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SpaceX projected 20M Starlink users by 2022–it ended up with 1M
- borissk 3y agoStarlink will no doubt turn into a money printing machine very soon. The war in Ukraine has proven it has a ton of value as a military communication system. Too bad it ruined the sky for the 15K professional astronomers out there and a big part of the millions of amateurs as well.
- camhart 3y agoDid the dark paint have no effect?
- zizee 3y agoThey recently started launching highly reflective satellites, which counterintuitively reduces the amount of light scattered in earth's direction.
- borissk 3y agoThe dark paint was a stupid idea, that never realized.
- hnburnsy 3y ago>The company developed a highly reflective dielectric mirror film and a low-reflectivity black paint, which are applied to several parts of the spacecraft body. The mirror-like surface reflects sunlight into space instead of scattering it toward observers on the ground. In addition, the solar panels can be oriented so that observers do not see their sunlit sides. https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-newest-and-largest-starlink-satellites-are-also-the-faintest/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-newest-and-la...
- ramesh31 3y agoKessler syndrome is inevitable once low-cost access to space is unlocked. At least we'll get to browse cat memes from an airplane out of it.
- cwillu 3y agoThis has nothing to do with kessler syndrome; these satellites will all necessarily deorbit a relatively short period after their fuel supplies are exhausted and they're no longer able to correct for the orbital degradation caused by the atmosphere.
- falcolas 3y agoSomewhat tangential: Can you imaging having to come up with a price point involving the planned destruction of millions, if not billions of dollars of assets every few years?
- derekp7 3y agoThey cost about 250,000 each from what I read. If the constellation is 10K satellites that is 2.5 billion every 5 years. If revenue is $80 per month per subscriber, you need about half million subscribers to break even. This doesn't include launch costs, but starship is supposed to minimize that further. Add in other overhead, then 1 million subscribers is well within spitting distance of break even.
- rlt 3y agoLow cost access to space also implies low(er) cost cleanup of defunct satellites and other debris.
- coolbreezetft22 3y agoNot sure about this - seems like Elon's personal meddling has shown that Starlink is not reliable for military purposes. Military would have to have complete ownership/control
- wilg 3y agoThey are building a US-military controlled one called Starshield.
- ianburrell 3y agoThe US doesn't have any current plans for military version of Starlink. They have a pretty extensive satellite system. Starshield is SpaceX project to use Starlink technology for military. The US Space Development Agency, focused on missile defense, is working with SpaceX on tracking and communications constellations. But the communications is using laser links for in-space communications. Military Starlink is possible but not proposed yet.
- bobsmooth 3y agoWhat you think Elon did with regards to Ukraine is almost certainly incorrect.
- zizee 3y agoWhat "meddling" are you talking about?
- pengaru 3y agohttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-biography-ukraine-russia-b2407399.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-bi... Walter Isaacson, the book's author, gave a long-form interview recently on The Lex Fridman podcast. In case you'd like to form your own opinion about the book's legitimacy, its writing/Musk-supported research is substantially discussed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGOV5R7M1Js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGOV5R7M1Js
- grecy 3y ago> Too bad it ruined the sky for the 15K professional astronomers out there and a big part of the millions of amateurs as well. Checkout the latest updates on the new sats, the problem has been fixed. https://www.pcmag.com/news/no-more-astronomy-photobombs-spacex-shows-off-starlink-satellite-mirror https://www.pcmag.com/news/no-more-astronomy-photobombs-spac...
- ancientworldnow 3y agoThe article doesn't say that it's been fixed, merely there's a new attempt to lessen the issue that is being tested with the latest batch (which were still easily visible by eye via earth bound observers).
- schiffern 3y agoI think they meant to post a different link. The latest satellites are dimmer than 7 apparent magnitude (meeting the AAS recommendation) despite being 4x larger. https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06657 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06657
- codeTired 3y agoThe war in Ukraine has proven that starlink or a private company shouldn’t be trusted when it comes to military operations.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoIt's proven that you get what you pay for
- wilg 3y agoIt does seem like there is an upper bound on Starlink's success given that terrestrial gigabit fiber exists in major markets. Maybe they have a plan for this?
- grecy 3y agoYes, their plan is to serve the hundreds and hundreds of millions of people around the globe who don't have access to terrestrial gigabit fiber.
- wilg 3y agoI think they will be successful, but it seems like terrestrial internet will always have a significant bandwidth (though not latency) advantage over Starlink.
- grecy 3y ago> but it seems like terrestrial internet will always have a significant bandwidth (though not latency) advantage over Starlink. Starlink was never designed to compete with terrestrial internet in any way. If you have access to good high speed internet already then Starlink is not for you.
- wilg 3y agook
- pharmakom 3y agoI thought starlink has poor and inconsistent latency?
- inemesitaffia 3y ago[dead]
- wilg 3y ago
- zizee 3y agoSo, in a presentation from 2015, SpaceX predicted 20M users by 2022, and they missed the mark. This was a presentation to investors, to drum up support for their plans. Subscriber numbers are still increasing. This seems like a case of being a bit late on a optimistic prediction about a massive 7 year undertaking.
- itsoktocry 3y agoThey missed by 95%, can't say that's a great call, can you? >This was a presentation to investors, to drum up support for their plans Isn't that the issue, though?
- throwaway-blaze 3y agoThis is why startups are only allowed to raise from "accredited investors" and not the general public. The fact that whatever technology they claimed to have at the time worked and wasn't a true fraud when pitched is really all that matters. Anything forward looking is a projection the investors can choose to believe or not.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> missed by 95%, can't say that's a great call, can you? Yes. They’re within an order of magnitude. On the north side of zero. That’s a good prediction, particularly given the 20mm user figure seems realistic.
- FireBeyond 3y agoYou cannot say with a straight face that predicting 20 million users, getting only 1 million, is "a good prediction".
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
- yardie 3y agoI'm sure it will get to 20M paying customers, eventually. But most of the inhabited planet is well served by terrestrial 4G/LTE. And the places that don't have terrestrial mobile service are also largely unpopulated. It's great for ships, but that's still in the 100k range. The Russia/Ukraine war has proved its effectiveness. But that is still just 1000s of terminals. In every instance where Starlink could be more usable than terrestrial we're talking a few million at most.
- lukev 3y agoAlso, Musk yanking the plug on an active operation does not bode well for that sort of use case.
- dsabanin 3y agoThat can be solved by legislation if necessary.
- rlt 3y agoExcept that’s not what happened. Starlink was not active in Crimea at the time because the US had sanctions in Crimea. He got a request from the Ukrainian government. He has stated if he got a request from the US government he would have activated it.
- inemesitaffia 3y ago[dead]
- serf 3y ago2500+250/mo is steep for the marine use device , especially when a lot of emergency-use data equivalents will charge you by the byte -- which makes the devices make good sense to have aboard but never used. I know of a lot of mariners that would probably bite at Starlink if an equivalent pay-as-you-need service was offered,even with the pricey equipment.
- inemesitaffia 3y ago
- wmf 3y agoPrevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37505168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37505168
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoMore discussions over here a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37499625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37499625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37505168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37505168
- spikels 3y agoNow over 2 million active customers https://twitter.com/Starlink/status/1705695980325323023 https://twitter.com/Starlink/status/1705695980325323023