I happened to get curious about the size of SpaceX, which includes Starlink as a subsidiary. Here it is:
SpaceX is a private company and doesn't report revenue, so this is a collection of estimates from various analysts and media sources. It's not exact, but it's pretty close.
Who thought it was a good idea for a private individual to have control of a vast network of communication satellites? Someone should seriously consider fixing that problem, although it might be too late now that Elmo has control of the world's most powerful military.
He's literally a Bond villain, but with control of a US president. Nobody would make a movie about that, because while it's unbelievable, the plot would be pretty boring - just a guy doing whatever the fuck he wants and nobody even attempting to stop him. And, if you agree that it would be a bad movie, wait until you see what it's like to live through it! We're barely through the opening credits, and it already sucks.
+1
Boring? You think evil hijinks like
* waving a chainsaw around on stage is boring? In the movie version, he'd turn it on and slice up the podium (at least)
* conducting an Oval Office briefing while the so-called "president" slumps over his desk like a kid in detention boring? In the movie version, the preceding scene of the movie, Evil Musk Man would give Prexy a dressing down and admonish him to behave
* literally bursting into an assortment of government agencies with the aid of armed bully boys and a nerd cadre of kids with several iphones apiece, roughing up the staff and physically shoving them out the doors -- admittedly, this would be the movie version, and there would be enough "action" (aka violence) that nobody would call it boring
* sending out (okay, movie version) videos to everybody in government of himself and the putative "president" yelling "YOU'RE FIRE!" and the reactions as various staff receive them, including military leaders, Congressmen, judges, whole open plan offices full of workers, rangers at national parks, fire fighters, etc
Sir, if you think the antics of a drug-addled, drunk on power evil villain are boring, you haven't been to the movies in a long, long time.
No one else was willing to invest in getting internet to the entire world.
Some things are only obvious to the majority in hindsight.
You don't need to defend him, Crissa. He's the richest man on earth and has the ear (if the not the powers outright) of the President. He'll be ok even if somebody named "d34df4n" criticizes him on the internet.
Who the fuck is defending him here?
You're disgusting if you think I'm defending him. Fuck you,
Whoa, dial it back a bit. d34df4n referred to Musk as a bond villain, and criticized the idea of a private individual like Musk having control over communication satelites.
You responded by claiming that nobody other than Musk was willing to invest in "getting internet to the entire world" and implied that Musk's investments were some sort of admirable foresight.
So yeah, it sure looked like you were defending him, and yeah, I don't think you need to. Dude's being destructive, and doesn't need us peasants pumping him up.
The other companies were specifically targeting regional markets or corporations which operate on the seas.
But near-orbit satellites don't fly only over a region; they fly over the world.
So no, investment did not seek out this goal, because investors are like sheep. They follow where money was made before - and avoid places money has never been made.
It doesn't fucking 'defend' him to say he took a risk and it paid off. It could have been a fucking cliff. That's why it was a risk.
But anyone who knows how satellites work knows this was totally plausible. That's why it was in sci fi novels and dystopias and if you asked any NASA scientist they'd say sure, but it would be expensive.
It doesn't fucking defend him to point out he did this obvious fucking thing.
Musk wasn't the first person to try satellite broadband in Low Earth Orbit, although Starlink is the first to make it successful and profitable.
If you want to discuss satellite constellations, I'd love to. It's what I went to university to do.
My spouse was on a NASA proposal for one, but W Bush cancelled all new unmanned programs that year, so it didn't get picked up.
Luckily, other countries and the participants in the commercial programs weren't so short-sighted. And no, it wasn't SpaceX.
I know the question is at least partly rhetorical, but the answer is obvious. The person who thought it was a good idea for Elon Musk to have control of a vast network of communication satellites was Elon Musk.
Apparently, Elon has decided to award Starlink a $5B contract which was formerly given to Verizon for FAA communications. This is on the heels of NPR reporting yesterday that the $400M for armored Teslas was NOT given during the Biden administration.
The corruption is strong with this one.
If it's any consolation, Elon lost $22 billion today, per Bloomberg.
That scorekeeping is dumb and not related to any real money he has.
Starlink is going to have ground-based communications? Or is the FAA being pushed to do something silly like depend on a satellite network for comms?
I think the contract is for additional communications aside from ground links, like microwave links?
I'm baffled how Starlink (which does not have reliability figured out yet) would do it in its current state.
Does Musk have any first-mover advantage in his various enterprises? I know Bezos is trying to compete, but he seems a day late and billions short.
Basically, by jumping forward with the reusable first stage, they got ahead in pricing. Starlink wasn't projected to be self-sufficient revenue-wise with the Falcon 9 but they moved forward anyhow to gain that proof of concept.
More than a day late, and billions more unfortunately. Bezos has been spending $1-2 billion a year on Blue Origin since 2015, and while the progress has been good (compare Blue Origin going from basically nothing to New Glenn in ten years to SpaceX going from nothing to Falcon 9 in ten years) it's been far more expensive than SpaceX doing it.
But they're getting better, and presumably reusable New Glenn rockets will start to cut into SpaceX's share of the launch business (and eventually get Kuiper satellites up there to compete with Starlink).
+1
There's also others on the horizon like Stoke Space, and some already flying cheap rockets like Rocket Lab is doing which will start nibbling the edge of the market.
But China has enough companies to mirror basically every other company in the world and that's kinda scary.
OT, sorry- having read Kevin Drum's writing only since his later MoJo years, I've never looked up his earliest mention of lead and its effect on crime rates due to its use in gasoline. This Smithsonian article is about Alice Hamilton, a privileged woman who became a doctor at 24 and who researched and identified health risks in work environments. I'd read about the high use of read in Roan times,but not about how long ago it was added to gasoline.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-alice-hamilton-waged-one-woman-campaign-get-lead-out-everything-180985960/
Starlink has a big first mover advantage, plus genuinely good decisions on deployment and manufacturing and a huge synergy with SpaceX's reusable rockets (frequent Starlink launches allows SpaceX to save money reusing rockets, which in turn makes it cheaper to launch Starlink satellites). That number is probably going to go up for a couple more years, especially if they get into more international markets, more ships, and parts of the cellular market.
Eventually other networks will likely cut into that, especially Kuiper and the proposed Chinese satellite broadband network. But for now they've got the advantage.
Whereas SpaceX's revenue is much more slow-growing, because aside from governmental launches, Starlink, and some commercial launches there's not much potential there for growth in launch alone. Space launch continues to be lacking in its "killer app" that could lead to rapid, sustained growth in launch capacity and a permanent drop in launch costs (in the same way that spices, cash crops from the Americas, and gold were a powerful source of highly profitable demand for shipping with the Columbian Exchange and Spice Trade). It's bedeviled the launch business for decades.
Yeah, SpaceX has not exploded like Starlink has, but tripling your revenue in 4 years or so is pretty impressive. They are (I think) by far the cheapest way to launch stuff into space, and when they get their Starship rocket going, they are going to have an even stronger position. Despite Musk's jackassery, it is a hell of good company.
Yep. They are way cheaper, and fly the most reliable and safest rockets currently. Even with the several engine failures past year they're still the most reliable since they have hundreds of successful missions recorded.
One of their barges just counted its hundredth landing, and with multiple active rockets at their 26th flight.
"Whereas SpaceX's revenue is much more slow-growing"
Don't worry! When DOGE deletes NASA's Orion/SLS programs as wastefraudabuse/competition, SpaceX will have an entirely new revenue source!
Space buffs have been making rude comments about SLS for years. The program is hugely expensive for what it's intended to deliver.
All the more reason for Musk to decide that Musk should get the contract!
Should be fairly easy to nationalize once Musk overdoses.
I think one of the news pieces about his drug use mentions that he keeps a doctor nearby whenever he's using drugs, in case he overdoses.
[Musk] keeps a doctor nearby whenever he's using drugs, in case he overdoses.
Yeah, that really helped Michael Jackson a lot.
To my chagrin, my Starlink works flawlessly in any weather, and took about 5 minutes to install. Prior to that, I had no option for internet of any kind, aside from hot spotting 1 bar of a 3g signal. Will happily switch when a competitor comes along.
Much of that rise has been since Biden took office, which leads me to believe that the dotted line estimation of future growth may not be nearly steep enough.