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Starlink Direct to Cell

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Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#431

Post by Retric »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #244
Retric wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean and unlimited on waterways, higher demand is cheaper per GB ex: 1TB for 1,000$/month. https://www.starlink.com/boats Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute allowing a 24/7 conversion for for a full month for 250$, or more realistically mostly sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls. The actual hardware installation is rela…

Is the reason that Starlink charges so much more for boats is low competition? Or is there something obviously much more complex / expensive about beaming gigs of data from space over the ocean vs land? I don't write this post with any spite; I am genuinely curious.

Starlink is normally a single hop from a home to a satellite and then down to a base station hooked up to fiber. To work over the ocean you pass messages between satellites potentially several hops and then eventually down to a base station, but that’s inherently constrained as with all mess topologies you get far less bandwidth than initially seems possible.

So in part it’s overhead to deal with inefficiencies and in part it’s a limited customer base for a lot of hardware, but it’s also just what the market will bare.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#433

Post by lmm »

piyh wrote: post #292
nehal3m wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you Elon? Also monopolies are never awesome.

Honest question because it's something I've internally debated over. Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?

Would we have had a single lab that became famous for so many things? No. Would we have got thousands of smaller labs that added up to more innovation? Maybe.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#434

Post by fasteddie31003 »

sd8f9iu wrote: post #411
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'd recommend you understand the etymology of the word Nazi. The Nazi acronym is NSDAP, which stands for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Elon is far from a socialist just the opposite IMO. If you don't like him stop being lazy and ignorant and better describe why you don't like him. I'm sick of lazy rhetoric like this.

The Nazi party was not socialist, it was just in the name. The Nazi party had a leftist socialist wing, which was expunged on the Night of Long Knives. Hitler himself generally stayed above such economic debates, and instead promised a sort of hazy race-based utopia that had elements of capitalism and socialism. Once the Nazis came to power, they did not try to seize private ownership of the means of production, but…

Eliminating a government regulation (EV tax credit) is the opposite of regulatory capture.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#435

Post by nickfromseattle »

mmaunder wrote: post #283

Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink. I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and m…

Yes, being able to manufacturer and deploy your satellite services at cost is an insurmountable competitive advantage. There is one other player in this space, Rocket Lab. They are 5-10 years behind SpaceX, but are the #2 launched rocket in the USA and 2/3rds of their revenue is from satellite manufacturing. I think something like 25-50% of the non-SpaceX satellites in-operation have a Rocket Lab logo somewhere on the craft. The next step in their vertical integration plan is to launch their own constellation and provide some sort of space-based service. Although it's several years away and pending the scale-up of their medium launch vehicle test flying next year.

Their CEO has come to the same conclusion as you. The major space companies of the future have to be vertically integrated if they want to compete. The founder has a pretty cool story. From New Zealand. Built a rocket bike and a rocket pack, but didn't go to college. Being a foreign national without traditional education meant he couldn't work in the space sector due ITAR. So he started Rocket Lab in 2006.

Their small lift vehicle (300kg) was the fastest vehicle from first orbit to 50 orbital launches, and tracking to be the fastest to hit 100 orbital launches. Their medium lift vehicle (13,000kg), if it makes orbit next year, will become the most capital efficient ($300m spent) MLV developed, and the fastest MLV to go from announcement to orbit (5ish years).

After Rocket Lab and SpaceX, the competition is pretty thin. Blue Origin is launching their HLV (40,000kg) New Glenn for the first time in early 2025 and there are a couple of startup and traditional defense contractor projects, but all unproven.

SpaceX is so insanely far ahead of everyone else. They will hit 100+ launches in 2024, Rocket Lab is at 15ish with their 300kg vehicle, and planning to scale their 13,000kg vehicle to 3 launches in 2026, 5 in 2027 and 7 in 2028. New Glenn will be on a similar ramp.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#436

Post by starspangled »

ryandrake wrote: post #419
nordsieck wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the past this at-cost dealing would have been considered monopolistic enough to force divestment I guess we'll see what happens. As with most things monopoly related, the critical fight is over how to appropriately define the market. Presumably SpaceX would argue that Starlink is an ISP and that it just happens to use satellites to deliver its service. And if that doesn't work, then it's a satellite internet pro…

For obvious reasons I think it's pretty safe to say we can count on at least the next four years of zero regulation or government scrutiny of any company Musk is involved in, monopoly-related or otherwise.

You believe the FAA, FCC, OHSA, EPA, FDA, etc., will cease to regulate SpaceX, Tesla, Nuralink operations? That seems pretty outlandish.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#438

Post by lmm »

dyauspitr wrote: post #315
mmaunder wrote: post #283

Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink. I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and m…

It’s awesome but also worrying. Elon is a political timebomb. I wouldn’t put it past him to selectively deny people usage based on political alignment, sex etc. At least for now there are much worse geosynchronous competitors, but some future state where one doesn’t exist is worrying.

Musk is at least a named individual, somewhat accountable for his decisions. Yes him having the ability to cut people off is worrying, but I'm less worried about him doing it than e.g. the Internet Watch Foundation, or whoever cut off Kiwi Farms (where we still don't really know who's actually responsible).

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#439

Post by sd8f9iu »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #429
sd8f9iu wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nazi party was not socialist, it was just in the name. The Nazi party had a leftist socialist wing, which was expunged on the Night of Long Knives. Hitler himself generally stayed above such economic debates, and instead promised a sort of hazy race-based utopia that had elements of capitalism and socialism. Once the Nazis came to power, they did not try to seize private ownership of the means of production, but…

Volkswagen was created by the Nazis. It translates to "People's Car". It sounds pretty Socialist to me.

Volkswagen was one small part of the Nazi's policy. It ultimately didn't deliver a single car to the users of its government-endorsed savings scheme, but instead was used for military production. You know what other companies have heavily relied on billions of dollars of government subsidies and military contracts? https://archive.is/lVZ3f

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#440

Post by godelski »

mmaunder wrote: post #283

Vertical integration by Starlink of the cheapest launch capability in the world (by far) is the reason there are no competitors, and there will be no competitors. The pace of innovation at SpaceX is not THE reason - it’s an additional reason that no one has a snowballs chance in hell of ever catching Starlink. I’ve seen talk of competitor satellite networks or a possible competitor emerging. Folks it’s game set and m…

You have it reversed. It’s fair, it’s hard to tell if you haven’t worked in the launch industry. But drive out to Mojave and go talk to the dozens of companies out there. Many of them have reusable designs. But also if you look at the financials, I think many would laugh at the funding many of these companies get when you compare to Silicon Valley. Clear vaporware frequently gets bigger investing.

The problem with launch companies is that you have nothing to launch. It’s a vicious coupled system, because it also means you can’t bring prices down to increase the number of launches. You need scale to bring prices down. You can’t implement the Silicon Valley model of run all your competitors (ULA) without dumping 10x down the drain compared to your Uber or Netflix.

So the reason it works is because SpaceX is its own customer. You are bootstrapping. The satellite internet idea isn’t even new. I was pitching this to a company I worked for in the early 2010’s (inspired by the brand new planet labs), but what helped was I even found white papers by Qualcomm and others that clearly had the exact same idea. My boss dismissed it because the failures of Celestri, Teledesic, Iridium, and Globealstar. I’m sure this is why I was able to find those white papers too, and very clearly so did SpaceX.

The difference here is that SpaceX is a launch company AND has the funding of a billionaire that is willing to take the risk [0].

Imo, the real question is who pitched Kuiper and did they do it before Starlink? It’s a good and obvious idea, so I’d put money down that someone did. I’m pretty sure they’re fucked now as there’s legitimate reasons you want LEO satellite mega constellation to be handled by a monopoly. You just can’t have a dozen of those companies running around.

[0] side rant: why the fuck are more billionaires not willing to take big risks. Especially those with at least a billion liquidated from their stock. What’s the point of that money? You’re so wealthy it’s effectively impossible to go broke. The real exception is if your wealth is mostly paper and you’re defrauding people. At 10 billion it basically will not happen even then. If you can stash (not even) 50 million, you never have to work ever again to live in high luxury.

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