I've been a pretty harsh critic of Starlink. I don't think it's going to compete well against terrestrial wireless links, specifically 5G FWA. But if they can actually do something interesting with distributed SAR in a large constellation, that's one of those national security breakthroughs that's worth every penny.
The issue with terrestrial wireless links is that you just aren't going to cover every inch of Earth's surface with terrestrial wireless links.
At the same time: coverage comes cheap to Starlink. Which makes it perfect for serving areas no one wants to serve. Such as rural areas, anything outside the largest cities in underdeveloped countries, the open ocean, and so it goes.
Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient and shrinking TAM. The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.
> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient [TAM]
Insufficient for what?
> and shrinking TAM.
Starlink has made quite an impact on planning around servicing commercially non-viable or marginal customers in government and telcos where I am from. It is IMO quite likely that some existing cell towers in remote areas that are very expensive to operate and maintain will eventually be shut down. So that could actually expand the "TAM".
> The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.
No, they also don't want to serve places where it costs more.
Satellites that last 5 years and have un-transparent launch economics are very unlikely to win on cost in any land-based market. If the market is too small or too poor to support FWA, it's not going to contribute significant revenue to Starlink.
Starlink needs tens of millions of subscribers to be valued like a telco.
The US military wants to have option to deploy anywhere in the world, so they also want to have comms everywhere.
The starlink network surely has special features to support US military needs (resiliance, encryption, blocking enemy countries from access, robustness against countermeasures, yaddayadda).
5G fixed wireless makes sense in urban and suburban areas because a single tower can serve many customers. But in rural areas, the number of customers per tower is much lower. To be profitable, the cost to build & maintain the tower must be covered by the customers in the area. Google says a 5G tower can cost anywhere from $150k-$300k, with maintenance costs being around 10% of that per year. In rural areas, the cost is likely on the high end because power and fiber lines will be longer. Each 5G tower has a range of 5ish miles, meaning it can serve an area of 75-80 square miles. A rural county like Ferry County, Washington has 2 households per square mile. So in that county, a tower can serve 150-160 households. Assuming 100% of households are customers, that means each must pay $200-400 per year for the tower to break even after a decade. The actual numbers are fuzzier. Obviously you won't have 100% adoption, but cell towers also serve cell phones.
In comparison, each Starlink satellite costs around $1 million to manufacture and launch, and each satellite lasts at least 5 years. So cost per satellite per year is $200k. They currently have 7,600 satellites serving 7 million customers, meaning on average, each satellite serves almost 1,000 customers. At $200k per satellite per year, each customer needs to pay $200 per year for them to break even. It seems likely that launch costs will go down in the future, meaning this number will decrease.
There's also the complication that each new Starlink satellite improves coverage & bandwidth for the entire globe, while each new 5G tower improves coverage & bandwidth in a specific area. A county may have a population density of 2-4 households per square mile, but many of those households are clustered together. The less dense areas are not likely to be covered by cell towers any time soon, as it's less economically viable. Another disadvantage of cell towers is service failures. A single Starlink satellite failure means a slight degradation of service, while a single cell tower failure means everyone in the region is taken offline. In areas where both services are available, people would be likely to prefer the more reliable option.
I'm quite sure that's what's already going on. LEO is big and empty and pretty boring, but it's also resilient to increasing trends of natural disaster, war, and civil unrest. Having a foothold there matters more and more every day.
Once you cross a certain threshold Starlink is superior to fiber optics. That's because it has the potential to be both lower latency and more direct than terrestrial fiber as the speed of light is faster in the vacuum of space.
At a certain scale you're going to have to make the argument that laying a 10,000KM glass fiber across the ocean for 10-20% more latency is a better value than beaming it around in LEO.
The two places that I'm fairly confident will never get covered by terrestrial wireless are the Pacific ocean and Atlantic ocean. Whether yacht owners, cruise ships, and airplanes are enough to sustain the business by some future time when terrestrial customers churn, who knows, but those customers aren't going to go away any time soon.
For Starlink, maybe. However, I'm sure nuclear submarines operating in the arctic (and the US Navy in general) as well as forward operating US bases, would love and be willing to pay for Starshield to cover everywhere.
Pretty sure they don't have any comms signals and wouldn't connect to that unless absolutely necessary emergent situation. I thought they operate in the dark.
Subs do pop up to make status reports or check-ins. They do operate independently in that command knows what area they patrolling but not exact locations at any given time.
Subs (at least the US ones) also use "strategic" LPI/LPD milsat comms instead of commercial satcom. You don't want your enemy to geolocate your sub fleet whenever they phone home.
Starlink has plenty of good use cases:
- camper van coverage across whole countries/continents
- rural farms/communities
- global coverage for convenience (eg business travellers)
- huge military use
If a giant chunk of the constellation can act as a truly huge antenna, what can you get from that? Super high resolution? Seek/dwell time on a target that is effectively infinite?
No need for the satellite manufacturer to be the same as the launch provider, and there's nothing at all special about short-lived commodity satellites for LEO constellations. SpaceX is going to be cost-effective at building them given their experience with Starlink, but cost isn't typically a major concern of the US govt, and certainly not a higher priority than concerns about the satellite operator frequently suggesting that access to his satellites might be contigent upon his views on a particular conflict.
> but cost isn't typically a major concern of the US govt
tell that to any project that has had their budget slashed or out right canceled because somebody thought their project was a waste of money. every contractor is bidding unless your name is Halliburton. what's the famous astronaut quote about sitting on top of a rocket built by the lowest bidding contractor?
2/3 of Falcon 9 launches are for Starlink. No outside revenue. SpaceX continues to require new investment rounds. So the whole "driving costs down" thing might only work until investors expect some actual free cash flow.
There have been 11 test launches of starship. You might've missed the last one because it didn't do anything new, except shedding parts and exploding less. There's a pretty good chance that program will never beat the cost of Falcon Heavy, or that the technology, like multiple refueling flights to get beyond low Earth orbit, is ever made workable.
The last Starship launch was indeed unspectacular because it didn't try pushing the envelope particularly hard. The previous launches were much more precarious, with many fire balls. But I'm a strong believer in iterative development. It's bad PR when everyone can see every failed prototype, but the "design it once, simulate, and make sure the first prototype flies without issues" boxes you in to conservative design decisions.
Well, if 2/3 of SpaceX's current launches are for Starlink (which deploys satellites in LEO), isn't a two-stage, fully reusable vehicle optimized for LEO deployment the thing SpaceX would want to build?
In terms of "free cash flow" expectations, are you aware that approximately 90% of "space" revenue and profit comes from satellite telecom services, with launch services accounting for about 10% of the mix? SpaceX's development of a telecommunications constellation (Starlink) is highly consistent with historical industry patterns of what makes profit in space.
If SpaceX only had contract money as revenue, they'd be fine but they probably would not be innovating as fast. The investment rounds are to pay for Starlink build-out and Starship.
How could you even think the opposite to be a better option?
The US does suffer from a serious amount of issues politically (I'm 100% convinced that presidential republics are flawed) but it's still an organization with plenty of checks requiring popular mandate.
No single private individual should ever hold this kind of influence imho, not even if it is Gandhi or a saint and Musk is quite the other end of the spectrum.
> if they can actually do something interesting with distributed SAR in a large constellation, that's one of those national security breakthroughs that's worth every penny
...could comprehensive SAR over the Earth's oceans uncloak submerged submarines when they're under power?
