NotMyOldRedditName @ NotMyOldRedditName @lemmy.world

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Starlink can be more direct as well. The further fiber goes the less direct it is. By the time we're talking between continents that builds up a lot.

SMRs should take less than 10 years and the one about to be built will be ready well before that in theory. The problem is they're so new here that even if it works and everything goes according to plan, it's probably a couple decades before it's even begun to scale.

Someone told me they are public some months ago? Like if someone wanted to look up your lemmy DMs they could.

I read the headline expecting to need some ELI5 on how they had some crazy optimizations... but guess it's nothing like that hahaha.

No the systemic problem is real, but I don't think this one independent company has succumbed fully to it yet. If they had, they wouldn't have fixed it as well as they did.

Gwynne Shotwell (in case you don't trust Elon) has stated that Starlink is profitable, and Elon has said it as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUAunM6abeY (Shotwell video)

From a profitability standpoint, it doesn't matter if they have to keep re-launching satellites every 5 years, as long as the business with launching satellites is profitable. If they spend 5 billion doing launches every year and then after all their costs have any profit they can just keep spending 5 billion every year to replenish the network and keep making whatever that profit is.

Their profit gets capped by the amount of bandwidth and customers they can find, but it is predictable as they know their bandwidth and how many customers they can support per launch. By the time they are replenishing the network, if it was simply the same satellites and launch count their growth would begin to plateau, however every 5 years they can upgrade the satellites to the latest tech, so each 5 year cycle they're actually able to increase their service capacity which means more customers and more profit. There's already a big difference in capacity between their v1 and current satellites in orbit in terms of overall bandwidth per launch, and SpaceX keeps increasing their launch cadence.

Further, if Starship is successful, they'll start offering gigabit services to consumers, and their costs would be dramatically reduced as now they have a reusable 1st AND 2nd stage. Starlink is already profitable with a disposable 2nd stage.

Just trying to compare it to fiber+5g completely misses the point that these LEO networks can provide internet to other things as well. Planes, boats, military, government services, remote areas fiber and 5g will never go, like a remote base in Antarctica. In critical setups people even use it as backup internet in fiber connected areas. All of that extra stuff is what helps make it profitable. It probably wouldn't be profitable if it was simply servicing rural communities.

You are right that the upkeep of a fiber+5g system is less, but it costs millions of dollars to support a very small amount of people, so it takes a very long time to recoup that cost, but once the cost is covered, then the profits start rolling in for a very very long time. The problem is the big telco's would rather spend less money to connect more people in urban areas and recoup that cost faster. (edit: On the other hand Starlink has to be able to recoup that cost (and more) in 5 years or the business simply doesn't work)

Starlink isn't meant to compete with this kind of service if it's installed, but the Teclos don't want to install it due to the high upfront costs and very long pay back time.

Edit: Just to be clear, they still have to make back the cost of the original network when they weren't profitable, but as long as they are profitable in its current state, they'll get there. While we don't know the exact cost for the existing network, it's probably around $8 billion dollars as we have rough ideas of launch costs + dish costs. In 2025 they're going to make over 10 billion in revenue. They haven't publicly disclosed how much of that will be profit.

I think if it was really late stage capitalism they wouldn't have fixed it nearly as good as they did and just called it a day.

Those satellites cover the entire orbit. They can offer service to multiple countries for consumers and then provide commercial services for airplanes and marine craft. It makes up for the cost, and I imagine the commercial side is actually a big part of how they've become profitable.

Spending millions to build fiber/5g infrastructure to support a hundred or so people just isn't as appealing, which is why no one wants to do it.

If we could run fiber to every home or close enough that an area can be covered by 5G towers, of course that would be ideal, but it's not profitable and hasn't happened.

The big telcos don't want to do it, and barely/don't do it when given money to offset the costs. Giving them even less money isn't going to speed it up.

In a perfect world, the infrastructure would be nationalized, and it could be built at a loss as a service, but that's not the world we live in.

You say it's a poor idea, but it's the idea that is actually working today, and is profitable today.

It might not be an ideal solution, but I wouldn't call it a poor idea.

Edit: and if the telecos ever get their act together and build the infrastructure, then starlink wouldn't be needed, would become unprofitable, and could wind down.

And yet the big telco's have gotten billions of dollars to do it over the years, don't do it or come nowhere near the requirements, and ask for even more money, meanwhile SpaceX has done it, and it's profitable.

In your analogy, they were on day 0.

They had not been awarded any money, money that was meant to help accelerate the deployment. The 3 year deadline only starts AFTER they would have received the money to do it. The service doesn't work without satellites launched, and the money was to launch said satellites.

No one else had this limitation put on them.

The contract awarded to SpaceX and Starlink under the Trump FCC was rescinded after Biden’s FCC decided that they weren’t meeting the requirements of the contract.

This was the most ridiculous thing ever.

The money was to provide ABC service by XYZ time. Nowhere in the contract did it say you had to provide that service ahead of that deadline, and when they weren't meeting that service on some random test years ahead of that deadline, they said, you're not gonna make it and rescinded it.

No one else had that requirement put on them, and that money was to help accelerate the delivering of said service.

Edit: Had SpaceX been awarded the money, their first deadline would have been sometime in 2025/2026 and they'd have to be serving 40% of the population they said they would.

Well, there are at least 5 million Starlink users around the world, and I'm sure if you ask them they'll say their lives and living conditions have been improved.

SpaceX's cost to launch Starship just got substantially cheaper as well.

They just launched Starship into space for the cost of fuel/minor refurbishment/operational cost instead of the cost of a whole new booster this launch. They reused the booster and 29/33 raptor engines (1 of which has flown 3 times). The only reason it went kaboom was they were doing a very aggressive test increase performance to see if it would fail since their modelling showed it may or may not work. It did not.

SpaceX has designed, launched, landed, and reused an orbital rocket TWICE before anyone has done it once, and yet people just see failure. (And NASA's doesn't really count as it cost just as much to refurbish it as making a new one)

He wants to be the arbiter of what's okay and what's not.

A deep fake of a Democrat doing something terrible - allowed and oh it's satire or comedy, no one would think it's real.

A deep fake of a republican or conservative - offensive and breaks the rules, immediately banned.

Quebec lost 12k in total incentives. They're going to be the outlier with probably everyone down, but Tesla down the most. The differential between others and Tesla will give a better idea of how much impact Elon is.

You get hit by the laser weapon before it fires!

You barely saw it in the news compared to VW as well. Even if an article would bring it up, it'd usually be headlines with VW in some way or another.

It's a shame so many of our choices for cars out there are run by bad people at the top 😞

That wouldn't even need to be malicious, but it definitely could be.

I could see a selling point being, oh ya you can monitor the system and then adjust things for more power, but it'll be dirtier.

And then at that point it's up to the OEM to keep it within regulations, but they could offer different power modes within limits.

Then everyone's like oh this would make cheating so easy!