[HN Gopher] Starlink now over 1M user terminals manufactured
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Starlink now over 1M user terminals manufactured
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-09-25 19:33 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| retrocryptid wrote:
| 1m user terminals manufactured and yet we still don't have one 18
| months after paying for it. (Actually, I canceled my order a year
| ago. But my brother, who also paid the full $600 still doesn't
| have his. And they keep delaying it.)
|
| Three years ago we both signed up for a terminal, paid the $100
| deposit and got on the list. Eighteen months ago I got an email
| saying I should log in, pay the additional $500 to have the
| terminal shipped to me. After three months of waiting nothing had
| shown up. There's no way to contact customer support so I had to
| ask a friend who works at SpaceX who I should talk to. Two weeks
| later I got an email from someone I'm guessing is part of their
| support group saying i was in the queue for delivery in late
| 2021. Late 2021 comes and goes and no terminal. I ping that same
| person. Now I'm in the queue for a late 2023 delivery. I ask if I
| can get a refund, they say yes. They credit my card for the
| second $500 charge but not the original $100 which they claim is
| unrefundable.
|
| My brother, the true believer, is still waiting for his terminal
| and his cybertruck.
|
| I know that Elon is a minor deity on hacker news and peeps are
| going to downvote the heck out of this comment, but from my
| perspective, dude's a ripoff artist who survives only because the
| government is paying for his rockets and ev subsidies.
| completelylegit wrote:
| It's been my thinking for a while that the majority of people
| who interface with Musk ventures walk away happy. They must,
| right? Customers are the most important fans.
|
| But if for some reason one of the cogs in the big machine fails
| you - you are screwed. There is no real recovery beyond
| tweeting @ElonMusk on the day once a year has his heart
| reinserted to legally be considered alive.
|
| I'm sorry to hear your situation - mine was different, more
| positive.
|
| The line that separates us is one broken cog. Musk customer
| support is the worst and I'm sorry you can't enjoy what has
| been a life changing product for me.
|
| Hang in there, it (Musk venture customer service) sometimes
| gets better.
| kortilla wrote:
| You're in an oversubscribed area, it's that simple. That's not
| going to change until they either get more sats up there or
| people in your area cancel service.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| If you email me to tell me "pay for your terminal and we'll
| ship it to you within 2 weeks" and instead of shipping it to
| me in two weeks you tell me, "thanks for the cash, we decided
| to send it to you in 18 months," then the problem is not that
| I'm in an oversubscribed area. The problem is SpaceX is I
| competent when it comes to basic logistics or is less than
| truthful regarding its service.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| That's fine but he should get a full refund not a partial
| one.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| You're flipping out like this because you got one downvote?
| Why not do something else for a while if it's upsetting you
| so much?
| zaptrem wrote:
| Musk quote: "We specialize at turning the impossible into
| late."
|
| Personally, I much prefer the latter. I also quite like the
| transparency that lets us all see into the disorganized mess
| of it all long before it's ready (as opposed to the Apple
| strategy of complete silence until announcement day).
| detaro wrote:
| I'm not sure how constantly promising and missing deadlines
| while taking peoples money is "transparency".
| [deleted]
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I think it's more that your comment is needlessly abrasive
| rather than anything else. And I don't think it's a healthy
| mindset to say you thrive on toxicity.
| xnx wrote:
| Would love to see websites start optimizing for low-bandwidth
| high-latency connections. Page sizes have continue to increase
| even with the increase in usage of [typically] slower mobile
| connections, so I'm not holding my breath.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| Maybe HTTP/3 with QUIC would help since there are less round
| trips?
| Stevvo wrote:
| Not something to be proud of when you have less half a million
| customers. Literally half the terminals are e-waste because you
| can't pause service or pass the terminal on to someone else to
| use.
| pmorici wrote:
| Your statement is false. You can both pause service and sell
| the equipment to someone else when you no longer need or want
| it.
| Stevvo wrote:
| OK, this was not possible a year ago, but looks like it is
| now.
| [deleted]
| terafo wrote:
| I wonder how expensive they are to produce now and have they
| managed to break even. Gwen Shotwell told the press that their
| costs were around 1300 with some updated model that was released
| in early 2021, she said that in April. Since then there was
| second gen antenna made, that is, I presume, cheaper to produce.
| And there was leaked email of Musk in late 2021 that was talking
| about need to get v2 sats working so amount of terminals they are
| ordering could make sense(email was about their need to fix
| Raptor 2 production in order to do this). Then they upped their
| prices in March of this year and IMO this could be a sign of
| break even point(not sure though).
| Seanambers wrote:
| If one assumes that all terminals are in use by paying customers
| @ 110[1] per month that gives 1.3 billion a year in income. Plus
| 0,5 billion usd for the hardware.
|
| So far there have been 62 Starlink launches - assuming an average
| price of 67m usd[2] that gives a total launch cost of 4.15
| billion(real launch cost is lower as SpaceX does it at cost.
|
| Life expectancy of the satellites are between 5 - 7 years so
| excluding R&D cost I'd say Starlink is already cashflow positive
| and will generate huge returns in the future. I'm sure there are
| some commercial / military contracts in the mix which alone will
| add a couple of B's to the income number.
|
| 1 & 2- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/spacex-raises-prices-for-
| lau...
| hef19898 wrote:
| You forgot on-going operations, maintenance and so on. Also,
| you assume all terminals are in use and paid for every month.
| Seanambers wrote:
| Yeah, thats why I started with "If one assumes.." :) But good
| point, I did not consider overhead and operational costs in
| this.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| Your numbers are a bit off, it's sort of safe to assume that
| maybe half of terminals are operational - not 100%.
|
| > some commercial / military contracts in the mix
|
| T-Mobile is a massive $$$ for them.
|
| I would assume the availability of worldwide, omnipresent,
| inexpensive low speed broadband is going to open new use-cases
| (and thus revenue streams), that we're not even aware of. It's
| going to be exciting.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| And speeds will creep up, as they did for phone / cable /
| fiber / cell.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Your numbers are a bit off, it's sort of safe to assume
| that maybe half of terminals are operational - not 100%.
|
| Wait, why is this? Do you mean that 50% have been produced
| and not yet sold, or 50% have been sold to people who aren't
| paying for service? I'd assume a much smaller percentage in
| either case.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| OP assumed 100%. I just think that if you're starting above
| 50%, you're already way off.
|
| The real number is actually way lower, probably.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Starlink's prices now take into consideration the buying power
| of each country. For example, it costs ~$55 in Czechia and ~$41
| in Hungary.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Of course SpaceX would use differential pricing.
|
| Once the satellites are up there orbiting, they might as well
| be earning income for as much of each orbit as they can. Zero
| marginal cost to do so. So SpaceX's prices in each market
| will be low enough to be competitive in each market.
|
| The caveat to that is that they're still taking a large loss
| on each user terminal, so they have to make that back over
| the expected life of a contract.
| chippiewill wrote:
| I think the current estimate for the direct cost of reusing a
| Falcon 9 is at most $30m and potentially as low as $15m
| (there's a lot of fixed costs so getting a "true" price for
| this would be hard even if you had access to the same data
| SpaceX does).
| leke wrote:
| Lol, I read the headline as...
|
| Starlink now over. 1M user terminals manufunctioned.
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| Starlink is definitely filling the niche market of providing
| internet connectivity in rural and sparsely populated areas where
| firms with traditional business models with fiber-optics based
| network are not incentivized to provide. The real question is:
| will Starlink become profitable by in turn finding a big enough
| market itself to be able to cover the Billions of dollars of cost
| of manufacturing, launching and maintaining these satellites?
| Elon Musk seems to be open to separate Starlink business from
| SpaceX and list it publicly in future (he tweeted something in
| that regard previously [1]) so it seems like he definitely thinks
| Starlink can become a profitable business in near future.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/spacex-starlink-ipo-elon-
| mus...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Or a great way to get additional SpaceX funding througha
| Starlink spin-off.
| supernovae wrote:
| I thought the move to do midband mobile spectrum with t-mobile
| and offer line of site coverage across 100% of the country was
| a pretty big move. Existing phones can be enabled on this
| spectrum. I also see it being leveraged well for edge services
| where classical 5g towers are just too damn expensive to pout
| out that far
| justapassenger wrote:
| You do realize that in terms of speed it makes 2G look like a
| dream?
|
| It's only good for emergencies.
|
| And anyway it was mostly just a publicity stunt, announcing
| non existing feature (no satellites in orbit are able to do
| it) to preempt Apple by few days, and them rolling out
| working product this year.
| cma wrote:
| "The public tends to respond to precedents and
| superlatives," is one of his main quotes. At some point I
| think he figured out it doesn't even need to be released
| first to get the precedent credit.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Or released at all. Elon does a lot of cool stuff but
| generates even more vaporware.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I hope those dreaming of this consider theres knowledgeable
| engineers and astronomers that think their growth plans are an
| ecological disaster:
| https://twitter.com/mxshift/status/1563561387649298432
|
| (Edited my comment from initially having a more polarizing
| tone.)
| kortilla wrote:
| Sounds a bit daft when you realize that's a drop in the
| bucket compared to the amount of crap deposited by meteors .
| brtkdotse wrote:
| I read an opinion piece somewhere that Starlink is just busy
| work to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but because _gestures
| at Google_ I can't find it. This Twitter thread nakes this
| theory plausible.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| Wasn't that exactly the plan publicized by Musk?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's more that the launches can only be cheap _if_ they are
| launched regularly.
|
| If you aren't launching every week, then the costs of those
| staff start to dominate, and the staff aren't paid less if
| you launch fewer rockets.
| wmf wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to lose money on every rocket launch
| but make it up in volume. It's more accurate to say that
| reusable rockets and a LEO satellite constellation can form
| a mutually-reinforcing flywheel that will lower costs for
| the eventual Martian fleet.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Why can't it be both? It absorbs excess capacity, allowing
| spacex to expand their capacity and achieve economies of
| scale that are unmatched in the modern world of rocketry
| while also setting up an exciting new revenue stream that
| will move them away from relying on government contracts.
| It also helps them win support from republicans as it
| serves rural communities and is an example of business
| innovation that the GOP can support which should help them
| win more govt contracts. Lots of win-win-win opportunities
| here
| modeless wrote:
| Starlink is absolutely a way to keep SpaceX launching
| rockets, but that doesn't make it busywork. It's
| revolutionary and immensely valuable.
|
| And, any theorized environmental impact has to be compared
| to the existing natural process of space dust falling into
| the atmosphere, and measured against the saved costs
| worldwide of wires and cell towers and travel not needed,
| especially as capacity increases in the future. Which is
| practically impossible to measure, but failing to account
| for difficult-to-measure costs is a classic error people
| make when evaluating things like this. And of course
| there's the extra benefits of coverage over oceans and
| poles and to ships and planes that you can't get any other
| way.
| pmorici wrote:
| This guys thread will almost certainly be wrong and look
| stupid in the long term. Pessimistic predictions sound smart
| in the present because with anything new it's hard to know
| how it will play out. Long term though any early issues with
| new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things
| evolve.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I didn't see much of it (I don't have a twitter account),
| but what I did see already had distortions.
|
| "Black carbon": starship uses methane, very little black
| carbon produced.
|
| 5000 tons of aluminum in the atmosphere is trivial compared
| to meteorite dust.
| patmcc wrote:
| >>Long term though any early issues with new technology
| tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve.
|
| I'm absolutely, completely, utterly sure someone said this
| about the first fossil fuel technologies. "Oh, I'm sure
| this 'pollution' thing will be solved."
| rowanG077 wrote:
| And the jury is still out on whether he will be right or
| wrong.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| are you implying that it would have been better if we
| delayed or never used fossil fuels?
| cavisne wrote:
| #candlesforall
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| bilsbie wrote:
| Lobsters pulling each other back into the pot.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I have no idea what this is in reference to, but I love the
| cut of your internet commenting jib.
| tuatoru wrote:
| The usual form of the metaphor is "a crab bucket".
|
| The mental image this is meant to evoke is that if one
| crab attempts to escape the bucket by climbing the side,
| then others will grab it, and their weight will pull it
| back down. So no crab escapes the bucket.
|
| A metaphor for unconstructive criticism or obstruction
| that squashes attempts at betterment.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| If it needs explaining I meant this guy is worried about
| a few 1000 tons of space debris versus the certain
| eventual end of the species if we don't become
| spacefaring.
| naveen99 wrote:
| You don't need to go rural or sparsely populated for low cost
| living... places like india have low cost housing, food,
| internet, and labor. I would think the market for internet in
| sparsely populated areas is by definition negligible.
|
| But, if all cell phones can access starlink in cell phone dead
| zones, that might make it economically viable, as the market
| expands to 5 billion plus users.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Perhaps. But another way to look at it is, now you could live
| _anywhere_. Pardon the cliche but Starlink might a game
| changer, a paradigm shift. I don 't disagree with you per se.
| But in this case the future might be different than the past.
| We'll have to wait and see.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You sound like someone who did many pitches to VC.
|
| "Everyone on earth breathes, so our market for oxygen bars is 8
| billion plus users".
|
| Profitability of dead zones (especially with speeds lower than
| 2G) is not exactly high. There's reason why they're dead zones
| in the first place.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| The profitability of the placing and maintaining physical
| network infrastructure (cell towers etc) in "dead zones" is
| low. The profitability of covering many "dead zones" with a
| single orbit may be different.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| That's some funky reasoning. Most Americans will not move
| overseas to get lower cost of living, so rural areas are a good
| substitute. Likewise, cost is not the only consideration, also
| quiet and privacy.
| tuatoru wrote:
| The world is around 60% urbanized, so there are still 3 billion
| people in rural areas. Quite a stretch to call that number
| negligible.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Related: Starlink Speeds Drop Significantly in the US Amid
| Congestion Woes
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speeds-drop-significantl...
| simondotau wrote:
| Because it is not intended for dense populated areas. The point
| of Starlink is to serve the underserved.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Totally. But revenue and profit expectations don't align with
| it.
| simondotau wrote:
| Underserved areas are like 98% of the earth's surface and
| include some rather wealthy entities like airlines,
| shipping/logistics, mining and resources, cruise liners,
| billionaire's yachts, and of course governments of
| small/island countries.
| justapassenger wrote:
| And all of that adds to maybe 100k customers. What next?
| Especially for a service that has scale bandwidth
| everywhere across the world, it increase it in one spot
| (or add 5G tower there, which you can just do, without
| this whole "10k satellites that have to be replaced every
| few years" business).
|
| I'm not saying there's no market. But it's very limited.
| Much more limited compared to all the hype it's getting.
| I had literally people living in SF telling me how
| they'll use it, to stop dealing with Comcast.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Surprising absolutely no one who understands networking.
|
| The ludicrously high speeds that were praised during the
| limited beta really seem like they were designed to be a bait
| and switch to get people on board with completely unrealistic
| expectations for a full fledged satellite internet service.
| jackmott wrote:
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| It seems to be surprising Starlink; they're still telling
| customers they should expect speeds far above what we're
| getting in practice. Their service description is a fiction.
|
| https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1002-69942-69?r.
| ..
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > they're still telling customers they should expect speeds
| far above what we're getting in practice
|
| That's Musk's MO, isn't it? "Full self driving", Mars by
| 2022...
|
| They certainly do some genuinely cool stuff, but meeting
| promises like this isn't one of them.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I'm a Starlink customer. I regularly get 100+ mbps in Austin,
| TX and have not noticed any speed drops. If anything, it's
| gotten more consistently fast.
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