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Disruption can come from any direction. I don’t think Spin launch has better than 5% odds of success, but it could drastically undercut SpaceX in terms of $/kg

by Retric 2y ago

Disruption can come from any direction. I don’t think Spin launch has better than 5% odds of success, but it could drastically undercut SpaceX in terms of $/kg to orbit and there’s a few others willing to face SpaceX head on. Or China, US military, etc may decide to heavily subsidize a competitor for strategic reasons outside of economics. Starlink is becoming a core component of their business model which presents its own issues. The service is attractive today, but cellular or wired connections have inherent advantages in most situations and could seriously eat into their customer base fairly quickly. T-Mobile/Verizon/etc 5G wireless home internet for example is generally a better choice for most people. Which isn’t to say SpaceX is in any kind of imminent danger, rather the company has significant long term risks.

jwells89 2y ago
It’s possible, but the whole reason Starlink has a userbase is because there’s large areas where traditional telecom companies either never had enough interest to set up infrastructure or let what had already been set up rot. If that were to change meaningfully it’d require a significant shift in strategy from Verizon, AT&T, etc.
- MeImCounting 2y ago
  Yeah land based networking just makes less and less sense when you look at it from first principles, wireless is fast enough for most connections it has enough bandwidth if distributed and being in orbit makes widely distributed networks trivial compared to doing it on earth. I dont know if it will be starlink but I do expect(hope) ground based telecom to go the way of floppy disks in the coming decades
  - Retric 2y ago
    Unless you on a boat being in land is a huge advantage. 5G only needs ~10,000 towers to cover most people on the US. From there you scale density based on where people actually live. Satellites however move so you need to accept the network sucks in moderate density areas or you have vastly more coverage in low density areas than you need. Wired connections inherently provide a lot more bandwidth, and in dense urban environments the last mile isn’t a mile it’s within a building.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      I think this is only kind of true. 10000 towers is a lot when you consider that probably half of them are in very low density areas. LEO based satellites are a really good way of covering the desolate areas (oceans, deserts, farm land with very low population density etc), and areas with medium density and lots of elevation changes that would mess with ground based coverage. Starlink was never going to work well for urban (or even sub-urban) areas, but airplanes, boats, and ~20% of the US population is nothing to scoff at.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Cell towers already exist to provide cellular service in low density areas. In general people expect service to be generally available not simply be available in cities and subdivisions. Some of that is provided for free when covering higher density areas which satellite networks like Starlink simply can’t handle at any kind of reasonable constellation size.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Can you site that number? It really doesn't pass the sniff test for me, unless the word "most" is doing some pretty heavy lifting. A quick search suggests that the range of a 5G tower, operating only at low/mid-band spectrum (so in other words, below peak speed - but at higher range) can only operate in the 1 to 3 mile range. [1] We'll say 2. That's an area of pi*2^2 = ~12.5 square miles, we'll say 13. The area of the US is 3.8 million square miles. So your number would provide coverage for (10,000 * 13) / 3.8 million = 3.4% of the US. That maybe enough to cover the most exceptionally dense urban locations, but you're missing a lot of people there. And, again, this is just for the low/mid-band stuff. And then you need to regularly maintain those towers. While you could get global coverage with relatively few satellites that can just be trivially remotely launched/decommissioned. A quick search there [2] turns up a current practical (not peak/theoretic) bandwidth for Starlink in the 100+ Mbps range + ~50ms latency. I have difficulty seeing a logical argument for ground based telecom, beside as a hedge against WW3 when probably the first thing that will happen is a huge chunk of all satellites going poof. [1] - https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ [2] - https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022 https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022
  - simiones 2y ago
    Satellite internet is inherently a niche market. The physics simply don't allow for example good satellite coverage of even 10% of NYC, because you just can't get enough satellites flying over NYC at the same time to handle that much data. And there are limits to how much better you can make the individual satellites themselves, since you have a very limited heat budget in space, where you have to rely 100% on radiative cooling. So, for any square mile of land, you can have at most some small number of subscribers. Sure, you can cover a huge surface, but only with a very low density. Conversely, the vast majority of the world's population lives in huge clumps in small areas.
    - ethagknight 2y ago
      Billions of people live in low density areas. Hundreds of millions live in NYC-type very high density areas. Satellite can still serve very high density, just at limited rates. Satellite internet is very far from niche. Starlink should (annd perhaps anlready do) approach commercial high rises with a single uplink for the building, shared through the building network. Even as a backup data system, still very valuable system.
      - venusenvy47 2y ago
        I don't think satellite is cost effective for high density areas. If you have enough subscribers in a given geographic location, it makes more sense to put up some cellular towers, which can be maintained by people on the ground.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Satellites really can’t provide coverage at full 1 acre lot suburbs level density let alone NYC level density. Starlink has ~1 million customers in the US from ~6,000 satellites so you’d think they could do 10x that with 10x the number of satellites. But much of the US is low enough density that their current constellation is already sufficient and effective bandwidth per satellite is maximum bandwidth * percentage of orbit in useful locations. Which means 10x satellites are closer to 3x useful bandwidth and it gets much worse the higher density you’re aiming for. Ahh you might think just offer lower bandwidth per customer in urban areas, but people will pay less as the bandwidth drops and Starlink is already fairly slow.
- deleted 2y ago
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- Retric 2y ago
  I think T-Mobile trying to buy US cellular suggests they are approaching 5G home internet as a real growth opportunity. The infrastructure rollouts are just far more reasonable tha trying to run wires everywhere.
- martinald 2y ago
  I think this is a very US centric viewpoint (and I'm actually not convinced that it is correct in the US - see https://undergroundinfrastructure.com/news/2023/december/fiber-broadband-association-reports-record-annual-growth-in-north-americas-ftth-coverage https://undergroundinfrastructure.com/news/2023/december/fib...). Outside the US there is major major FTTH rollout going on everywhere. UK will get to ~90%+ penetration within a few years (it's at 66% now, 83% if you include HFC DOCSIS3.1 and growing at ~1% a month, including some very very rural areas). All of Europe is basically like this, and will have/already has overwhelming FTTH coverage. The same is happening in Asia and even in the more developed parts of Africa. So every month the addressable market for Starlink IMO declines. There will of course be places that are extremely rural that won't get FTTH for a long time (but I think they will eventually), and underdeveloped countries will struggle to roll it out for a long time too - but there is a lack of capacity in these underdeveloped places to pay for starlink. What Starlink as actually amazing at is bringing the price of fixed line connections down. A lot of countries have ridiculously high fixed line/mobile data costs (I would assume some level of corruption is happening to keep competition out). Starlink will push those prices down and force providers to offer unlimited data packages in those areas. However, I'm not convinced Starlink will see the benefit of a lot of that. Don't get me wrong - Starlink is an awesome service that really benefits humanity. However, I think the long term economics for it are poor for it to grow substantially more (this may be ok as I believe it is EBITDA positive now). And I think churn will be a problem in developed countries as more and more of them get FTTH.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    How could it be a US centric view when the US has faster bandwidth than almost every country in the world? It's ranked 5-6th in the world for average bandwidth and 10 in median. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - martinald 2y ago
      I literally said that it wasn't true. There is a common misconception that the US is miles behind other countries in terms of FTTH coverage and/or rollout has stalled.
cptskippy 2y ago
> T-Mobile 5G wireless home internet for example is generally a better choice for most people. I was speaking with someone from US Cellular at a conference recently and they were saying their whole advantage over T-Mobile was spectrum in rural areas. Which explains why they were bought out by T-Mobile. T-Mobile is also in the process of rolling out fiber home internet to compete with AT&T because 5G isn't that great. T-Mobile's network might be good enough in suburban areas but it's lacking in rural areas. This is where Starlink is competitive, and also places like the middle of the ocean.
- Retric 2y ago
  There’s absolutely markets like sailboats or back country RV’s where starlink has inherent advantages. Obviously 5G isn’t rolling out everywhere. The issue is it’s rolling out enough places to start hurting Starlink because speeds are generally higher and it costs 50$ vs 120$ / month.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Not sure that's true. Around here (rural Montana) the 5G providers will sell "home" service in town, but not outside town. My assumption is this is because they have enough capacity on 2GHz in town with small cells but not enough on the large 700MHz cells in the country. Starlink is really the only proper provider in our neighborhood. You can use LTE Hotspot but the carrier will throttle traffic pretty quickly.
    - chasd00 2y ago
      I worked on a deal with a US state government to bring broadband to unserved and underserved areas by working with local ISPs. Largest proposal of my career so far and will be nice come bonus time if we win but, honestly, if it were me I’d just give the unserved folks out in the country starlink vouchers instead of pouring millions amd millions into ISPs and call it a day. I probably would have been fired if I said that out loud in front of the client.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
Stoke Space is developing a novel fully reusable rocket that could be competitive with SpaceX.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  If we are betting on a company that hasn't launch anything and wont for years to come. We know we are grasping at straws. They haven't even tested reentery or landing of a first stage rocket yet. They have a cool design. They are just one of many hopefuls in the industry.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    > They are just one of many hopefuls in the industry. There's a big difference. Virtually all rocket startups are doomed regardless of whether their rockets succeed or fail because of the competition from fully reusable Starship and/or Terran R and/or Stoke. Relativity and Stoke actually have a chance of success. It's small, but non-zero.
deleted 2y ago
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imtringued 2y ago
Spinlaunch makes no sense on earth, they should put a tether based spinlauncher on the moon instead.
panick21_ 2y ago
Spin launch doesn't even have 0.005% odds of success. 5% is an absurd number frankly. The $/kg doesn't matter that much in practice in the real world. Maybe in the future where people are launching only fuel. But not now. The reality is Spin launch requires people to build sats 'for' launching on Spin launch. And that's simply not happening. No major consumer is gone do that. Spin launch is borderline a grift.
- Retric 2y ago
  Square cube law means smaller satellites care less about g-forces. People shot vacuum tubes out of artillery shells as part of proximity fuses and they would survive just fine. A cellphone experiences higher peak acceleration when hitting a floor when falling off a table but they are generally fine. So yes some sats would need modifications, but not necessarily significant ones and you can trivially test those conditions prior to launch. A Starlink competitor would happily design for such if it reduced their launch costs by 90%.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    First of all, all sats need modification. Things like reaction wheels simply wont work the same. Usually launch vehicle selection is done well after engineering on the project is along quite a bit. SpinLaunch basically requires that you make a decision to be SpinLaunch compatible as soon as you start. And that will force you to use some of their parts. This simply isn't something that anybody would do unless there is a huge benefit to it. Spin Launch still requires a rocket, and one that will likely not be reusable one anytime soon. So the idea that its going to massively reduce cost is a fantasy. To even have any cost saving at all they need a huge number of launches. There simply isn't a market for that many tiny sats. There is a reason all the constellations have moved to larger sats that are not SpinLaunch compatible. Micro launch is a tiny market and companies like SpinLaunch are just lying to their investors, just like Astra did. If we are looking at things like consumables, it would take 500 SpinLaunch launches and that doesn't even match a single Starship launch. How anybody could think this would be cheaper is beyond me.

by Retric 2y ago

jwells89 2y ago

It’s possible, but the whole reason Starlink has a userbase is because there’s large areas where traditional telecom companies either never had enough interest to set up infrastructure or let what had already been set up rot. If that were to change meaningfully it’d require a significant shift in strategy from Verizon, AT&T, etc.

MeImCounting 2y ago
Yeah land based networking just makes less and less sense when you look at it from first principles, wireless is fast enough for most connections it has enough bandwidth if distributed and being in orbit makes widely distributed networks trivial compared to doing it on earth. I dont know if it will be starlink but I do expect(hope) ground based telecom to go the way of floppy disks in the coming decades
- Retric 2y ago
  Unless you on a boat being in land is a huge advantage. 5G only needs ~10,000 towers to cover most people on the US. From there you scale density based on where people actually live. Satellites however move so you need to accept the network sucks in moderate density areas or you have vastly more coverage in low density areas than you need. Wired connections inherently provide a lot more bandwidth, and in dense urban environments the last mile isn’t a mile it’s within a building.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    I think this is only kind of true. 10000 towers is a lot when you consider that probably half of them are in very low density areas. LEO based satellites are a really good way of covering the desolate areas (oceans, deserts, farm land with very low population density etc), and areas with medium density and lots of elevation changes that would mess with ground based coverage. Starlink was never going to work well for urban (or even sub-urban) areas, but airplanes, boats, and ~20% of the US population is nothing to scoff at.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Cell towers already exist to provide cellular service in low density areas. In general people expect service to be generally available not simply be available in cities and subdivisions. Some of that is provided for free when covering higher density areas which satellite networks like Starlink simply can’t handle at any kind of reasonable constellation size.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Can you site that number? It really doesn't pass the sniff test for me, unless the word "most" is doing some pretty heavy lifting. A quick search suggests that the range of a 5G tower, operating only at low/mid-band spectrum (so in other words, below peak speed - but at higher range) can only operate in the 1 to 3 mile range. [1] We'll say 2. That's an area of pi*2^2 = ~12.5 square miles, we'll say 13. The area of the US is 3.8 million square miles. So your number would provide coverage for (10,000 * 13) / 3.8 million = 3.4% of the US. That maybe enough to cover the most exceptionally dense urban locations, but you're missing a lot of people there. And, again, this is just for the low/mid-band stuff. And then you need to regularly maintain those towers. While you could get global coverage with relatively few satellites that can just be trivially remotely launched/decommissioned. A quick search there [2] turns up a current practical (not peak/theoretic) bandwidth for Starlink in the 100+ Mbps range + ~50ms latency. I have difficulty seeing a logical argument for ground based telecom, beside as a hedge against WW3 when probably the first thing that will happen is a huge chunk of all satellites going poof. [1] - https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ https://dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/ [2] - https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022 https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speed-tests-2023-vs-2022
- simiones 2y ago
  Satellite internet is inherently a niche market. The physics simply don't allow for example good satellite coverage of even 10% of NYC, because you just can't get enough satellites flying over NYC at the same time to handle that much data. And there are limits to how much better you can make the individual satellites themselves, since you have a very limited heat budget in space, where you have to rely 100% on radiative cooling. So, for any square mile of land, you can have at most some small number of subscribers. Sure, you can cover a huge surface, but only with a very low density. Conversely, the vast majority of the world's population lives in huge clumps in small areas.
  - ethagknight 2y ago
    Billions of people live in low density areas. Hundreds of millions live in NYC-type very high density areas. Satellite can still serve very high density, just at limited rates. Satellite internet is very far from niche. Starlink should (annd perhaps anlready do) approach commercial high rises with a single uplink for the building, shared through the building network. Even as a backup data system, still very valuable system.
    - venusenvy47 2y ago
      I don't think satellite is cost effective for high density areas. If you have enough subscribers in a given geographic location, it makes more sense to put up some cellular towers, which can be maintained by people on the ground.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Satellites really can’t provide coverage at full 1 acre lot suburbs level density let alone NYC level density. Starlink has ~1 million customers in the US from ~6,000 satellites so you’d think they could do 10x that with 10x the number of satellites. But much of the US is low enough density that their current constellation is already sufficient and effective bandwidth per satellite is maximum bandwidth * percentage of orbit in useful locations. Which means 10x satellites are closer to 3x useful bandwidth and it gets much worse the higher density you’re aiming for. Ahh you might think just offer lower bandwidth per customer in urban areas, but people will pay less as the bandwidth drops and Starlink is already fairly slow.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Retric 2y ago
I think T-Mobile trying to buy US cellular suggests they are approaching 5G home internet as a real growth opportunity. The infrastructure rollouts are just far more reasonable tha trying to run wires everywhere.
martinald 2y ago
I think this is a very US centric viewpoint (and I'm actually not convinced that it is correct in the US - see https://undergroundinfrastructure.com/news/2023/december/fiber-broadband-association-reports-record-annual-growth-in-north-americas-ftth-coverage https://undergroundinfrastructure.com/news/2023/december/fib...). Outside the US there is major major FTTH rollout going on everywhere. UK will get to ~90%+ penetration within a few years (it's at 66% now, 83% if you include HFC DOCSIS3.1 and growing at ~1% a month, including some very very rural areas). All of Europe is basically like this, and will have/already has overwhelming FTTH coverage. The same is happening in Asia and even in the more developed parts of Africa. So every month the addressable market for Starlink IMO declines. There will of course be places that are extremely rural that won't get FTTH for a long time (but I think they will eventually), and underdeveloped countries will struggle to roll it out for a long time too - but there is a lack of capacity in these underdeveloped places to pay for starlink. What Starlink as actually amazing at is bringing the price of fixed line connections down. A lot of countries have ridiculously high fixed line/mobile data costs (I would assume some level of corruption is happening to keep competition out). Starlink will push those prices down and force providers to offer unlimited data packages in those areas. However, I'm not convinced Starlink will see the benefit of a lot of that. Don't get me wrong - Starlink is an awesome service that really benefits humanity. However, I think the long term economics for it are poor for it to grow substantially more (this may be ok as I believe it is EBITDA positive now). And I think churn will be a problem in developed countries as more and more of them get FTTH.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  How could it be a US centric view when the US has faster bandwidth than almost every country in the world? It's ranked 5-6th in the world for average bandwidth and 10 in median. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - martinald 2y ago
    I literally said that it wasn't true. There is a common misconception that the US is miles behind other countries in terms of FTTH coverage and/or rollout has stalled.

cptskippy 2y ago

> T-Mobile 5G wireless home internet for example is generally a better choice for most people. I was speaking with someone from US Cellular at a conference recently and they were saying their whole advantage over T-Mobile was spectrum in rural areas. Which explains why they were bought out by T-Mobile. T-Mobile is also in the process of rolling out fiber home internet to compete with AT&T because 5G isn't that great. T-Mobile's network might be good enough in suburban areas but it's lacking in rural areas. This is where Starlink is competitive, and also places like the middle of the ocean.

Retric 2y ago
There’s absolutely markets like sailboats or back country RV’s where starlink has inherent advantages. Obviously 5G isn’t rolling out everywhere. The issue is it’s rolling out enough places to start hurting Starlink because speeds are generally higher and it costs 50$ vs 120$ / month.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Not sure that's true. Around here (rural Montana) the 5G providers will sell "home" service in town, but not outside town. My assumption is this is because they have enough capacity on 2GHz in town with small cells but not enough on the large 700MHz cells in the country. Starlink is really the only proper provider in our neighborhood. You can use LTE Hotspot but the carrier will throttle traffic pretty quickly.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    I worked on a deal with a US state government to bring broadband to unserved and underserved areas by working with local ISPs. Largest proposal of my career so far and will be nice come bonus time if we win but, honestly, if it were me I’d just give the unserved folks out in the country starlink vouchers instead of pouring millions amd millions into ISPs and call it a day. I probably would have been fired if I said that out loud in front of the client.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

Stoke Space is developing a novel fully reusable rocket that could be competitive with SpaceX.

panick21_ 2y ago
If we are betting on a company that hasn't launch anything and wont for years to come. We know we are grasping at straws. They haven't even tested reentery or landing of a first stage rocket yet. They have a cool design. They are just one of many hopefuls in the industry.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  > They are just one of many hopefuls in the industry. There's a big difference. Virtually all rocket startups are doomed regardless of whether their rockets succeed or fail because of the competition from fully reusable Starship and/or Terran R and/or Stoke. Relativity and Stoke actually have a chance of success. It's small, but non-zero.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

imtringued 2y ago

Spinlaunch makes no sense on earth, they should put a tether based spinlauncher on the moon instead.

panick21_ 2y ago

Spin launch doesn't even have 0.005% odds of success. 5% is an absurd number frankly. The $/kg doesn't matter that much in practice in the real world. Maybe in the future where people are launching only fuel. But not now. The reality is Spin launch requires people to build sats 'for' launching on Spin launch. And that's simply not happening. No major consumer is gone do that. Spin launch is borderline a grift.

Retric 2y ago
Square cube law means smaller satellites care less about g-forces. People shot vacuum tubes out of artillery shells as part of proximity fuses and they would survive just fine. A cellphone experiences higher peak acceleration when hitting a floor when falling off a table but they are generally fine. So yes some sats would need modifications, but not necessarily significant ones and you can trivially test those conditions prior to launch. A Starlink competitor would happily design for such if it reduced their launch costs by 90%.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  First of all, all sats need modification. Things like reaction wheels simply wont work the same. Usually launch vehicle selection is done well after engineering on the project is along quite a bit. SpinLaunch basically requires that you make a decision to be SpinLaunch compatible as soon as you start. And that will force you to use some of their parts. This simply isn't something that anybody would do unless there is a huge benefit to it. Spin Launch still requires a rocket, and one that will likely not be reusable one anytime soon. So the idea that its going to massively reduce cost is a fantasy. To even have any cost saving at all they need a huge number of launches. There simply isn't a market for that many tiny sats. There is a reason all the constellations have moved to larger sats that are not SpinLaunch compatible. Micro launch is a tiny market and companies like SpinLaunch are just lying to their investors, just like Astra did. If we are looking at things like consumables, it would take 500 SpinLaunch launches and that doesn't even match a single Starship launch. How anybody could think this would be cheaper is beyond me.