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Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

corporatejetinvestor.com

131–140 of 233 posts

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#131

I am traveling in Europe currently and got a Saily SIM card - 5g coverage is really good and seems to be expanding fast - a small village I visited 2 years ago that had no cell coverage at all I was getting 250mbps download, faster than than the wired internet at most of the places I was visiting. This prompted me to actually look into Starlink speeds and apparently 5g is generally faster than Starlink... This made m…

Theoretical max speed of 4G/5G are like 5Gbps down/1Gbps up, without going into mmWave. Actual link speeds of Starlink terminals don't seem to be published in the open, but it's at least throttled to up to 310Mbps down/44Mbps up for Priority plans. Looks like it's supposed to reach 1Gbps down with V3 sats, but then again, cellular is like up to 5Gbps yesterday, at least in the spec.

It's just that Starlink being a new thing and with zero users tended to be less congested, hence it tended to do better in somewhat of an unfair comparison in a remote cabin side by side against an LTE equipment. It was NEVER faster in theory compared to terrestrial cellular.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#132
post #65

>SpaceX has also increased the price of its Starlink Aviation equipment to $200,000 per business aircraft, up from $145,000 last year. ouch.

Won't someone think of the aviators!!

Brand-new Cessna planes were selling for roughly 2x the US median annual income in the 1960s. Today that number is at around 5.5x.

I've always wanted to fly my wife & kids in a plane, but I just can't afford a high-maintenance luxury asset that costs as much as a house, and fuel costs are prohibitive as well.

so yeah, if someone could mass-manufacture an FAA MOSAIC-certified light-sport aircraft with >2 seats, that could bring the cost of fractional ownership and once-every-two-months weekend use down to my level. And if small local air strips could stop closing too, that'd be great.

---

All to say, aviation used to be semi-reachable as a middle class hobby for family people. Now, the only way to get a family in the air for people like me is to spend years building a kit plane from scratch or fixing up a cheap broken plane.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What harm are you worried about coming to in the middle of a national forest that having the internet could possibly save you from? You're in a van, for heaven's sakes. You can roll up the windows, lock the doors, and/or drive off from most dangers save a breakdown or a wildfire, and the internet won't save you from a wildfire. I've tent camped a lot on forest service land (and BLM land) both out west and in the east…

i can think of 1000 reasons to need to call for help. heck, two months ago i fell on my skateboard and shattered my femur at the hip. it sure was nice to be able to call 911 and have someone come pick me up given that i couldn't drive anywhere. my van was parked right at the skatepark and there was no way i was going to drive. obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a ma…

> obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a major injury in a remote location.

It isn't out of the question to have a major injury in a remote location.

But the fundamental problem would be being on your own in a remote location, not being unable to call 911.

Yes in your skating example, you "only" fell and shattered your femur.

But what if you fell and hit your head or landed and hit your spine ?

Or what if you had a heart attack ?

You would not be in a position to call 911 then, would you.

Being on your own in a remote location is not a risk problem that you can solve with any amount of technology.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#134
post #122
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory problems are doing the heavy lifting. Sure power is "free", if you can launch it, station keep it and cool it and if the data services are useful at the modem latencies of geosync and lunar orbits. But if datacenter projects can't be built/powered fast enough due to permitting, this is an expensive workaround.

The orbits are lower than that. Not that it changes the point.

Also, the lifetime of the panels on the ground is longer by about the same multiple as the power advantage of going to space, so if you're limited by the size of your photovoltaic factory, there's no reason to go to space.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can think of 1000 reasons to need to call for help. heck, two months ago i fell on my skateboard and shattered my femur at the hip. it sure was nice to be able to call 911 and have someone come pick me up given that i couldn't drive anywhere. my van was parked right at the skatepark and there was no way i was going to drive. obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a ma…

> obviously not skating in a national park, but it isn't out of the question to not have a major injury in a remote location. It isn't out of the question to have a major injury in a remote location. But the fundamental problem would be being on your own in a remote location, not being unable to call 911. Yes in your skating example, you "only" fell and shattered your femur. But what if you fell and hit your head or…

> You would not be in a position to call 911 then, would you.

I never said anything about being alone.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#136
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need a specialized amphibious vehicle to get to your shack in the woods, it's not anti-consumer if it costs you more than a Mitsubishi Mirage.

A few days ago people were telling me the Starlink was brilliant because it gave small African villages with no mains electricity an internet connection to share. This kind of behaviour does rather dampen the value proposition for such people.

Do you think tech bros who voluntarily choose to live in the woods should pay the same subsidized price as a rural African schoolhouse? Equity and all that.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What harm are you worried about coming to in the middle of a national forest that having the internet could possibly save you from? You're in a van, for heaven's sakes. You can roll up the windows, lock the doors, and/or drive off from most dangers save a breakdown or a wildfire, and the internet won't save you from a wildfire. I've tent camped a lot on forest service land (and BLM land) both out west and in the east…

You really can't think of ANY situations that might be helped with instant communication with the outside world? If that's true, please don't go into national forests or BLMs anymore, I don't want my taxes to be spent looking for your body.

I won't suggest that you can't find situation where having Starlink wouldn't be nice, but as another comment suggests: It's increasingly a niche product. Starlink may not be able to survive on being a product that provides internet access for campers and rural populations. That market might not be large enough to sustain the Starlink satellite fleet. There are entire countries where even to most remote areas have at least 2G cell service and fiber is frequently available even out in the country side.

Defence contracts are more likely than anything to be what keeps the satellites in orbit.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#138
post #2

Hard to not look at the crazy valuation of SpaceX and not see a correlation. At some point, something's gotta give.

Unfortunately, their valuation has almost nothing to do with starlink revenues. It’s almost entirely speculative oribital data centers that have not been invented yet. They could double their starlink revenues and it would have no impact on the valuation.

[dead]

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#139
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also all the flagship phones have emergency satellite connections now, so it's not even the emergency bit, it's just about having full broadband internet

powered by... starlink. https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service

Apple's SOS features are going to go to AmazonLEO and are currently globalstar. Google's SOS goes to a geosync orbit. This is some t-mobile feature.

Re: Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k

#140

Gotta pay the massive coupons on SpaceX's bonds, whose yields are heading towards junk territory: https://www.ft.com/content/3a023b95-66c3-41e1-b0ce-df752a499... Having just flown some flights with Starlink internet connection, I really love the service, it's just amazing. But the rugpull here might actually break through the distortion field of Musk. It's really interesting to compare the reality distortion fields o…

At the end of the day, there's the people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same. They like to be pushed, they love solving hard problems, hate bureaucracy, and will find leaders that can accommodate all that. Elon provides that the same as Steve did.

> people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same

These parts are likely pushing the best minds away from Musk these days. Not sure when that turned, perhaps Cybertruck?

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