âThe fact that one of the so-called international operators is part of its corporate structure suggests an abuse of legal personality, as it could choose not to comply with Brazilian court orders without suffering any consequences, covered by its representative in Brazil." In a petition sent to the judge, lawyers for the Brazilian branch of the platform controlled by businessman Elon Musk argued that the office has âno capacity to interfere in the administration and operation of the platform, nor authority to make decisions regarding compliance with judicial orders in this regard.â
Does that sound like theyâre considering piercing the corporate veil and holding him personally responsible?
Maybe. But I donât think they will have the guts to do something so bold.
The Barzilian right-wing couldnât be more happy. They are trying to spread the news that we are living under a dictatorship worse than Eastern Germany or Soviet Union.
Muskâs Undisclosed Starlink Costs Undercut Profitability Claims
SpaceX celebrates the satellite business as a money-making venture fueling a quest to launch rockets and reach Mars.
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/Mm6Ht
What I find interesting about this article that it contains a lot of the problems with Starlink and SpaceX, but doesnât really point all of them out.
Starlinkâs raison dâĂȘtre is to create/inflate a launch market for SpaceX; a market that otherwise would be significantly smaller or wouldnât even exist.
This is the good old left pocket - right pocket game. Plus, apparently, creative accounting:
"People familiar with the finances of [Starlink] [âŠ] describe the companyâs accounting as âmore of an art than a scienceâ and say itâs not actually profitable based on an operational and ongoing basis."
Enron, anyone? Too bad Arthur Andersen isnât around anymore.
So Starlink has 2.6 million customers.
Per their own current price sheet (all prices in âŹ, so mind the commas and decimal points being used as god intended, my good people, except for version numbers, because reasons)
the hardware costs between âŹ225 and âŹ2.843, depending on model, use cases (stationary/mobile) and capabilities.
Data plans range from âŹ50/month to âŹ5.608/month. More money buys priority when connections are bad.
Now, Iâm not going to make a detailed study here because a) I canât be asked and b) Iâd have to have proprietary data for that anyway.
But letâs say the users paid on average âŹ500 for the hardware, and pay an average of âŹ200/month for using it. Just to get a general idea.
Starlink started in 2020 and has been operating globally since 2023 [source: Jimbopedia].
Thatâs âŹ1.300.000.000 from the hardware in total over three years.
Thatâs âŹ520.000.000 from monthly subscriptions. What with not starting out globally and building up the customer base, letâs say this amounts to âŹ1.200.000.000 over three years to get a nice, round number: âŹ2.5 billion revenue for 2020 to 2023.
This is supposed to pay for 5.089 satellites put in orbit in 128 launches (using Starlink Insiderâs launch statistics, not counting the launches in 2019 and 2024).
Numbers of Starlinkâs internal costs are hard to come by, obviously.
Cost per unit goes down as production numbers go up, and all that. From what I have found (Jimbopedia, Starlink Insider, others; the problem is that most sources cite each other) so far, Iâd say itâs not totally unreasonable that I ass u me it costs Starlink in the region of
âŹ1.000 to build a standard ground module = âŹ2.600.000.000 and
âŹ300.000 to build a satellite = âŹ1.526.700.000,
Thatâs âŹ4.2 billion just for the hardware, without the launch cost.
But then Starlink is a SpaceX company; so SpaceX sort of pays itself wich generates cash flow in the books, which looks good.
[tangent]
By the way, the satellites are getting larger. Starlink could launch up to 60 of v1.0 in one go.
This dropped first to around 50 (46 to, once, 56) for v1.5, and then to typically 22 for the v2.0 mini.
This is why Rocket Boy is so determined to build Starship, it would significantly reduce the launch numbers. This is also Starshipâs problem, because putting constellations into LEO is practically all it can do efficiently. Or at all, letâs see where the iterative development end up.
Which Iâd say is also the reason why SpaceX massively underbid the competition to get the HLS contract by offering to split the bill with NASA. (Not that any of the other landers would have been a better choice from a technical standpoint. Itâs a fucking mess.) Because now NASA has no choice but to help out on Starship to make it work reliably if they donât want to postpone a crewed Moon landing into the next decade. Which would kill the programme.
[/tangent]
Shotwellâs blurb âthereâs eight billion potential customers for Starlinkâ doesnât even deserve a comment, really.
Starlink isnât profitable right now, and it would need a lot more customers to ever become profitable. Which I canât see. Yes, there are legit use cases for satellite links. Basically everywhere where you canât string fibre to or put up a cell tower. The problem doing this with Starlink is its design which can only guarantee a continuous connection by using a lot of satellites. Most of which would most of the time not be where customers in remote and/or mobile location could actually use them. This means a massive unprofitable overhead.
What I can see is Starlink going the classic defence contractor route; they already put stuff into orbit for the NRO.
Picking up the tangent somewhatâŠ
âAs SpaceX tells it, thereâs a limit to how much money rocket launches can make. Musk is counting on the rapidly growing satellite business to bankroll the billionaireâs lifelong ambition to reach Mars. According to some investors, Starlink accounts for more than half of SpaceXâs 2024 revenue.â doesnât bode well for SpaceX.
At the very least it makes be wonder if SpaceX is profitable at this point without the creative accounting. The CFO has a habit of being a bit vague and evasive.
SpaceX did well so far, especially with Falcon, because it entered an existing launch market and offered something actual customers wanted at an interesting price point.
This market is, as stated above, limited.
Growing it, somewhat artificially, is a risky proposition.
Fist, satellite communications is somewhat niche, there arenât that many end users whoâd actually need it. Itâd have to be cheaper than dirt cheap to get âbillions of customersâ.
Second, there are other companies that build satellites and/or rockets. Who would like to claw back market share from SpaceX and expand it. (Oddly enough, pretty much everybody making the case for mega constellations or geostationary clusters or whatever is, one way or another, connected to companies that make satellites and/or rockets.)
Reusable rockets arenât a guarantee per se to be cheaper, too. Reusability slaps on another level of complexity (cost and time to develop it), increases the weight, lowers the performance, is more expensive to build and has turnaround times to be considered. To operate resuables cheaper than optimised expendables youâll have to fly a lot of them all the time. And for that youâll need a market that demands a lot of launches all the time. And this is where the dog is chasing its own tail.
As a reminder: the cost per [non-SI weight unit] to put stuff into orbit that NASA used to sell at least the Shuttle on the Nixon administration were based on the totally legit assumption that every orbiter in the whole fleet would launch at least once per week, all year round, for ever and ever. Building one space station after the other and whatnot. That sort of launch cadence didnât happen then, and it wonât happen anytime soon either.
Edits: tyops, missing words, grammar.
I wonder what could be behind this freedom paladin?
Paladin? I donât think thatâs his character class.
Thereâs a guy you want designing and manufacturing your Mars habitat.
Send up some more colonists! And make sure they bring a ton of FlexSeal.
They make it up by charging exorbitant rates on the Ukraine - which are passed along to Uncle Sam.
With Musk more-or-less actively bragging about being a Russian asset, betraying his adopted countryâs allies, and overall being a crap person, is the defense industry really going to keep trusting him with their business? âComrade Musk, ensure this one little bug gets attached to each satellite, and the Starlink does not become âThe Musk Kessler Syndrome,â da? Spasibo.â
If he wasnât born in South Africa he could (and probably would) run for president and Iâd give him better odds than Trump.
Workers at Elon Muskâs Boring Co. accidentally dug too close to a supporting column of the Las Vegas monorail last year, forcing officials to briefly halt service
Iâd give Ronald Reaganâs corpse better odds if he were running, the two biggest threats to democracy currently are voter supression and apathy, two things the GOP loves and encourages.
A remake of Paint Your Wagon, with Musk as the bull?
The self-made Techno Messiah billionaire from a Heinlein novel?
Read the room. 45%+ easily.
That film has some of Clint Eastwoodâs best work in it.
