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I agree that third parties have been paying for terminals and services (I pointed out the 1300 terminals which were being paid for by the UK), but there seems t

I agree that third parties have been paying for terminals and services (I pointed out the 1300 terminals which were being paid for by the UK), but there seems to be a reasonable amount of info out there confirming that the majority is donated by SpaceX. A lot of it is just buried in misleading reporting from the usual manipulative sources. For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietl... highlights that the US has paid millions for Starlink terminals 'contrary to SpaceX's claims', while burying that SpaceX had donated 3670 terminals with free service for 3 months, compared to 1500 terminals purchased by USAID. Then we have the first half of CNN's manipulative reporting (https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta...), where, after setting the tone to bias readers against SpaceX by citing outages and 'having to request Starlink services to be turned on in liberated areas' (conveniently skipping over the explanation that that's necessary to avoid Russia using the terminals), they sneak in a few lines about how 70% of the service costs were being borne by SpaceX. Both also reference an "85% of terminals partially paid for by entities like the US and Poland", but that doesn't fit with the numbers, since the 3670 donated is greater than 15% of the 20k total terminals which had been sent by then, implying that 'partially paid' includes things like transportation costs, masking the true numbers regarding the costs of the terminals themselves (which obviously wouldn't be necessary if the number wasn't unfavorable to the narrative they were attempting to push).

foobarqux 3y ago
It's not the number of terminals that is relevant it is the total $. If the buyer pays $100m and receives 100 terminals with retail price $5m there is zero charity, it doesn't matter if you label 99 terminals as "donated" except for PR purposes. > ... 70% of the service costs were being borne by SpaceX. That's Musk's completely made up number for the price of the service ($4500/month). By that logic he could have said it was $10000/month and therefore been "donating" even more. That price 1. isn't the cost of providing the service; 2. isn't the retail price of the service, 3. isn't a reasonable mark up on the retail price.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  You're making an unfalsifiable argument by dumping the reasonable assumption that when SpaceX talks about things like terminal and service costs it's using the same price baselines. Especially since if they're reporting to the Pentagon and intend to get them to pay by reason of unreasonable financial burden for SpaceX, they would want to make it look like it's costing them more, which would not be the case if we go with your unsupported suggestion that they're charging extremely high rates to government compared to how they're pricing their donations.
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    > ... your unsupported suggestion that they're charging extremely high rates to government I did support it by linking to a CNN article which cites what government officials say they were paying (hundreds of millions of dollars per year) as well as Musk's own claims about the service price. Look this is very simple: Musk receives a certain amount of money from providing service and terminals in Ukraine (hundreds of millions of dollars a year). You claim that this is substantially less than what it costs to provide those terminals and services (even in a war-zone) which is absurd.

foobarqux 3y ago

It's not the number of terminals that is relevant it is the total $. If the buyer pays $100m and receives 100 terminals with retail price $5m there is zero charity, it doesn't matter if you label 99 terminals as "donated" except for PR purposes. > ... 70% of the service costs were being borne by SpaceX. That's Musk's completely made up number for the price of the service ($4500/month). By that logic he could have said it was $10000/month and therefore been "donating" even more. That price 1. isn't the cost of providing the service; 2. isn't the retail price of the service, 3. isn't a reasonable mark up on the retail price.

dotnet00 3y ago
You're making an unfalsifiable argument by dumping the reasonable assumption that when SpaceX talks about things like terminal and service costs it's using the same price baselines. Especially since if they're reporting to the Pentagon and intend to get them to pay by reason of unreasonable financial burden for SpaceX, they would want to make it look like it's costing them more, which would not be the case if we go with your unsupported suggestion that they're charging extremely high rates to government compared to how they're pricing their donations.
- foobarqux 3y ago
  > ... your unsupported suggestion that they're charging extremely high rates to government I did support it by linking to a CNN article which cites what government officials say they were paying (hundreds of millions of dollars per year) as well as Musk's own claims about the service price. Look this is very simple: Musk receives a certain amount of money from providing service and terminals in Ukraine (hundreds of millions of dollars a year). You claim that this is substantially less than what it costs to provide those terminals and services (even in a war-zone) which is absurd.