Live data from Hacker News

Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

twitter.com

161–170 of 205 posts

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#161
post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

Conversely, I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk in the other direction. Those who jump to defend him. Those who put all his lies, deception, xenophobia, and record of publicly humiliating himself.

I'll never take anything he says at face value because anything that's ever come out of his mouth is posturing.

I'm frankly tired of billionaire windbags like him. I have no idea how someone could be a fan of his.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timely! Now do the courts (or have those been perfect over the decades?) Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.

Jury is mob-based justice. If mobs likes you, then you are basically immune to consequences as illustrated by the link above.

You ignored my statements. Evaluate the courts.

We're all waiting on the edge of our seats to know what your ideal judicial system is.

Btw you've never had jury duty? Did you vote in a mob form? I sure hope not. I haven't.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#163
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all). Why would people most probably been positively impacted by him? He seems to constantly have knee-jerk reactions to things happening around him, and his companies seems to frequently have issues with overworking employees.

2 examples: He's accelerated the switch to electric cars. He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

There's not evidence for that. In fact, by being willing to lose so much money on each car Tesla likely discouraged the broader industry from investing in electric cars for many years. Tesla may have, in fact, made the switch to electric cars slower than it otherwise would have been.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#164
post #98
post #6

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

The "trick" here is that he is likely speaking of operational cashflows (i.e. the 'correct' metric for low CAPEX companies). The rub, of course, is that most of the cost for something like Starlink is designing, building, and launching the satellites, which shows up in investing cashflows. Put differently, if the company was actually generating more cash than it consumes on all levels, start the IPO right now and Spa…

SpaceX will never have an IPO because being publicly traded means ceding a certain degree of control. The founders' goal is to make life multiplanetary, and the typical goal of rando shareholders is to pump up the stock price. They don't want to have to deal with the latter. They may at some point spin off Starlink and IPO that, but not until it's fully deployed and not heavily dependent on frequent, super cheap, low bureaucratic friction launch services from SpaceX.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's just when I see Facebook, Google, etc mentioned in a headline, I see rational conversation about the topic, but when I see a Musk company mentioned in a headline, I already know what the comments are going to look like.

Do you assign any responsibility for that to Elon? Compared to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, etc, Elon engages in far more incendiary rhetoric every day. He's chosen to become an outspoken public figure, criticism comes with the territory. Especially when it is tribal politics.

Sure, he has full responsibility for it and he seems to have embraced it but while Elon is outspoken, the other big tech CEOs are just as engaged in politics, they are just more effective and quiet about it which to me is much more insidious. I'm sure they love watching Elon get all the attention, it takes the pressure off of them. As they influence policy, have armies of attorneys and lobbyists, buy senators, etc. At this point they are more powerful than our own government and our representatives are useless except for the rare virtue signal about keeping big tech accountable. I don't put Elon or any of his companies in that category when it comes to power, so he is less of a threat in my opinion. But I get it, HN is definitely a place where the tribal outrage comes out of the woodwork, it's likely because of the demographic here is of people that mostly benefit from the technocratic system so they see Elon as a threat to that or something.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-funding-secur...

Then a jury ruled in Musk's favor, right? https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit... The end result is left out every time the "court finds" articles are linked. The jury found the opposite, which is what actually matters.

The jury finding was that he was not personally liable for investor losses, not that his tweet was in fact accurate.

The facts are not in dispute here. He tweeted "funding secured" and funding was not secured. He announced intentions to take it private at a given price, which did not happen.

He misrepresented the financial state of his company.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jury is mob-based justice. If mobs likes you, then you are basically immune to consequences as illustrated by the link above.

You ignored my statements. Evaluate the courts. We're all waiting on the edge of our seats to know what your ideal judicial system is. Btw you've never had jury duty? Did you vote in a mob form? I sure hope not. I haven't.

Anything else than jury mob rule is better judical system.

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignored my statements. Evaluate the courts. We're all waiting on the edge of our seats to know what your ideal judicial system is. Btw you've never had jury duty? Did you vote in a mob form? I sure hope not. I haven't.

Anything else than jury mob rule is better judical system.

You still didn't answer the questions.

No jury I've been on has functioned that way. Have you acted that way?

If you don't support a system of a jury of your peers determining your guilt, what do you support?

Re: Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

#170

I read an analysis by Morgan Stanley that it costs $40B to launch the entire constellation. That doesn't include the cost of the satellite, just the launches. According to SpaceX their satellites last 5 years. That means Starlink must make, at minimum, $8B/year to maintain the constellation. `$8B/yr / ($200/mo * 12 mo) = 3.33 Million users` 3.3 million users paying $200/mo in order to break even. The starshield contr…

That's a number wrong by an order of magnitude - there's been 118 starlink launches (with many of those being rideshares).

Falcon 9 costs 67 million for external customers, for internal use the cost will likely be lower. Let's say 50. 50 * 118 gives us a HIGH estimate of 5.6 billion, but i'd expect it to be much closer to 3-4 b.

Satellites are relatively cheap. Total cost below 10b, certainly not 40b

Post reply on HN