4 ms·

Meanwhile, as one of those engineers, they ran fiber down the highway a mile from my house circa 2021, but they did not do any upgrades at all to the last mile

by 0xffff2 3mo ago

Meanwhile, as one of those engineers, they ran fiber down the highway a mile from my house circa 2021, but they did not do any upgrades at all to the last mile infrastructure so I still only have a ~10Mbps DSL option for wired internet at that house, which is a big step up from literally no wired option before, but still vastly inferior to Starlink. (The terrain makes terrestrial wireless a nonstarter in the area). I've since moved back to civilization, but I still own the house. As far as I know, there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure. Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.

consumer451 3mo ago
I was only trying to talk about Starlink here, as that is what TFA is about. Starlink is AMAZING in-flight, out at sea, etc.. But since you brought it up: > Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company. So, where does the rest of the valuation come from? It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.
- 0xffff2 3mo ago
  According to SpaceX itself 93% of the company's value is in AI IIRC.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - t-writescode 3mo ago
    God I hope not. That’s terrifying.
  - lokar 3mo ago
    99% of the value is goodwill towards musk
- jordanb 3mo ago
  > where does the rest of the valuation come from? AI data centers in space, of course!
- BurningFrog 3mo ago
  SpaceX is by far the most cost effective way in this world to send things into space. That is very valuable.
  - Alpha3031 3mo ago
    Not according to their prospectus (which was what was asked about), where it accounted for slightly under 2% of SpaceX's market.
  - Lomlioto 3mo ago
    No its not. The payload we send to space is very limited and the 300% increase in the few last years was ONLY starlink itself. Thats the issue Musk has to sell it to the investors and his idea is datacenter payload. Just that he would need to send 300 Starships up there to even install a smallish datacenter like his own colossus 1. Starship is not done yet, we have not seen it fly up there and return for 300 times at all.
    - BurningFrog 3mo ago
      "No it's not" replies and silent downvotes instead of arguments didn't use to be how HN worked. Sad to see this place becoming a normal web forum.
      - rsynnott 3mo ago
        I mean, it was a response to a claim, without evidence, that it was valuable. Is your position that _you_ can make assertions without evidence but that lesser mortals may not contradict you without writing a paper on the subject? I’m convinced that a large part of the user base of this site is genuinely, literally, solipsistic.
        BurningFrog 3mo ago
        My position is more that it's OK to mention a well known and easily verifiable fact without digging out authoritative sources.
shoo 3mo ago
> there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure The economics of laying fiber to the premises are heavily driven by density of potential customers * probability that a potential customer will sign up if you run fiber down their street. You can get reasonable intuition by focusing on the density alone & ignoring the competition / pricing side of things. I'm not familiar with current US construction costs to install fiber but have some intuition from Australia. With Australia's national broadband network project from a decade or so ago, it'd cost in the ballpark of $100 AUD per meter to run fiber down the street in an underground trench - most of the capex is digging the holes in the ground etc, the cost of the cable itself is essentially free. The construction budget for a suburb would be something like $2000 / premises. To give a ballpark estimate, suppose 25% of your budget is the premises-specific work to connect the house to the cable running down the street, if they choose to sign up for your broadband plan. That leaves at most $1500 / premises for the rest of your capex budget, so the economics only work if you've got a neighbourhood with a density of least one house every 15 meters. Those numbers aren't exact but they'd be in the ballpark. There's a bit of variability in the cost per meter to install, if you can reuse existing poles & run the cable aerially that might be only 30%-40% of the cost of digging holes, so you might be able to support a lower density suburb that way & still stick to your construction budget. In Australia for the lower density rural / semi-rural areas they'd use fixed wireless, & finally satellite for the remote extremely low density areas where it didn't even make sense to build a wireless tower.
- tw1984 3mo ago
  your numbers are completely meaningless. it is well known that Australia has an extremely lazy workforce that refuse to put in any real work. the best example here is the stupid residential building cost. nowadays it costs over $1m AUD or $700k USD do a first floor 2bedroom 1 bathroom extension for an existing house in good condition. That is significantly more expensive than building a big house in the US.
  - Alpha3031 3mo ago
    I'm fairly sure there are also houses in Australia being built for less than $1m AUD given there are new houses being sold for less than $1m AUD with no indication those developers are making a loss.

by 0xffff2 3mo ago

consumer451 3mo ago

I was only trying to talk about Starlink here, as that is what TFA is about. Starlink is AMAZING in-flight, out at sea, etc.. But since you brought it up: > Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company. So, where does the rest of the valuation come from? It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.

0xffff2 3mo ago
According to SpaceX itself 93% of the company's value is in AI IIRC.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- t-writescode 3mo ago
  God I hope not. That’s terrifying.
- lokar 3mo ago
  99% of the value is goodwill towards musk
jordanb 3mo ago
> where does the rest of the valuation come from? AI data centers in space, of course!
BurningFrog 3mo ago
SpaceX is by far the most cost effective way in this world to send things into space. That is very valuable.
- Alpha3031 3mo ago
  Not according to their prospectus (which was what was asked about), where it accounted for slightly under 2% of SpaceX's market.
- Lomlioto 3mo ago
  No its not. The payload we send to space is very limited and the 300% increase in the few last years was ONLY starlink itself. Thats the issue Musk has to sell it to the investors and his idea is datacenter payload. Just that he would need to send 300 Starships up there to even install a smallish datacenter like his own colossus 1. Starship is not done yet, we have not seen it fly up there and return for 300 times at all.
  - BurningFrog 3mo ago
    "No it's not" replies and silent downvotes instead of arguments didn't use to be how HN worked. Sad to see this place becoming a normal web forum.
    - rsynnott 3mo ago
      I mean, it was a response to a claim, without evidence, that it was valuable. Is your position that _you_ can make assertions without evidence but that lesser mortals may not contradict you without writing a paper on the subject? I’m convinced that a large part of the user base of this site is genuinely, literally, solipsistic.
      - BurningFrog 3mo ago
        My position is more that it's OK to mention a well known and easily verifiable fact without digging out authoritative sources.

shoo 3mo ago

> there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure The economics of laying fiber to the premises are heavily driven by density of potential customers * probability that a potential customer will sign up if you run fiber down their street. You can get reasonable intuition by focusing on the density alone & ignoring the competition / pricing side of things. I'm not familiar with current US construction costs to install fiber but have some intuition from Australia. With Australia's national broadband network project from a decade or so ago, it'd cost in the ballpark of $100 AUD per meter to run fiber down the street in an underground trench - most of the capex is digging the holes in the ground etc, the cost of the cable itself is essentially free. The construction budget for a suburb would be something like $2000 / premises. To give a ballpark estimate, suppose 25% of your budget is the premises-specific work to connect the house to the cable running down the street, if they choose to sign up for your broadband plan. That leaves at most $1500 / premises for the rest of your capex budget, so the economics only work if you've got a neighbourhood with a density of least one house every 15 meters. Those numbers aren't exact but they'd be in the ballpark. There's a bit of variability in the cost per meter to install, if you can reuse existing poles & run the cable aerially that might be only 30%-40% of the cost of digging holes, so you might be able to support a lower density suburb that way & still stick to your construction budget. In Australia for the lower density rural / semi-rural areas they'd use fixed wireless, & finally satellite for the remote extremely low density areas where it didn't even make sense to build a wireless tower.

tw1984 3mo ago
your numbers are completely meaningless. it is well known that Australia has an extremely lazy workforce that refuse to put in any real work. the best example here is the stupid residential building cost. nowadays it costs over $1m AUD or $700k USD do a first floor 2bedroom 1 bathroom extension for an existing house in good condition. That is significantly more expensive than building a big house in the US.
- Alpha3031 3mo ago
  I'm fairly sure there are also houses in Australia being built for less than $1m AUD given there are new houses being sold for less than $1m AUD with no indication those developers are making a loss.