[flagged]
Can you elaborate on Musk being a nazi, or is that just hyperbole?
Both sides have become ridiculous and unreasonable. Neither have any of the morals they are talking about.
Starlink Direct to Cell
261–270 of 831 posts
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation. Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo. He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard . But he also…
I agree with you, yet in a somewhat different way. He is an investor investing in science fiction. This isn't even implied, he comes out and says it again and again. I'm reminded of xerox parc's "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and I think that's his philosophy. As to "businesses he knows well" I do not agree. He didn't go into electric vehicles, rockets, robots or neural interfaces as "business h…
[flagged]
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#263I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
Why do you think Kuiper is dead in the water?
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#264A quick glance at these comments indicates the majority are excited about Starlink. I must be in the minority. Is anyone else here on HN very unhappy with the prospect of having no place to escape internet access? I love the idea of no-rescue zones. https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/hike-at-your... Not trying to change anyone's mind, just wondering if I'm a complete outlier.
Just don't take a phone with you or turn it off.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Starlink has caused rural fiber deployments to accelerate because a friend's property in rural Oregon just got fiber, but the challenge remains: after you get fiber to the corner of your 22 acre lot, how do you cover the rest of the 21 acres? With fiber and using wifi as your backhaul you have to get a chain a bunch of nodes to get Internet to each building/area you want wifi. Starlink (business) lets you jus…
There are long-range e.g. 20km WiFi transmitters/repeaters. It's a solved problem.
that solution isn't without issues. specifically, you have to climb trees and run power or do solar, and then if there's a heavy storm you can have issues. those aren't insurmountable problems but being able to get Internet anywhere there's liner of sight to the sky is easier (or harder!) depending on the terrain.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Starlink has caused rural fiber deployments to accelerate because a friend's property in rural Oregon just got fiber, but the challenge remains: after you get fiber to the corner of your 22 acre lot, how do you cover the rest of the 21 acres? With fiber and using wifi as your backhaul you have to get a chain a bunch of nodes to get Internet to each building/area you want wifi. Starlink (business) lets you jus…
Centurylink ran fiber down the nearest highway to my rural Oregon property a couple of months before Starlink became available. AFAIK the timing was more coincidence than anything, but you're entirely right about the logistics of fiber being non-trivial. As usual, last mile is the hardest part. Even with fiber at the highway, the only service Centurylink would offer us was 10Mbps DSL. I bet they would have tun fiver…
you're probably right about the timing being coincidental. it would have been nice if they'd gotten there before buying the Starlink hardware
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. AFAIK, Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chair, had no particular association with Musk prior to joining Tesla’s board. She is an Australian business executive with a history of working in senior finance roles in Australian and US firms. She was recruited on to Tesla’s board by another (now former) Tesla director, Brad Buss, who to my knowledge has never been that closely associ…
Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive? Robyn Denholm excecised and sold $35M worth of TSLA in the past month.
If receiving stock based compensation is grounds for not being independent then wouldn't most companies have an independence issue with their boards? It just seems like a crazy claim on it's face.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is great for regions that need to be connected That's at least a billion people. I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though. I'm writing this from an Ayahuasca center in rural Peru connected with Starlink. Before, internet was a ten minute drive into town away. We're now connected when at one side of the center. It would be nice to have it all the way into the jungle. And when…
> That's at least a billion people a) Based on what we've seen in China, India etc many of those will shift towards densely populated cities or will stay and those locations will become industrialised, densely populated cities. b) In densely populated cities it doesn't make sense to use Starlink when fibre is far cheaper, has limited congestion issues and can provide gigabit speeds at a minimum. c) It's great that yo…
All those points are true, but it doesn't change the fact that Starlink will be quite profitable for SpaceX.
Currently, each launch of 23 Starlink satellites costs SpaceX around $50 million. To get 1,000 direct to cell satellites in orbit, they'll need to launch 44 times, costing them $2.2 billion. Due to the low orbits, air resistance causes the satellites to reenter within 5-10 years, so to maintain the constellation they'll need to spend $220-440 million per year. These costs will be much lower when they switch from Falcon 9 to Starship.
Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell. That's still 80 million people. If SpaceX charges cell companies $10/month per user for the service, that's almost $10 billion per year. And that's not counting the money they make from selling Starlink Internet, which currently has over 4 million subscribers. At $100/month, that's $4.8 billion per year in revenue.
So Starlink is profitable without direct to cell technology, but since they're launching the satellites anyway, they might as well collect more revenue by adding cell capability. DTC only becomes unprofitable if the cost of the extra hardware and mass is less than DTC subscriber revenue.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#269> ENGINEERED BY SPACEX It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another. xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch). His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the…
samsung family I think is the closest
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#270I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands One space based cell plan for the whole world
Adding to this: I wish I can just buy a 4G modem for my cubesat and get 24/7 access through Starlink without waiting for my cubesats to be in view of my groundstation...
Have you looked into AWS Ground Station? I don’t know if it’s economical, or has enough locations for 24/7 access, but it might be better than once an orbit.