Elon certainly gets credit for ambitious and “thinking big” but neither of these is the same thing as “economically viable.” Nor does that scale of ambition or vision mean that a big idea will be viable at some point in the future, or at all.
My issue with SPCX is that Internet and phone calls are things that have already been solved - they just feel shitty in the US being hamstrung by legacy regulation and infrastructure. Go to any major city in Asia or Africa and you’ll find a competitive market offering of blazing fast unlimited internet and cellular service for a few dollars a month.
There are places in the world where internet access is lacking but if we really care about human flourishing the issue in those places is more often access to power (and therefore refrigeration, clean/modern cooking technology, nocturnal lighting, etc), which SPCX does nothing to address (I do not consider this to a “fault” of SPCX, just a statement that challenges that assumption / narrative around product market fit)
Fundamentally I question the logic of hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to deliver satellite internet to places where either a) internet is already solved or b) the would-be rural customer base has far larger problems while also lacking the money of SpaceX kit. Especially when we already have a globally scale supply chain to deliver internet and cellular to places at very low cost. A technology being new, does not presuppose that it is actually better.
Also most, or really all, of Elon’s moon shoots have yet to pay off in terms of free market economic viability. Tesla is not a viable company without subsidies. SpaceX is not a viable company without subsidies. Humanoid robotics are simply not economically viable. What does the Boring Company even do and where is the hypertube, or whatever he’s calling it now?
Also, that Musk’s companies are not at the forefront of agitating for broad and rapid American nuclearization, is very telling to me. This is a fundamental base input all of his companies would benefit from massively and that is required for the logical extension of all of his “vision”but he’s happy to sell us all stories while sucking up our tax dollars.
And China IS nuclearizing so I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon is living in Beijing come 2035 once he’s conned America for all he can get.
Replies (4)
A concrete test case for the subsidy claim exists, and it ran the other way. SpaceX won 885.5 million dollars from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to serve rural broadband across 35 states, and the FCC revoked the award in August 2022. SpaceX appealed on the grounds that it had met the requirements as written. The FCC denied that appeal in December 2023 for capability rather than cost, since Starlink had not shown it could deploy a network of that scope, scale and size.
Both readings cut here. The money was real and it was clawed back over delivery, which says less about dependence than about the deadline attached to a subsidy. For satellite internet the sharper test is scheduling: does it arrive at a price a rural household will pay, on time.
I'm not commenting on this whole response, but I do want to say that internet is far from a solved problem in the US outside any major city. If you go more than 30 miles from the city the only internet options are cellular. Yes I'm fully aware we can blame regulation and corruption and collusion of billions of tax dollars and not even slaps on the wrist. But tech and corps move faster than voting and the state ever will.
Starlink is become the only affordable and usable options in suburban to rural US. People I know are paying hundreds of dollars per month for 8mbps peak with 300+ms ping. They can barely stream any modern media, poor voice calls, poor video streams etc.
I knew a guy who ran a fairly large non-profit maybe 6-7 years ago who's entire career was spent brining internet (in any form usable or unusable) to rural areas in the US. Specifically commercial and institutions, schools, libraries, medical, etc. They worked crazy hours just getting internet to a handful of locations on the east coast like the Carolina and Georgia. IIRC their biggest contracts were from Microsoft. I have no way of contacting him now, but Id be surprised if he didn't pivot to Starlink in totality now.
Trabajar por sueño no paga la hipoteca. SPCX pierde dinero por usuario. ¿Cuánta carne podés comprar con esos números?
our network operators (o2, vodafone, t-mobile) share the infrastructure.
our summerhouse has access to one competely overloaded BTS and all 3 only tries to convince you that switching to their services will solve the problem.
doesn't matter how hard I tried to convince them that this is not a carrier issue, but infrastructure.
they all charge me like 600 czk/m for theoretically good enough performance which is however practically not achievable. So you buy a 1.5gb and get 100kbps to 2mbs. usually the lower bound.
switched to starlink for 1000 czk/m it's just no-brainer
