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Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for satellite services in Ukraine

49 points by lysp 4y ago

sega_sai 4y ago
Call me conspiratorial, but I do find it weird that first there were these 'peace plans' from Musk, than reports of Starlink problems in Ukraine, then claims about the conversations with Putin (that Musk denied), followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk, otherwise he'll have to stop operating Starlink over Ukraine. Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.
- wmf 4y ago
  The "problem" is that Ukrainian troops are advancing into cells that were not activated because they were Russian-held. You can see this on the map (assuming it's up-to-date): https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map No conspiracy theory is needed to explain this.
  - sega_sai 4y ago
    That sounded plausible to me initially, but then other news came in (as well as continued reports of issues with starlink). But it is possible that there is nothing sinister here.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- superchroma 4y ago
  Musk likes to look good. He weighs in on notable events to boost his brand. He is also an extremely savvy investor who is very greedy, and has routinely manipulated markets for profit. Considering he is willing to roll over for the chinese (with a direct link between tweet and outcome), I don't trust him. It's not cute anymore.
  - sega_sai 4y ago
    Yes I agree. I don't care if Musk trolls about twitter or about crypto or gamestop stocks, but here we're are talking about people's lives.
- jhgb 4y ago
  > followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.
danso 4y ago
> More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire. Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.
- fyfid47uddj 4y ago
  Is this actually hard to understand? Because this sort of visible opining just seems like an extension of the "It's unethical to support people fighting for their freedom" propaganda that's popular with the anti-war crowd. It's not particularly hard to understand wanting to give an underdog better odds even if you can't gurantee a win for them.
- jstarfish 4y ago
  I'm assuming he's playing both sides here. Why alienate a massive potential consumer market?
- Maursault 4y ago
  A common narcissistic tactic to manipulate a victim is to provide what is needed, allow that support to become relied upon if not essential, and then all support is discontinued without warning. Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath, though sociopaths have no conscience and are prone to yelling a lot, they are also irresponsible and unreliable, mostly due to incompetence. Could Musk be incompetent? Though difficult to believe, it would explain some things.
  - jstarfish 4y ago
    It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent-- like a spouse forgoing a career to raise your children, and then you threaten them with a divorce that will leave them destitute and unable to provide for themselves. So they stay trapped in an exploitative arrangement. What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity. If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.
Rapzid 4y ago
> The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service. Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.
- wmf 4y ago
  For comparison, consumer Starlink service costs 230 PLN ($47) per month in Poland. AFAIK the consumer plan is not throttled, so what are they getting for $4,500?
  - simonh 4y ago
    They’re not the same devices. The premium terminals support higher data rates up to double those of the basic consumer units. There may be other improvements and advantages as well, there was talk of wider field of view of the sky, multiple simultaneous satellite tracking and redundant connections but I don’t know if those features made it into these devices. Starlink prioritised Ukraine for the latest gear.
    - wmf 4y ago
      If they knew it was just going to be a free trial, maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals. I wonder if the premium terminals are even faster when there are so many of them clogging the network.
      - simonh 4y ago
        >maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals Sure, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have been much better for them. They're grown ups, I'm sure they would make the right decision.
      - jhgb 4y ago
        I bet one of the issues is that there's actually too few of them. While Ukraine is fairly small compared to the US, it's still no slouch. The front was as long at one point as the distance between the northern and southern border of the US. A few thousand ground terminal in such a large area make what seems to be a sub-optimal number of ground terminals per base station. Normally the "non-premium" terminals would be oversubscribed in an area and the ISP would rely on usage statistics to determine the economic optimum, but here you might have a situation where the "non-premium" pricing may not reflect the service available (there may be more connectivity available per terminal, because there's so few of them) nor the costs incurred (the same amount of effort is spent on servicing a small number of terminals). The upside is that the ground terminals can each be shared by many people so it's not all that expensive per connected individual -- you're just splitting the costs at the level of connected individuals, not at the level of privately owned terminals.
cyanydeez 4y ago
Russia has kompromat. All the best conservatives have it
asojfdowgh 4y ago
Sounds more of a case of not realizing that spacex was supposed to negotiate with internet providers instead of taking the first value they offered. Reminds me of ISPs harassing netflix to pay extra in addition to the prices they charged their consumers https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with-the-devil-why-reed-hastings-violated-his-principles https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with... Assumably something similar is happening to SpaceX's offering
viczsaszbo 4y ago
$4,500/month is a bit less than Starlink maritime at $5,000/month. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide the support needed for a warzone. There aren't any similar services with public numbers to compare this cost to that are in an active warzone.
- attentive 4y ago
  what sort of support is there that is specific for "active warzone"?
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Seems like this is a drop in the buckert for the military $$ we're sending and they are definitely getting a lot of bang for the buck, I wonder if the DOD is dumb enough to let this program die out?
nocoiner 4y ago
So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine (and funded by USG) at 5x retail? And now they’re attempting to extort the USG (who, by the way, is also their primary customer)? I’m not a socialist, but SpaceX should be nationalized now. The capabilities that it provides cannot remain in the hands of its current majority owner. I’m happy to see it re-privatized, in the very near future, with ownership sold to more responsible, and less flighty, stewardship.
- DeWilde 4y ago
  How do you know the service is zero marginal?
- jhgb 4y ago
  > So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine It makes absolutely no sense to say that this has "zero marginal costs". Internet connectivity for the ground stations has costs. Operation of the ground stations has costs. Supervision of the whole system has costs. Ongoing fighting of Russian countermeasures has costs. Ground stations and ground terminals even have opportunity costs -- possibly very large opportunity costs, considering the money the same hardware could be generating in rural US instead. > I’m not a socialist Good for you. > but SpaceX should be nationalized now. Now you are a socialist by definition. Congratulations. It started in my country in 1948 with large industrial concerns, then this trickled down all the way to self-employed people. You're at step 1 now.
  - nocoiner 4y ago
    You were so eager to write your rejoinders that you literally could not finish reading the final two sentences of my post? I think I fairly clearly anticipated and addressed most of your points in my post. If you want to debate the wisdom of the U.S. Defense Production Act (apologies, I do not know what country you live in, based on what you said about nationalization of your industries - but if you’re unfamiliar with that law, feel free to look up it, or I’m happy to give you a capsule description if you like - I assume you have something analogous where you live, or maybe even a stronger version of it based on what you said in your post) or “too big to fail” and how I think that implies the necessity of temporary nationalization under exigent circumstances, then those are topics we could probably have an interesting discussion about. I bet we’d have some interesting disagreements! But I do think it was fairly clear that I wasn’t calling for perpetual public ownership of formerly private enterprise.
VikingCoder 4y ago
I desperately want to know what exactly is the difference between the $60 per month for retail customers, $500 per month "Premium" (that Ukraine apparently requested) for businesses, the $4,500 Starlink is giving them, and the $5,000 maritime version.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Markup, nothing else.
- DeWilde 4y ago
  Security options? Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.
- jhgb 4y ago
  SLA? My understanding is that this is typical for connectivity options. Whether you're on a 1:50 aggregation or 1:10 aggregation or 1:1 aggregation may massively affect costs of an X Mb/s connection for any offered value of X. This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.
NonNefarious 4y ago
jelliclesfarm 4y ago
That Musk wants the US military to foot the upcoming cost of the Ukraine Russia war is entirely reasonable. What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers. How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?
revolutukr 4y ago
For us old-timers, this reminds me a great deal of the plot of "Operation Canadian Bacon".

49 points by lysp 4y ago

Call me conspiratorial, but I do find it weird that first there were these 'peace plans' from Musk, than reports of Starlink problems in Ukraine, then claims about the conversations with Putin (that Musk denied), followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk, otherwise he'll have to stop operating Starlink over Ukraine. Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.

wmf 4y ago
The "problem" is that Ukrainian troops are advancing into cells that were not activated because they were Russian-held. You can see this on the map (assuming it's up-to-date): https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map No conspiracy theory is needed to explain this.
- sega_sai 4y ago
  That sounded plausible to me initially, but then other news came in (as well as continued reports of issues with starlink). But it is possible that there is nothing sinister here.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
superchroma 4y ago
Musk likes to look good. He weighs in on notable events to boost his brand. He is also an extremely savvy investor who is very greedy, and has routinely manipulated markets for profit. Considering he is willing to roll over for the chinese (with a direct link between tweet and outcome), I don't trust him. It's not cute anymore.
- sega_sai 4y ago
  Yes I agree. I don't care if Musk trolls about twitter or about crypto or gamestop stocks, but here we're are talking about people's lives.
jhgb 4y ago
> followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.

danso 4y ago

> More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire. Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.

fyfid47uddj 4y ago
Is this actually hard to understand? Because this sort of visible opining just seems like an extension of the "It's unethical to support people fighting for their freedom" propaganda that's popular with the anti-war crowd. It's not particularly hard to understand wanting to give an underdog better odds even if you can't gurantee a win for them.
jstarfish 4y ago
I'm assuming he's playing both sides here. Why alienate a massive potential consumer market?
Maursault 4y ago
A common narcissistic tactic to manipulate a victim is to provide what is needed, allow that support to become relied upon if not essential, and then all support is discontinued without warning. Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath, though sociopaths have no conscience and are prone to yelling a lot, they are also irresponsible and unreliable, mostly due to incompetence. Could Musk be incompetent? Though difficult to believe, it would explain some things.
- jstarfish 4y ago
  It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent-- like a spouse forgoing a career to raise your children, and then you threaten them with a divorce that will leave them destitute and unable to provide for themselves. So they stay trapped in an exploitative arrangement. What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity. If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.

Rapzid 4y ago

> The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service. Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.

wmf 4y ago
For comparison, consumer Starlink service costs 230 PLN ($47) per month in Poland. AFAIK the consumer plan is not throttled, so what are they getting for $4,500?
- simonh 4y ago
  They’re not the same devices. The premium terminals support higher data rates up to double those of the basic consumer units. There may be other improvements and advantages as well, there was talk of wider field of view of the sky, multiple simultaneous satellite tracking and redundant connections but I don’t know if those features made it into these devices. Starlink prioritised Ukraine for the latest gear.
  - wmf 4y ago
    If they knew it was just going to be a free trial, maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals. I wonder if the premium terminals are even faster when there are so many of them clogging the network.
    - simonh 4y ago
      >maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals Sure, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have been much better for them. They're grown ups, I'm sure they would make the right decision.
    - jhgb 4y ago
      I bet one of the issues is that there's actually too few of them. While Ukraine is fairly small compared to the US, it's still no slouch. The front was as long at one point as the distance between the northern and southern border of the US. A few thousand ground terminal in such a large area make what seems to be a sub-optimal number of ground terminals per base station. Normally the "non-premium" terminals would be oversubscribed in an area and the ISP would rely on usage statistics to determine the economic optimum, but here you might have a situation where the "non-premium" pricing may not reflect the service available (there may be more connectivity available per terminal, because there's so few of them) nor the costs incurred (the same amount of effort is spent on servicing a small number of terminals). The upside is that the ground terminals can each be shared by many people so it's not all that expensive per connected individual -- you're just splitting the costs at the level of connected individuals, not at the level of privately owned terminals.

cyanydeez 4y ago

Russia has kompromat. All the best conservatives have it

asojfdowgh 4y ago

Sounds more of a case of not realizing that spacex was supposed to negotiate with internet providers instead of taking the first value they offered. Reminds me of ISPs harassing netflix to pay extra in addition to the prices they charged their consumers https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with-the-devil-why-reed-hastings-violated-his-principles https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with... Assumably something similar is happening to SpaceX's offering

viczsaszbo 4y ago

$4,500/month is a bit less than Starlink maritime at $5,000/month. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide the support needed for a warzone. There aren't any similar services with public numbers to compare this cost to that are in an active warzone.

attentive 4y ago
what sort of support is there that is specific for "active warzone"?

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Seems like this is a drop in the buckert for the military $$ we're sending and they are definitely getting a lot of bang for the buck, I wonder if the DOD is dumb enough to let this program die out?

nocoiner 4y ago

So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine (and funded by USG) at 5x retail? And now they’re attempting to extort the USG (who, by the way, is also their primary customer)? I’m not a socialist, but SpaceX should be nationalized now. The capabilities that it provides cannot remain in the hands of its current majority owner. I’m happy to see it re-privatized, in the very near future, with ownership sold to more responsible, and less flighty, stewardship.

DeWilde 4y ago
How do you know the service is zero marginal?
jhgb 4y ago
> So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine It makes absolutely no sense to say that this has "zero marginal costs". Internet connectivity for the ground stations has costs. Operation of the ground stations has costs. Supervision of the whole system has costs. Ongoing fighting of Russian countermeasures has costs. Ground stations and ground terminals even have opportunity costs -- possibly very large opportunity costs, considering the money the same hardware could be generating in rural US instead. > I’m not a socialist Good for you. > but SpaceX should be nationalized now. Now you are a socialist by definition. Congratulations. It started in my country in 1948 with large industrial concerns, then this trickled down all the way to self-employed people. You're at step 1 now.
- nocoiner 4y ago
  You were so eager to write your rejoinders that you literally could not finish reading the final two sentences of my post? I think I fairly clearly anticipated and addressed most of your points in my post. If you want to debate the wisdom of the U.S. Defense Production Act (apologies, I do not know what country you live in, based on what you said about nationalization of your industries - but if you’re unfamiliar with that law, feel free to look up it, or I’m happy to give you a capsule description if you like - I assume you have something analogous where you live, or maybe even a stronger version of it based on what you said in your post) or “too big to fail” and how I think that implies the necessity of temporary nationalization under exigent circumstances, then those are topics we could probably have an interesting discussion about. I bet we’d have some interesting disagreements! But I do think it was fairly clear that I wasn’t calling for perpetual public ownership of formerly private enterprise.

VikingCoder 4y ago

I desperately want to know what exactly is the difference between the $60 per month for retail customers, $500 per month "Premium" (that Ukraine apparently requested) for businesses, the $4,500 Starlink is giving them, and the $5,000 maritime version.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Markup, nothing else.
DeWilde 4y ago
Security options? Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.
jhgb 4y ago
SLA? My understanding is that this is typical for connectivity options. Whether you're on a 1:50 aggregation or 1:10 aggregation or 1:1 aggregation may massively affect costs of an X Mb/s connection for any offered value of X. This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.

NonNefarious 4y ago

jelliclesfarm 4y ago

That Musk wants the US military to foot the upcoming cost of the Ukraine Russia war is entirely reasonable. What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers. How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?

revolutukr 4y ago

For us old-timers, this reminds me a great deal of the plot of "Operation Canadian Bacon".