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So a perfectly normal US tech company, operating in a stock market that totally decoupled from economic reality quite some time ago.
It has a shitty LLM company attached, so that magically makes it one of the most valuable companies in the world!
And they’re going to launch those LLMs into spaaaaaaaace!
No, no, no. You see, it all makes perfect sense because economics is built on the nobility of the rational thinking person. SpaceX is worth $1,500,000,000,000 because they have VTVL rockets! It's the future! Wait, what's that you said? Honda also has VTVL rockets and their market cap is only $35,000,000,000? Also, NASA has VTVL rockets in the 90s but keeps getting their budget cut? Ok, but the xAI has got to be making [searching] negative several billion dollars a quarter. Nevermind- what about Starlink? They're making money. Haha, check and mate. Adding in all the money Starlink has made puts SpaceX at [searching] just over negative one Honda in revenue. That... could be worse. Also, I mean, sure, satellite internet providers have been around for 30 years and each one had a period where the future looked bright before upkeep costs or technical issues hammered them into oblivion, but... mhhh....
Look, it's a very real, very serious, very professional system that is very grounded in reality. This is definitely not a huge scam with several giant red flags of unethical and possibly illegal rule changes to weasel into the NASDAQ-100 to fleece index funds.
I agree with your overall point, but have one quibble:
Pre-Starlink satellite internet's future never looked bright because the latency and upload speeds always sucked. Having a swarm of satellites in a low orbit constantly handing off the connections is genuinely a huge improvement compared to having a few satellites all the way out at geostationary. It's just a shame that it's got the deal-breaker of being run by a nazi.
I agree for the most part, but if instead of giving FCC money to a nazi billionaire scumbag we funded public utility fiber, we would have no need to ruin ground based astronomy and we'd have faster, more stable, lower latency connections. Switching to my county's PUD fiber was huge. I pay $65/mo for gig up and down and get sub 15ms pings in most things.
The FCC should have never given money to any private company, and certainly not one owned by one of the richest scumbags around.
There’s no “instead of”. We already paid for that fiber, and need to start insisting we get what we paid for
… “in addition to” getting low latency high bandwidth satellite. There are many legitimate use cases for satellite internet, including astronomy
While I do see the loss to astronomy, they can filter it out most of the time, they have satellite options, and most importantly there are a lot more internet users than astronomers
The money is gone, because the FCC gave it to private companies. Unless the FCC stops giving grants to private companies, people will have to deal with spotty, unreliable internet that is overpriced. It was very much given to private companies (such as Comcast, Time Warner, and now SpaceX) in much more massive quantities than public fiber. There is definitely at least some "instead of".
I didn't say there weren't legitimate uses, but fiber is more often a better solution and it doesn't fall out of the sky in an unsustainable way. Once the fiber is there, it's there, and unlike LEO satellites, it can be repaired. It also doesn't create an ungodly amount of pollution every time they need to lay some more, no where near as much.
I'd be curious to know what the astronomical use you're thinking of is.
They can't always filter it out. A lot of times the satellite tracks are RIGHT in front of what they're observing. If it weren't a problem, why are astronomers speaking out about it? Space telescope time is priceless, and it takes years to even get the chance to have a window of time where you're able to use it. Have you ever seen how booked up they are? Saying they have satellite options only serves to minimize the actual problem to those that have no idea what that looks like.
The point isn't that there are more internet users than astronomers. The point is that we had a better solution, most of the grants for that solution were given to private companies, and now one of the private companies (owned by a nazi billionaire fuck) is exploiting that for financial gain, while astronomers are catching strays. The point, in the end, is that SpaceX, like other private companies, should have never been given a grant from the FCC, especially when the nazi owner is one of the richest people on the planet.
Promising from a business perspective. Hughesnet was looking at a having a billion customers. SES looked poised to be the internet provider for Europe. Echostar exploded onto the scene. Teledesic, who back in the 90s pioneered the low orbit constellation you mentioned (possibly sent up with NASA's VTVL rockets?), had a business plan that looks eerily similar to Starlink (speaking of, read up on all the people the Muskrat met with who pitched satellite internet, then he ditched them and did it """himself""") and was off to a solid start until dot.com crash wiped its funds and it fizzled. Yes, a lot of this was hype or promises of tech was nowhere near ready- "the future LOOKED bright", not necessarily was.