SpaceX mission control lost contact with the rocket after it leaked fuel and spun out of control, despite already flying halfway around the world
SpaceX mission control lost contact with its latest Starship rocket on Tuesday, as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled re-entry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean, officials said.
“Just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago. So that brings an end to the ninth flight test,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot during a live feed.
Starship, the futuristic rocket on which Elon Musk’s ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, roared into space from Texas on its ninth uncrewed test launch and flew further than the last two attempts that ended in explosive failure.
The government is legally allowed to make that judgement. Satellite internet is a tremendously dumb way to provide rural internet.
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.
This is an argument for giving them less money not spacex more. A huge swarm of LEO comsats that must be constantly replaced is a poor idea compared to fiber + 5G towers for most environments. The latter is much much cheaper.
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.
If running fiber to everyone for 5g towers is unprofitable, the much more expensive satellite arrays that would be necessary for the same level of coverage don’t sound like a better option.
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.
They’re not profitable yet, though. They’re already raising prices beyond what you would need to expand 5g and they’ll need to do much more to keep sending up new satellites as they die off.
Something no one seems to be acknowledging is the upkeep for a 5g setup would be significantly less than putting up new satellite constellations every few years.
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.