceX knocks it out if the park with reusability such that they say to themselves (or rather, Musk tells the board) “well, we’re about to cannibalize the launch market and we’re running out of TAM, can we launch our own satellite constellation and consume another TAM with these F9s we’ve got laying around not being productive?”

shaklee3 4y ago
geo companies don't care much about launch cost since it's infrequent, and SpaceX has not shown starlink has a path to be profitable. I know it's the cool thing to do to love SpaceX, but separate the launch from the satellites. the latter hasn't shown it's sustainable unless there's a large influx of government subsidies.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  I'm just going to throw some numbers out here. edit: MASSIVE miscalculation fixed! Let's say they have 12k satellites. With oversubscription at 10? and a third of time over land? but 20gbps capacity for 200mbps connections, you get 333 users per satellite. 12k gives you 4 million users, at $100/mo or $1.2k/y. I'm going to drop that to $80/mo because Starlink need to pay for backhaul, so let's say $1k/y because it's round. So $4 billion annually. Over 12 years of satellite lifetime that's 48 billion. Satellites cost $300k to make, so subtract another 4 billion for production (44 remaining). Sats are launched in batches of 50, requiring 240 launches. Internal costs are somewhere between 30 to 60 million, it's unclear because of reuse, let's say 50 million for 12 billion launch costs, leaving 3 billion a year. And then there's some operational costs which they pay from that. So Iunno, it doesn't seem as extremely profitable as my first calc, but it's still probably pretty profitable. And any improvement they make to the satellites over time just adds on top. (Also I don't think they actually have $50 million internal cost per launch.) edit: Terminals "reportedly cost around $1000 to make" and are sold for $500, so nbd, subtract another 2 billion per customer-lifecycle.
  - plq 4y ago
    I came across this guy recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be Looks to me that you forgot about the consumer-side terminal.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Yeah they make a loss on it, but probably not a huge one. Call it half a year to a year of fees. Can you tl;dw? I'm not watching 40 minutes of a video that has DEBUNKED in the title.
      - plq 4y ago
        He claims the terminal costs at least 3× the retail price and will never make a profit because of it He also claims that its product offering brings nothing new to the table compared to hughesnet and viasat which is wrong imo as offering 1/10th latency of these products is a gamechanger. Sorry, I'd do better but I'm on mobile, I think it's worth a watch at 1.5×
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
        Of course the terminals will not make a profit, they're a loss leader. And yes, um, read comments on /r/starlink of people switching from Viasat. It's pretty unequivocal. (I'd say "read comments on /r/viasat of people switching from Starlink too", but, well, all you can find on that sub is people switching to Starlink.)
        JoshCole 4y ago
        Your source is a liar. Some examples: - After lying about SpaceX launch costs, he later posts screenshots of articles. One of those articles had the true launch costs. The image was photoshopped to remove this launch cost. - When posting pricing information for competitor services, he uses their lowest cost tiers for their highest cost service provision. He also falsely implies that SpaceX and other satellite providers are providing comparable services despite the latency difference. This is all part of his effort to mislead with regard to demand. - When quoting speed test results, he uses outdated alpha information. He argues that speedtests would not improve, but at the time he posted the video the speed tests results did improve. He knew this. You can tell because he claims there is a government conspiracy to favor SpaceX for funding for rural internet. This reveals he knows that they qualified for this. Which reveals that he knows his speed test numbers are out of date. - He lies about the number of launches SpaceX will have to do, double counting replacement launches. I might think these sort of things were an honest mistake, but the pattern of behavior is clear. Given any information, he distorts it and attempts to paint a bad narrative, going as far as photoshopping or proposing government conspiracies. It is obvious he did a great deal of research - so it is absurd to give him the benefit of the doubt with regard to ignorance. TL;DR - Watching that video will make you uninformed and delusional, not informed. It is not worth watching. The person who made it is not trustworthy. You are linking, not to a skeptic, but to an Elon Musk conspiracy theorist.