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Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

reuters.com

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Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#41

Post by timschmidt »

ipython wrote: post #36
timschmidt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon is a crazy shitposter on “X” Does anyone care beyond internet drama points? The man's efforts to engineer societal-level technological change toward sustainability seem to matter more in my estimation.

Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it? To me it reeks of a certain lack of self awareness, respect for others and questionable decision making. You can be interesting and edgy without being a total asshole. I also question his actual interest in sustainability. How exactly does paying $40 billion for Twitter fit into that grand strategy? What about driving a wedge between large groups of people by promoting h…

> Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it?

People are allowed to express themselves?

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#43

Post by erkt »

ipython wrote: post #36
timschmidt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon is a crazy shitposter on “X” Does anyone care beyond internet drama points? The man's efforts to engineer societal-level technological change toward sustainability seem to matter more in my estimation.

Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it? To me it reeks of a certain lack of self awareness, respect for others and questionable decision making. You can be interesting and edgy without being a total asshole. I also question his actual interest in sustainability. How exactly does paying $40 billion for Twitter fit into that grand strategy? What about driving a wedge between large groups of people by promoting h…

Is he promoting hate speech or just not suppressing it? Who even gets to define hate speech? Often it seems to be speech that aligns with the other teams political agenda. Having a different opinion on something isn’t hate speech even if it’s a very personally held belief. “When does life begin?”, “is sex different than gender?”, “is the Ukraine war righteous, or NATO expansionism?, “should we do everything possible to fight covid, or get back to work?”. Better not fail a purity test.

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#44

Post by erkt »

timschmidt wrote: post #41
ipython wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it? To me it reeks of a certain lack of self awareness, respect for others and questionable decision making. You can be interesting and edgy without being a total asshole. I also question his actual interest in sustainability. How exactly does paying $40 billion for Twitter fit into that grand strategy? What about driving a wedge between large groups of people by promoting h…

> Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it? People are allowed to express themselves?

Not people whose opinions differ from mine. /s

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#45

Post by mptest »

zpeti wrote: post #24
marcusverus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that SpaceX (which actively fought against cost-plus accounting in favor of fixed-cost contracts and has greatly reduced the cost of launch services) is ‘extracting money from American taxpayers’ is laughable. SpaceX is the death knell of the old space industry, whose primary function was delivering recycled tech late and over budget. In the fullness of time it will save the government many tens of billions…

Don't bother with facts for the elon haters, they are emotionally invested in Elon being an evil billionaire right winger, who is only around because of government tax incentives. Oh and it's his employees that did all the work, he just had money... (why didn't SLS, arianespace and blue origin work then? oh and the N1 russian rocket) Never mind the hundreds of data points to the contrary, the media now hates Elon, an…

>it's surprising just how effective they've been at turning many people against him.

He's done plenty of it himself, retweeting nazi shit and great replacement shit and all types of horrible shit he supports on twitter. It takes a real boot licker to not recognize his overt evil he believes politically, and believe it's some media conspiracy. The fact he takes government money isn't a question, whether giving elon that money is a net benefit or detriment is a different question entirely. The boot is so far down your throat you're being as myopic as those you accuse of being myopic.

I'll explain this real slow. The problem with people like elon isn't that they get tax payer money, it's that they act afterwords like they bootstrapped themselves alone in to success and then dodge billions in taxes. Simple enough for you elon simp??

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#46

Post by survirtual »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #39
mattgibson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given it's already been done before by Iridium [0], it's hard to see how it would take centuries for a more efficient version of the same thing to emerge if Spacex was not around. Especially given the general technology progress since Iridium initially launched. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

Starlink is comparable to Iridium if you are discussing ‘internet from the sky’ but the details are more complex.

They are not comparable.

Starlink offers highspeed (actually, not marketing gibberish), low latency internet around the world at a price people can actually afford and without unreasonable datacaps. This is possible because they are mass producing phased array antennas, something that was out of reach of common affordability before Starlink.

Starlink is comparable to Iridium like dial-up internet is comparable to fiber. Just go to Iridium's website and try to figure out what they actually sell to anyone who doesn't have elite pockets.

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#47

Post by timschmidt »

erkt wrote: post #44
timschmidt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly Elon does otherwise he wouldn’t do it? People are allowed to express themselves?

Not people whose opinions differ from mine. /s

I see comment threads about the dude and wonder sometimes where all the hate comes from. People's dissatisfaction with society and injustice and scarcity and all bad things? But then why direct it at this person, who is working to electrify transportation, reduce the cost of space by multiples, make communication globally available, why not some oil billionaire or war profiteer or large scale polluter? Certainly they exist. They must not post jokes on social media.

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#48

Post by swagempire »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #31

There are many timelines without spacex where something like starlink isn’t achieved for many more decades, possibly centuries. Very few thought this was possible.

But why do you even think this is so important -- it achieves nothing we don't already have terrestrially and just pollutes the sky visually (causing problems with ground based telescopes) and pollutes the atmosphere we actually breathe:

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/05/0330226/spacecra...

I can't see any upsides to this venture.

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#49

Post by mensetmanusman »

swagempire wrote: post #48
mensetmanusman wrote: post #31

There are many timelines without spacex where something like starlink isn’t achieved for many more decades, possibly centuries. Very few thought this was possible.

But why do you even think this is so important -- it achieves nothing we don't already have terrestrially and just pollutes the sky visually (causing problems with ground based telescopes) and pollutes the atmosphere we actually breathe: https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/05/0330226/spacecra... I can't see any upsides to this venture.

Shipping tracking to reduce black market exchanges and human/drug trafficking.

Also, without starlink Ukraine has said they would have been defeated quite quickly. (Ie fighting without a gun).

There are many upsides.

Re: Starlink achieves cash-flow breakeven, says SpaceX CEO Musk

#50

Post by panick21_ »

swagempire wrote: post #48
mensetmanusman wrote: post #31

There are many timelines without spacex where something like starlink isn’t achieved for many more decades, possibly centuries. Very few thought this was possible.

But why do you even think this is so important -- it achieves nothing we don't already have terrestrially and just pollutes the sky visually (causing problems with ground based telescopes) and pollutes the atmosphere we actually breathe: https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/05/0330226/spacecra... I can't see any upsides to this venture.

Ah so you can attach a cable to a plane? Or a ship? If it achieves nothing, why is there global demand?

The simple fact it, it is superior in many ways for a huge number of application and just denying the is never work.

As for the 'visual pollution' its mostly just not true. For the waste majority of humans its invisible basically always outside of a few situations.

For most terrestrial telescopes it doesn't really matter much. Broad visual surveying telescopes take a slight hit but its not like they will be no longer working. Many of the issues SpaceX has addressed and made the problem way less impactful.

Some very sensitive radio telescopes are also slightly effect and having some regulation like we do on earth for electronic devices would make sense.

The idea that its some horrible thing just doesn't hold up. The benefits outweigh the cost by a gigantic amount. Starlink is used to give good internet to native Americans who life away from infrastructure. The worth of these things are far, far, far higher then the few 10s of millions we lose in observatory performance.

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