9 ms·

I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than for

I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than foreign militaries sponsoring them. There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market. We can only hope the competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX has been about space debris risk and ensuring the satellites are not visible to the naked eye and don't disrupt astronomy. So far the proposals I've seen have been much worse than Starlink in these areas.

throwing_away 2y ago
I disagree too, but because it will no longer require military budget to start a SpaceX competitor. Pretty soon AI agents could reasonably take a crack at it.
- mmaunder 2y ago
  I’m sure LangGraph has Elon quaking in his boots.
mmaunder 2y ago
Game that out for us. How government innovation competes with a private sector launch company whose main differentiator is lower cost.
- modeless 2y ago
  China is going to do it for sure. It doesn't have to be as efficient as SpaceX if it is massively subsidized for defense purposes. And China is pretty good at building things cheap. On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. There are other up and coming private launch competitors too.
  - jimmydoe 2y ago
    Nothing is impossible but it takes time. Based on current disclosed plan, they will have same number of LEOs as SpaceX have today by ~2030; and SpaceX is not slowing down either.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The issue is that space launch has some huge economies of scale. And {world space launch demand} is >> {one country's space launch demand} The argument for China overcoming SpaceX would be: - China needs to get within functional (not cost) technological parity with SpaceX ASAP (i.e. which means reusability, albeit for cadence/capacity reasons) - After that, they need to incentivize global demand to launch on Chinese rockets (likely heavily subsidizing prices to attract demand) - After that, they need to continue to out-innovate SpaceX on technological and economic fronts Of those, convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law.
    - wmf 2y ago
      I don't think China needs any third-party payloads. Even if they only launch Qianfan it should be enough to bring costs down.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        The issue is that SpaceX, unlike any space company since some never-realized 1960s hypotheticals, is a flywheel company built around scaling. They create demand so they can scale manufacturing that they can use to decrease prices that creates more demand... etc. etc. You can't beat a company doing that by just getting "big enough" unless the scaling company (a) runs out of increased demand or (b) cannot convert increased volume into cheaper economics per unit. Neither of those seem very plausible.
    - MaxPock 2y ago
      "convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law." Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        For countries that aren't on the US' shit list (e.g. Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or Thailand), why would I take a chance on Chinese legal agreements instead of American ones? The American private company might be prohibited from launching military assets for you, but once a launch contract is otherwise signed, you know it's going to happen. In contrast, a Chinese legal agreement is worth what, if the central government decides to get involved?
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. [citation needed] Sure, New Glenn is designed to be a partially reusable rocket. But it's far from clear that they'll even successfully launch on their debut, not to mention recover the booster. And even when they've sorted all that out, word on the street is that the rocket was not designed to be inexpensively manufactured. It's not clear to me just now low reuse can help drive down their launch price.
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    China is very good at copying things but this is one they'll have trouble with given the strict employment requirements.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  blink By spending more money in absolute terms to achieve objectives, without a necessitative need of immediate profit?
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  And adding onto this it's not just cost, they also have the fastest turn around and the highest reliability. It's vaguely analogous to the early automobile market where Ford was dominating by every single objective metric so competitors were left to compete on subjective metrics like styles. Incidentally this era is where planned obsolescence really took off. Unfortunately for competitors I'm not sure coating a rocket in a chrome finish and running a sleek ad campaign is going to beat out price+speed+reliability.
schiffern 2y ago
>We can only hope competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX... about space debris.. and satellite [visibility] Thank you. For those unaware, one of the SpaceX engineers gave a talk to professional astronomers on this topic. https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717 https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717
nordsieck 2y ago
IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space. Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites. One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 years. Which means the operators can never stop launching. It's an ongoing operational cost. For smaller operators like OneWeb, they don't have to launch that often, but for a serious competitor like Kuiper, they'll be constantly launching some satellite every year. IMO, launch cost will be a problem even for China. The cost of an LEO constellation is so high that even if it's partially subsidized by the military it'll be a serious cost for the country. That could change pretty soon, though - various companies and organizations in China are aggressively working on getting reusable rockets working. --- 1. $70 m / 17.5 tonnes == $4 m / tonne 2. $15 m[3] / 17.5 tonnes == $0.86 / tonne 3. The $15 m number is not public info, but it is widely believed that it is in the correct ballpark.
- nrmitchi 2y ago
  In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment (ie, almost exactly the same as Boeing and United Airlines divestment due to the Air Mail Act). > Air Mail Act of 1934: > This legislation prohibited the common ownership of airlines and aircraft manufacturers to prevent conflicts of interest and promote fair competition in the aviation industry.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment I guess we'll see what happens. As with most things monopoly related, the critical fight is over how to appropriately define the market. Presumably SpaceX would argue that Starlink is an ISP and that it just happens to use satellites to deliver its service. And if that doesn't work, then it's a satellite internet provider, but competes with both LEO and GEO services. If it ever goes to court, it'll be interesting to see how such an argument holds up.
greenavocado 2y ago
We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  Unless you're in Brazil https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/ https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/
01100011 2y ago
Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.
- wmf 2y ago
  It's not the same because there are plenty of companies that can manufacture cars at scale but only one company that can launch satellites cheaply. Arguably Waymo is ahead of Tesla FSD and they have access to the mature Hyundai and Zeekr supply chains.
  - robotresearcher 2y ago
    Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced. Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain. SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.
    - 01100011 2y ago
      If what you are saying is true, why would Waymo not then pivot to a cheaper sensor system like Tesla? They have extensive experience with deep learning and plenty of training data. Surely this only buys Tesla a few years of lead time? You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give up.
  - 01100011 2y ago
    It is the same. In both cases people are doubting the ability of the free market(and non-free markets) to detect and respond to an opportunity. How long do you think it will be before a, say, Chinese SpaceX catches up while being unfettered by environmental restrictions and backed by government subsidies? Space is quite important and as the world deglobalizes there will be intense pressure to compete. SpaceX is breaking new ground and giving other competitors plenty to copy.
adastra22 2y ago
With respect, I’m not sure you understand the scale of what we are talking about. No other organization — including national space agencies and military contractors — has the life capacity to compete with Starlink at ANY cost. Even if money were no object, the other contenders literally don’t have the launch capacity and can’t reasonably scale up. It’s as if Intel released the Pentium Pro back in the 50’s when everyone else was working with vacuum tubes. Yes, in theory there is room for competition. But the gulf is so large in practice.
meta_x_ai 2y ago
You have no idea the margins at which Elon Musk operates. If you read his biography he is obsessive about cost cutting like no else in the history of mankind. There are plenty of examples where Musk brings down the cost of a component by 90%. No other leader takes risks like Musk and hence he will always push frontiers. His companies never get lazy or bloated even if it reaches $10T market cap. Musk methods can't be replicated because it is the anti-thesis of every management practice.
la64710 2y ago
This is already available in iPhone with their text based coverage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930 https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930 Probably they are using GSAT satellites.
- modeless 2y ago
  Apple's feature is not comparable. It is extremely low bandwidth and requires special hardware and holding the phone pointing in a certain direction. Starlink acts as a regular (albeit low bandwidth) 4G tower in space.
  - quailfarmer 2y ago
    Starlink DTC is also very low bandwidth in this generation, it’s is a fundamentally similar RF link budget
    - modeless 2y ago
      Starlink DTC bandwidth is orders of magnitude higher than Apple's.
    - everfrustrated 2y ago
      Starlink allows calling (Apple's can't) which requires a higher bandwidth by definition. Obviously it will never have the bandwidth of a local cell site, but doesn't need to to still be useful.
Nevermark 2y ago
> There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market. Economics? Competitors would have to match SpaceX's vertical integration: Satellite design, reusable launches at cost, its exiting armada of satellites, and its moving target of customer penetration. The latter is huge. Starlink is clearly not satisfied leaving any satellite demand on the table. There is no military on Earth that has demand for satellite bandwidth approaching anything like SpaceX's, which is basically being designed to meet the needs of the whole planet. Note that militaries (US, China, Russia, Europe, ...) have their custom means of communicating on planet, for unique reasons, but the vast majority of their communication is over commercial cell phones. This is no different. If anyone was going to have a chance, it was Bezos. But neither his launch capabilities, or big satellite constellation plans, have amounted to much. China will feel the need to try. But they won't have SpaceX's customer base to support a fraction of a comparable effort. (And I say that as someone who has tremendous respect for the multi-decade cadence of their space capability march.)
- modeless 2y ago
  "SpaceX is really good and it's hard to compete with them" is not an economic reason for it to be winner takes all. Economic reasons would be, for example, regulations that either explicitly or implicitly prohibit others from competing, as are present in many terrestrial ISP markets. Some way for SpaceX to corner the market for some essential resource like spectrum or orbits and exclude competitors that way.
  - cjblomqvist 2y ago
    Vertical integration is definitely one. It's such a big factor it can cause regulators to break up a company. See Google/Chrome as an example from last week.
    - modeless 2y ago
      "SpaceX is vertically integrated" is also not an economic reason for the space ISP market to be winner takes all. Vertical integration doesn't cause breakups. Anticompetitive behavior causes breakups, with or without vertical integration. And vertical integration is not some kind of cheat code to suppress competition. It can be a business advantage but it can also easily be a disadvantage.

throwing_away 2y ago

I disagree too, but because it will no longer require military budget to start a SpaceX competitor. Pretty soon AI agents could reasonably take a crack at it.

mmaunder 2y ago
I’m sure LangGraph has Elon quaking in his boots.

mmaunder 2y ago

Game that out for us. How government innovation competes with a private sector launch company whose main differentiator is lower cost.

modeless 2y ago
China is going to do it for sure. It doesn't have to be as efficient as SpaceX if it is massively subsidized for defense purposes. And China is pretty good at building things cheap. On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. There are other up and coming private launch competitors too.
- jimmydoe 2y ago
  Nothing is impossible but it takes time. Based on current disclosed plan, they will have same number of LEOs as SpaceX have today by ~2030; and SpaceX is not slowing down either.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The issue is that space launch has some huge economies of scale. And {world space launch demand} is >> {one country's space launch demand} The argument for China overcoming SpaceX would be: - China needs to get within functional (not cost) technological parity with SpaceX ASAP (i.e. which means reusability, albeit for cadence/capacity reasons) - After that, they need to incentivize global demand to launch on Chinese rockets (likely heavily subsidizing prices to attract demand) - After that, they need to continue to out-innovate SpaceX on technological and economic fronts Of those, convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law.
  - wmf 2y ago
    I don't think China needs any third-party payloads. Even if they only launch Qianfan it should be enough to bring costs down.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      The issue is that SpaceX, unlike any space company since some never-realized 1960s hypotheticals, is a flywheel company built around scaling. They create demand so they can scale manufacturing that they can use to decrease prices that creates more demand... etc. etc. You can't beat a company doing that by just getting "big enough" unless the scaling company (a) runs out of increased demand or (b) cannot convert increased volume into cheaper economics per unit. Neither of those seem very plausible.
  - MaxPock 2y ago
    "convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law." Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      For countries that aren't on the US' shit list (e.g. Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or Thailand), why would I take a chance on Chinese legal agreements instead of American ones? The American private company might be prohibited from launching military assets for you, but once a launch contract is otherwise signed, you know it's going to happen. In contrast, a Chinese legal agreement is worth what, if the central government decides to get involved?
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > On the commercial side Blue Origin has been slow in starting but they are almost ready and will have relatively cheap launches. [citation needed] Sure, New Glenn is designed to be a partially reusable rocket. But it's far from clear that they'll even successfully launch on their debut, not to mention recover the booster. And even when they've sorted all that out, word on the street is that the rocket was not designed to be inexpensively manufactured. It's not clear to me just now low reuse can help drive down their launch price.
- jaimex2 2y ago
  China is very good at copying things but this is one they'll have trouble with given the strict employment requirements.
freeone3000 2y ago
blink By spending more money in absolute terms to achieve objectives, without a necessitative need of immediate profit?
ANewFormation 2y ago
And adding onto this it's not just cost, they also have the fastest turn around and the highest reliability. It's vaguely analogous to the early automobile market where Ford was dominating by every single objective metric so competitors were left to compete on subjective metrics like styles. Incidentally this era is where planned obsolescence really took off. Unfortunately for competitors I'm not sure coating a rocket in a chrome finish and running a sleek ad campaign is going to beat out price+speed+reliability.

schiffern 2y ago

>We can only hope competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX... about space debris.. and satellite [visibility] Thank you. For those unaware, one of the SpaceX engineers gave a talk to professional astronomers on this topic. https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717 https://youtu.be/MNc5yCYth5E?t=1717

nordsieck 2y ago

IMO, one of the central problems is the cost of launching stuff into space. Today, SpaceX offers world leading low prices to launch satellites: $4 m / tonne[1]. But Starlink has access to launch at cost, which is $0.86 m / tonne[2]. Which is a huge advantage when launching an enormous number of satellites. One thing to keep in mind, especially for these LEO constellations: the lifetime of these satellites is 5-10 years. Which means the operators can never stop launching. It's an ongoing operational cost. For smaller operators like OneWeb, they don't have to launch that often, but for a serious competitor like Kuiper, they'll be constantly launching some satellite every year. IMO, launch cost will be a problem even for China. The cost of an LEO constellation is so high that even if it's partially subsidized by the military it'll be a serious cost for the country. That could change pretty soon, though - various companies and organizations in China are aggressively working on getting reusable rockets working. --- 1. $70 m / 17.5 tonnes == $4 m / tonne 2. $15 m[3] / 17.5 tonnes == $0.86 / tonne 3. The $15 m number is not public info, but it is widely believed that it is in the correct ballpark.

nrmitchi 2y ago
In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment (ie, almost exactly the same as Boeing and United Airlines divestment due to the Air Mail Act). > Air Mail Act of 1934: > This legislation prohibited the common ownership of airlines and aircraft manufacturers to prevent conflicts of interest and promote fair competition in the aviation industry.
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment I guess we'll see what happens. As with most things monopoly related, the critical fight is over how to appropriately define the market. Presumably SpaceX would argue that Starlink is an ISP and that it just happens to use satellites to deliver its service. And if that doesn't work, then it's a satellite internet provider, but competes with both LEO and GEO services. If it ever goes to court, it'll be interesting to see how such an argument holds up.

greenavocado 2y ago

We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bigfatkitten 2y ago
Unless you're in Brazil https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/ https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/

01100011 2y ago

Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.

wmf 2y ago
It's not the same because there are plenty of companies that can manufacture cars at scale but only one company that can launch satellites cheaply. Arguably Waymo is ahead of Tesla FSD and they have access to the mature Hyundai and Zeekr supply chains.
- robotresearcher 2y ago
  Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced. Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain. SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.
  - 01100011 2y ago
    If what you are saying is true, why would Waymo not then pivot to a cheaper sensor system like Tesla? They have extensive experience with deep learning and plenty of training data. Surely this only buys Tesla a few years of lead time? You seem to demonstrate what my point that Tesla maximalists assume a temporary lead becomes a permanent one and competitors just give up.
- 01100011 2y ago
  It is the same. In both cases people are doubting the ability of the free market(and non-free markets) to detect and respond to an opportunity. How long do you think it will be before a, say, Chinese SpaceX catches up while being unfettered by environmental restrictions and backed by government subsidies? Space is quite important and as the world deglobalizes there will be intense pressure to compete. SpaceX is breaking new ground and giving other competitors plenty to copy.

adastra22 2y ago

With respect, I’m not sure you understand the scale of what we are talking about. No other organization — including national space agencies and military contractors — has the life capacity to compete with Starlink at ANY cost. Even if money were no object, the other contenders literally don’t have the launch capacity and can’t reasonably scale up. It’s as if Intel released the Pentium Pro back in the 50’s when everyone else was working with vacuum tubes. Yes, in theory there is room for competition. But the gulf is so large in practice.

meta_x_ai 2y ago

You have no idea the margins at which Elon Musk operates. If you read his biography he is obsessive about cost cutting like no else in the history of mankind. There are plenty of examples where Musk brings down the cost of a component by 90%. No other leader takes risks like Musk and hence he will always push frontiers. His companies never get lazy or bloated even if it reaches $10T market cap. Musk methods can't be replicated because it is the anti-thesis of every management practice.

la64710 2y ago

This is already available in iPhone with their text based coverage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930 https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930 Probably they are using GSAT satellites.

modeless 2y ago
Apple's feature is not comparable. It is extremely low bandwidth and requires special hardware and holding the phone pointing in a certain direction. Starlink acts as a regular (albeit low bandwidth) 4G tower in space.
- quailfarmer 2y ago
  Starlink DTC is also very low bandwidth in this generation, it’s is a fundamentally similar RF link budget
  - modeless 2y ago
    Starlink DTC bandwidth is orders of magnitude higher than Apple's.
  - everfrustrated 2y ago
    Starlink allows calling (Apple's can't) which requires a higher bandwidth by definition. Obviously it will never have the bandwidth of a local cell site, but doesn't need to to still be useful.

Nevermark 2y ago

> There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market. Economics? Competitors would have to match SpaceX's vertical integration: Satellite design, reusable launches at cost, its exiting armada of satellites, and its moving target of customer penetration. The latter is huge. Starlink is clearly not satisfied leaving any satellite demand on the table. There is no military on Earth that has demand for satellite bandwidth approaching anything like SpaceX's, which is basically being designed to meet the needs of the whole planet. Note that militaries (US, China, Russia, Europe, ...) have their custom means of communicating on planet, for unique reasons, but the vast majority of their communication is over commercial cell phones. This is no different. If anyone was going to have a chance, it was Bezos. But neither his launch capabilities, or big satellite constellation plans, have amounted to much. China will feel the need to try. But they won't have SpaceX's customer base to support a fraction of a comparable effort. (And I say that as someone who has tremendous respect for the multi-decade cadence of their space capability march.)

modeless 2y ago
"SpaceX is really good and it's hard to compete with them" is not an economic reason for it to be winner takes all. Economic reasons would be, for example, regulations that either explicitly or implicitly prohibit others from competing, as are present in many terrestrial ISP markets. Some way for SpaceX to corner the market for some essential resource like spectrum or orbits and exclude competitors that way.
- cjblomqvist 2y ago
  Vertical integration is definitely one. It's such a big factor it can cause regulators to break up a company. See Google/Chrome as an example from last week.
  - modeless 2y ago
    "SpaceX is vertically integrated" is also not an economic reason for the space ISP market to be winner takes all. Vertical integration doesn't cause breakups. Anticompetitive behavior causes breakups, with or without vertical integration. And vertical integration is not some kind of cheat code to suppress competition. It can be a business advantage but it can also easily be a disadvantage.