The slap fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has highlighted the absurdity of keeping so much of our space program and satellite internet infrastructure in the hands of a single oligarch.
SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and operator…
It’s definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.
That said, they’re high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn’t want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.
At the time it looked like one of the main reasons to launch Starlink was to provide SpaceX with a new market, much larger than the usual space launching stuff. Also this meant Felon could get subsidies through 2 different companies.
I mean the reason for starlink was that they could, and they could do it for cheaper than anyone else because they would be launching at cost.
Also, falcon doesn’t really get subsidies for launching. SpaceX got a grant for the rural broadband infrastructure thing, but that’s like a one time thing, it doesn’t really pay for ongoing launches.
Who’s buying satellites?
SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and operator…
It’s definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.
That said, they’re high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn’t want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.
Isn’t that part of the grift?
At the time it looked like one of the main reasons to launch Starlink was to provide SpaceX with a new market, much larger than the usual space launching stuff. Also this meant Felon could get subsidies through 2 different companies.
Isn’t what?
I mean the reason for starlink was that they could, and they could do it for cheaper than anyone else because they would be launching at cost.
Also, falcon doesn’t really get subsidies for launching. SpaceX got a grant for the rural broadband infrastructure thing, but that’s like a one time thing, it doesn’t really pay for ongoing launches.