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no, it's not a strong sign of that. it's a strong sign that with VC money and government money you can offer unrealistic service at unrealistic prices. but when

no, it's not a strong sign of that. it's a strong sign that with VC money and government money you can offer unrealistic service at unrealistic prices. but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. The honeymoon phase of starlink is over. in the best case scenario with starship they can add capacity much cheaper. but even the business case for that is going to be hard to close given the amount of money they're already burning.

pastage 4y ago
FWIW that is what Starlink has been saying themselves. Their operations have always been linked to cheaper launches. My opinion is that it is easy to get side tracked when your leader gets stuck in political activism.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? Starlink's problem is going to be that most profitable areas are better served by terrestrial LTE/5G, leaving only truly remote areas that are low density enough. But not many people live there...
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? Spectral bandwidth doesn't matter so much with beamforming with reasonably narrow beams. At least not until you get to a lot of satellites overhead at once. Dishy probably obtains a beam ~3 degrees wide; there's a lot of 3x3 degree sectors in the sky. Similarly, the ground "cells" are 300 sq km; there's a lot of these in view of the satellite. > Starlink's problem is going to be that most profitable areas are better served by terrestrial LTE/5G Yup, for the most part I agree. Still, there is a pretty large rural population.
    - shaklee3 4y ago
      bandwidth matters a lot. it's why SpaceX pays so much on legal fees for fcc filings
      - mlyle 4y ago
        > bandwidth matters a lot. Sure, how much data you can exchange per satellite is roughly proportional to the bandwidth. Increasing bandwidth or increasing satellites increases data rate. > it's why SpaceX pays so much on legal fees for fcc filings Note that a whole lot of the paper that goes to the FCC relates to the FCC's statutory authority over space debris and constellation licensing.
        shaklee3 4y ago
        they have spent an immense amount of money and time on fcc filings for spectrum. this is a mixture of asking for spectrum, proving they're not interfering, and trying to beat kuiper and others to market.
        mlyle 4y ago
        > they have spent an immense amount of money and time on fcc filings for spectrum. Well, sure. It has a multiplicative effect with number of satellites on throughput. Not to mention the proxy warfare they've endured from other constellation vendors through the FCC. The big point which I responded to was there was a claim that adding more satellites doesn't add throughput ("Do cheap launches help")-- that one could be purely spectrum limited and not benefit from additional satellites. Directional antennas make this not true for any reasonable number of satellites.
    - cozzyd 4y ago
      well 3 degrees wide means at best ~28 square degrees on the sky (pi * 3 * 3). But the problem is the other way. It looks like Starlink has 7 GHz total downlink bandwidth from satellite to customers. A cell may be ~300 sq km, but no way you can pipe all that bandwidth in adjacent cells due to interference (or... if you did, you'd probably lose in spectral efficiency). If we assume something like 10 Gbps/cell total downlink bandwidth (based on two polarizations, 1/4 the total bandwidth and 3 bits/Hz efficiency), then you can maybe serve... 500 people / cell reasonably? How many people live in places with fewer than a few people/km^2? Only Alaska averages below that in the US.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? I don't get the question. Do costs matter when revenue is limited? Of course they matter. They matter even more the more limited is the potential revenue.
publicmenace 4y ago
Almost all of Starlink’s competitors are completely dependent on government money. The FCC spends billions a year cutting checks to rural ISPs to subsidize them. The FCC took Starlink’s subsidies away because the Biden admin hates Musk now. But I think Musk will still beat many of these clown companies anyway.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  your history is a bit off. the fcc commissioner and fcc has generally loved SpaceX, and they were not appointed by Biden. what happened was SpaceX continually got worse in the fcc samknows testing, so much so that their original application for $900M was far from the service they actually offered. for that reason they paused the funding until SpaceX improved things to the point they promised. they still have not improved and have continued declining.
  - publicmenace 4y ago
    They didn't have to meet any performance targets until 2024 at the earliest so that was a bogus justification. They were fairly close but were cutting performance a bit to reach more customers pending the launch of more satellites. And just because Rosenworcel was appointed by Obama instead of Biden doesn’t mean she’s not a loyal part of the Biden administration.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      >They didn't have to meet any performance targets until 2024 at the earliest why not? seems like they should have had to
      - publicmenace 4y ago
        Because that’s how the RDOF program was designed. You have a number of years to meet your targets in exchange for the subsidies to help you do it.
roer 4y ago
This doesn't add up for me. They are launching more powerful satellites with a higher cadence than before. The network is in every measure improving its capacity, and it doesn't seem like money is the issue. Do you have a source for them burning money at a pace that requires starship in the near future? Looking in from the outside, their amount of falcon launches don't reflect that.
- doogieboo 4y ago
  The new satellites are bigger and weigh more so they are launching fewer on each rocket now. They need starship for better launch capacity for the new satellites. https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/26/spacex-unveils-first-batch-of-larger-upgraded-starlink-satellites/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/26/spacex-unveils-first-b...
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Doesn't that sound more like they are planning for that higher launch capacity? They're removing a constraint in the future so they're scaling up the satellites now, it means less of the new ones go up in the mean time but it also means a much faster increase in network capacity once Starship is available.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
shaklee3 4y ago
take a look at @lionnetpiere on Twitter. he's done extensive analyses on the launch costs and revenue from service. most other estimates leave out big parts of the costs, so he's going the most accurate I've seen.
BurningFrog 4y ago
You imagine that SpaceX and Elon Musk get by on borrowing VC money?
- shaklee3 4y ago
  yes. this is easily verified. they have done many rounds of funding.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Huh. Looks like you're right: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... I didn't expect that, since the company makes a lot of money. I guess they also invest a lot. Anyway, thinks for the info update!
    - shaklee3 4y ago
      That's the thing, they don't make a lot of money. there was a WSJ article a few years back that showed they absolutely need StarLink to expand that full capacity very early to be profitable. there are not making enough money on launches to sustain the run rate. originally musk said starlink would be profitable with falcon 9. that clearly changed and now the only way it's profitable is with starship.
kobalsky 4y ago
> but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. starlink is a project worth billions with years of planning, there's no fake it till you make it in that league do you seriously think this is something they stumbled onto? they are rising the prices because they can, it's not a non-profit. even the article mentions that the service is within stated expectations.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  I think you are missing/ignoring most of the history of starlink. You can look at my post history to read more if you'd like. Virtually everything starlink had promised from the start has turned out to either be lies or missed the mark significantly. This isn't just me speculating, the Ookla data shows that both their latency is significantly higher than Musk said, and it's also slower now that they've added more customers. This also has nothing to do with the lack of ISL; the latencies are higher in areas that wouldn't even benefit from ISL. It's purely due to network congestion, which again, is something everyone involved in this industry knew would happen. Starlink is still not profitable. Musk and Shotwell have hinted at this or directly said it. It requires an immense amount of money to fund the engineering, support, and launches to keep even the current number of subscribers they have. While Starlink is "successful" by your definition, you have both Oneweb and TeleSat's lightspeed both being relative failures. This isn't because they were worse systems. In fact, Telesat's was supposed to have the best bandwidth economics. But it failed largely because it didn't get the funding SX gets due to Musk, and they realized the economics of a LEO constellation are nearly impossible to sustain. What you're seeing right now is an ISP that's akin to Uber or Lyft. Are they profitable? No, but they're around and they're big names. Your rides are subsidized from VC money hoping one or the other will lose and the other can raise prices. Starlink is raising prices because they have to. Not because "they can". They are decreasing prices in unfilled areas just to use the capacity that is otherwise completely stranded. Once those areas fill, wash, rinse, repeat.

pastage 4y ago

FWIW that is what Starlink has been saying themselves. Their operations have always been linked to cheaper launches. My opinion is that it is easy to get side tracked when your leader gets stuck in political activism.

cozzyd 4y ago
Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? Starlink's problem is going to be that most profitable areas are better served by terrestrial LTE/5G, leaving only truly remote areas that are low density enough. But not many people live there...
- mlyle 4y ago
  > Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? Spectral bandwidth doesn't matter so much with beamforming with reasonably narrow beams. At least not until you get to a lot of satellites overhead at once. Dishy probably obtains a beam ~3 degrees wide; there's a lot of 3x3 degree sectors in the sky. Similarly, the ground "cells" are 300 sq km; there's a lot of these in view of the satellite. > Starlink's problem is going to be that most profitable areas are better served by terrestrial LTE/5G Yup, for the most part I agree. Still, there is a pretty large rural population.
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    bandwidth matters a lot. it's why SpaceX pays so much on legal fees for fcc filings
    - mlyle 4y ago
      > bandwidth matters a lot. Sure, how much data you can exchange per satellite is roughly proportional to the bandwidth. Increasing bandwidth or increasing satellites increases data rate. > it's why SpaceX pays so much on legal fees for fcc filings Note that a whole lot of the paper that goes to the FCC relates to the FCC's statutory authority over space debris and constellation licensing.
      - shaklee3 4y ago
        they have spent an immense amount of money and time on fcc filings for spectrum. this is a mixture of asking for spectrum, proving they're not interfering, and trying to beat kuiper and others to market.
        mlyle 4y ago
        > they have spent an immense amount of money and time on fcc filings for spectrum. Well, sure. It has a multiplicative effect with number of satellites on throughput. Not to mention the proxy warfare they've endured from other constellation vendors through the FCC. The big point which I responded to was there was a claim that adding more satellites doesn't add throughput ("Do cheap launches help")-- that one could be purely spectrum limited and not benefit from additional satellites. Directional antennas make this not true for any reasonable number of satellites.
  - cozzyd 4y ago
    well 3 degrees wide means at best ~28 square degrees on the sky (pi * 3 * 3). But the problem is the other way. It looks like Starlink has 7 GHz total downlink bandwidth from satellite to customers. A cell may be ~300 sq km, but no way you can pipe all that bandwidth in adjacent cells due to interference (or... if you did, you'd probably lose in spectral efficiency). If we assume something like 10 Gbps/cell total downlink bandwidth (based on two polarizations, 1/4 the total bandwidth and 3 bits/Hz efficiency), then you can maybe serve... 500 people / cell reasonably? How many people live in places with fewer than a few people/km^2? Only Alaska averages below that in the US.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > Do cheap launches help when spectral bandwidth over an area is going to be the true limitation? I don't get the question. Do costs matter when revenue is limited? Of course they matter. They matter even more the more limited is the potential revenue.

publicmenace 4y ago

Almost all of Starlink’s competitors are completely dependent on government money. The FCC spends billions a year cutting checks to rural ISPs to subsidize them. The FCC took Starlink’s subsidies away because the Biden admin hates Musk now. But I think Musk will still beat many of these clown companies anyway.

shaklee3 4y ago
your history is a bit off. the fcc commissioner and fcc has generally loved SpaceX, and they were not appointed by Biden. what happened was SpaceX continually got worse in the fcc samknows testing, so much so that their original application for $900M was far from the service they actually offered. for that reason they paused the funding until SpaceX improved things to the point they promised. they still have not improved and have continued declining.
- publicmenace 4y ago
  They didn't have to meet any performance targets until 2024 at the earliest so that was a bogus justification. They were fairly close but were cutting performance a bit to reach more customers pending the launch of more satellites. And just because Rosenworcel was appointed by Obama instead of Biden doesn’t mean she’s not a loyal part of the Biden administration.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    >They didn't have to meet any performance targets until 2024 at the earliest why not? seems like they should have had to
    - publicmenace 4y ago
      Because that’s how the RDOF program was designed. You have a number of years to meet your targets in exchange for the subsidies to help you do it.

roer 4y ago

This doesn't add up for me. They are launching more powerful satellites with a higher cadence than before. The network is in every measure improving its capacity, and it doesn't seem like money is the issue. Do you have a source for them burning money at a pace that requires starship in the near future? Looking in from the outside, their amount of falcon launches don't reflect that.

doogieboo 4y ago
The new satellites are bigger and weigh more so they are launching fewer on each rocket now. They need starship for better launch capacity for the new satellites. https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/26/spacex-unveils-first-batch-of-larger-upgraded-starlink-satellites/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/26/spacex-unveils-first-b...
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Doesn't that sound more like they are planning for that higher launch capacity? They're removing a constraint in the future so they're scaling up the satellites now, it means less of the new ones go up in the mean time but it also means a much faster increase in network capacity once Starship is available.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

shaklee3 4y ago

take a look at @lionnetpiere on Twitter. he's done extensive analyses on the launch costs and revenue from service. most other estimates leave out big parts of the costs, so he's going the most accurate I've seen.

BurningFrog 4y ago

You imagine that SpaceX and Elon Musk get by on borrowing VC money?

shaklee3 4y ago
yes. this is easily verified. they have done many rounds of funding.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Huh. Looks like you're right: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... I didn't expect that, since the company makes a lot of money. I guess they also invest a lot. Anyway, thinks for the info update!
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    That's the thing, they don't make a lot of money. there was a WSJ article a few years back that showed they absolutely need StarLink to expand that full capacity very early to be profitable. there are not making enough money on launches to sustain the run rate. originally musk said starlink would be profitable with falcon 9. that clearly changed and now the only way it's profitable is with starship.

kobalsky 4y ago

> but when you need to start showing that you are profitable and launching satellites to maintain the current network is also expensive, both your service and prices start to get more in line with what everybody else already had. starlink is a project worth billions with years of planning, there's no fake it till you make it in that league do you seriously think this is something they stumbled onto? they are rising the prices because they can, it's not a non-profit. even the article mentions that the service is within stated expectations.

shaklee3 4y ago
I think you are missing/ignoring most of the history of starlink. You can look at my post history to read more if you'd like. Virtually everything starlink had promised from the start has turned out to either be lies or missed the mark significantly. This isn't just me speculating, the Ookla data shows that both their latency is significantly higher than Musk said, and it's also slower now that they've added more customers. This also has nothing to do with the lack of ISL; the latencies are higher in areas that wouldn't even benefit from ISL. It's purely due to network congestion, which again, is something everyone involved in this industry knew would happen. Starlink is still not profitable. Musk and Shotwell have hinted at this or directly said it. It requires an immense amount of money to fund the engineering, support, and launches to keep even the current number of subscribers they have. While Starlink is "successful" by your definition, you have both Oneweb and TeleSat's lightspeed both being relative failures. This isn't because they were worse systems. In fact, Telesat's was supposed to have the best bandwidth economics. But it failed largely because it didn't get the funding SX gets due to Musk, and they realized the economics of a LEO constellation are nearly impossible to sustain. What you're seeing right now is an ISP that's akin to Uber or Lyft. Are they profitable? No, but they're around and they're big names. Your rides are subsidized from VC money hoping one or the other will lose and the other can raise prices. Starlink is raising prices because they have to. Not because "they can". They are decreasing prices in unfilled areas just to use the capacity that is otherwise completely stranded. Once those areas fill, wash, rinse, repeat.