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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   28046 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-probes-fcc-decision-to-revoke-starlink-funds/

“In 2020, the FCC awarded SpaceX’s Starlink $885.5 million through RDOF. Starlink ‘is the world’s first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver a broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls’ and more. On August 10, 2022, the FCC rejected Starlink’s long-form application to receive funding through RDOF on the basis that the FCC ‘cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements,’” Chairman Comer wrote.

“In December 2023, the Commission reaffirmed its decision to deny the award to Starlink. More specifically, the FCC again ‘determined that Starlink failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.’ Notably, however, FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington have spoken against the Commission’s decision […] Commissioner Carr has argued that the FCC is now among a ‘growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses.’ The FCC must ground its decision-making in law and not politics,” Chairman Comer continued.

Not sure if I have much to add, I didn't see anyone talk about this, but may have missed it.

I understand that a lot of people have it out for Musk, but this seems blatantly partisan and all culture war. Is there a not-culture war aspect to this? $885 million seems like small potatoes compared to all the other numbers that have been floated around lately. I have a hard time strong-manning the decision to not release the funds. It seems like another pebble in the bucket of reasons why Musk, for the sake of his ambitions and livelihood has to support Trump. People can get mad about it, but what else is the dude supposed to do with the power of the Dems fully against him?

‘cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements

I think basic Bayes would clear things up and remove political bias. Not delivering promised products is undoubtedly a common pattern for Musk (FSD 10 years ago, humans on Mars by now, rapidly (they said 24 hrs) reusable rockets, roadster 2, a 40k cybertruck with 500mi range, fleet of robo taxis 5 years ago). SpaceX took 4.5B in govt money for a human moon landing system to be delivered in the next few months, but they are still at or near step 1 of the Gantt chart. You get the idea.

So the strong man is that Musk frequently overpromises and underdelivers (which is not mutually exclusive of all his fantastic delivered successes). So, knowing nothing, the claim "starlink is not delivering what is promised" is a good prior. I know nothing about starlink. In fact I assumed starlink was fine and useful given its role in Ukraine and the reviews I've seen. However, this is why Baysian reasoning is so useful. Not delivering on promises is good prior and a workable strong man.

I don't want bureaucrats spitefully revoking contracts because Musk tweets too much.

I also don't want my tax dollars given to StarLink. They are a large private for-profit venture and are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost. If they don't meet the criteria for this award, then don't give them this award. Similarly don't give hundreds of millions of my tax dollars to Iridium, Kuiper, Blue Ring or the other satellite companies. Make government contracts with them of course. Pay for services provided. But don't just 'award' only one of them with a money spigot regardless of their ability to deliver promised services.

I also don't want my tax dollars given to StarLink. They are a large private for-profit venture and are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost.

The purpose of the program is to help deliver broadband to areas that don't have it.

Whatever you think about the program itself, I can't stand the practice, seemingly universal now, where everything program has to be about every goal.

Why does a small fledgling industry ne a boost from the government? Isn't that what venture capital is for?

Except in super-hot industries like AI, VC checks are too small for a lot of world-of-atoms stuff.

That just proves my point. They think those kinds of investments are worthwhile in some areas but not in others, so why should the government go in and invest money in areas professional investors have decided are not worthwhile?

I'm not advocating for it. But some people would. I'm saying Starlink and satellite internet aren't that and don't need my tax dollars.

I agree but if you are going to dole out contracts it can’t be partisan which it seems here clearly to be. Starlink is the only game in town for the most part and is much closer to completing their contract compared to the others but the FCC is crystal balling it.

I think this is the fruit of the deep state long since being removed from any serious accountability for its decision making. It is now so partisan and blatantly so that a company that qualifies for funding doesn’t get it because of who runs it. An agency held to account for results would at least fear the wrath of elected officials for having done so. The FCC has so much protection from the official state that it can punish Musk’s company for his public crime think.

government should incentivize social goods. which is what RDOF is about.

They should subsidize public goods, which it is not.

are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost

SpaceX was much smaller 4 years ago in 2020. The year before they “only” had 13 launches, instead of the 100 launches per year now, and actually it was a struggle for them to finance Starlink and Starship at the same time and maybe this money would have accelerated both.

I am not arguing for subsidies, but we/they got a bit lucky that it still worked out ok.

not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost.

RDOF was supposed to be a boost for rural people with no broadband. It wasn't a handout to spacex, it was a handout to rural people.

SpaceX provides a valuable service. They're not asking for (nor do they need) a handout.

I don't want tax dollars given to Starlink, or anyone else, to subsidize rural broadband. But if we're going to have such an award, I'd rather not it be given out or not according to how much the various players suck up to the party in power. Especially when the quid-pro-quo isn't just campaign funds and endorsements but censoring the opposition.

I don't want tax dollars given to Starlink, or anyone else, to subsidize rural broadband.

To clarify: is this because you want rural people to not have broadband (e.g. because you want to keep SJ away from them), or because you don't think this is something the government should be meddling in (e.g. because you think this is basically pork)?

Rural broadband has been truly massive amounts of pork and government waste throughout the run of the program. The government’s actual goals are mostly not achievable and the things which work are not supported by the government.

By "the government's actual goals", do you just mean what they asked for, or are we talking bigger-picture like "get more people to live rurally"?

I mean the things the government asked for. Getting more people to live rurally is much easier than giving fiber access to rural dwellers.

How would you go about getting more people to live rurally?

(I mean, the answer is going to boil down to "incentives", but I'm asking which incentives you would think most cost-effective, since you think this one isn't.)

By moving jobs into rural areas or easy commuting distance thereof(probably through tax incentives). Universal WFH has shown us that there’s significant unmet demand for living out in the boonies and there’s lots of smaller towns that have spare room to move in a support office or whatever.

It's pork.

And StarLink isn't performing as previously claimed, so they don't qualify for this award. I don't want awards based on mean tweeting. I am fine with denying awards for failure to deliver as promised. I hope that is the criteria being used here.

The question isn’t “did Starlink underdeliver.” The question is did Starlink underdeliver compared to other parties that didn’t have their funding yanked.

I don't actually know the criteria for this grant, but I'm a rural user who pays for it myself and it works very well for all the use cases mentioned. (meetings, streaming, etc)

It's possible that the criteria are jiggered to be greater than actually required for those things, which would make it a pretty blatant subsidy towards fibre/adsl providers.

It's possible that the criteria are jiggered to be greater than actually required

It happens quite often in government contracting that the contracts are designed for a particular bidder. Starlink might have the cheapest rural broadband, but are their curtains the right shade of purple? Then the primary contractor who wins sublets the work out to whoever really had the best bid.

One company I worked for told me that my job would be very safe with them, because the owner was Puerto Rican and so we always "got primary" for being minority-owned. Another company I worked for was very happy when they got rejected for a contract but told their bid was the best -- great progress!

That's my suspicion, yeah -- individual government workers are often lazy (shocked, shocked I say) and just get proponents they've worked with in the past to essentially write their bid documents for them.

It's a form of corruption, but nobody seems to care that much with the possible exception of large military contracts. (which of course have other more obvious issues)

It was annoyingly difficult to track down the exact terms.

https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904#technology

It looks like spacex bid specifically for the 100/20 tier, and that this is indeed a hard cutoff. It's unfortunate that there's no partial credit, and the inherent stability advantage of wireline over wireless means the former is more likely to maintain advertised speeds over time.

Hm, well that's tricky then -- certainly the tech is capable of those speeds; I see well in excess of 100 Mbits down and 20-30 up during low usage periods, but up is often more like 10-20 in the daytime, presumably limited by downlink capacity.

So is SpaceX required to meet those criteria now, or on the delivery date? (a year from now, AIUI?)

Also AIUI cable providers often pool their customers' downlink and provide much less that advertised speeds at peak times; is the FCC looking into this?

Also AIUI cable providers often pool their customers' downlink and provide much less that advertised speeds at peak times; is the FCC looking into this?

Requiring providers to not oversubscribe their link bandwidth would make broadband multiple times more expensive than it currently is and be wildly inefficient.

I've had home internet since the mid 90s and I've never, ever had an ISP provide the advertised speeds. Not even in off-peak times. At this point I don't really expect them to either; I've just accepted that this is part of the business model.

Also, the FCC have been overt culture warriors for my entire life. They're one of the least accountable federal agencies and they know it.

I'd suggest that both you and @TIRM (and maybe @jkf as well) read @gattsuru's reply to this top-level a few pages down below; there may or may not be issues with his info, but it seems highly relevant.

Starlink has, as far as I can tell, completed the requirements now, still before the actual time target, and that awards to 'settled' technologies aren't always retracted even after a due date has come and gone

vs

the FCC again ‘determined that Starlink failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.’

Hard to square unless there's some wild spin going on. Which I wouldn't put past the FCC.

Trying to evaluate this clearly: the FCC claims that Starlink won't meet future projected targets even though they happen to be working fine at the moment. As Starlink expands it has throughput problems in rural areas. By some (foolishly naive?) projection from current trends they will underdeliver.

But then Starlink is launching ever escalating numbers of satellites. So presumably a short term slump in download speeds isn't indicative of long term performance.

Hard to square unless there's some wild spin going on. Which I wouldn't put past the FCC.

Specifically, the FCC collected Ookla data from 2021 and 2022, highlighting that "that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022", and then cited a single drop in average-monthly-speeds in one month of 2023 during appeal. The FCC analysis quoted by Rosenworcel in that section was from August 2022.

By late 2023 those numbers were already vastly improved (median 79/9.2 Mbps). It's currently October 2024; while I can't find a specific Ookla report, tomshardware cites them saying in September "Speed test analysis by Ookla shows Starlink seeing major gains in speed in the past few months. Median download speed has jumped from 65.72 Mbps to 97 Mbps."

Anecdotally from those who've use it in rural areas near me, they've consistently seen 100/20 or higher. I can't say for sure what the current Ookla numbers area, but I'm not seeing any good evidence otherwise.

These are compatible claims. It's just one of them is stupid: taking a two data points and extrapolating with a ruler is the sort of thing I'd caution a high schooler about.

Contrast other RDOF defaults: the Starry (bankrupt), GeoLinks (blocked by California regulations) or LTD Corporation (severe financial chicanery, heavily delayed regulatory compliance mandated in the contract), all have far clearer and more certain problems.

But then Starlink is launching ever escalating numbers of satellites. So presumably a short term slump in download speeds isn't indicative of long term performance.

There are theoretical limits to how much bandwidth they can squeeze out of their spectrum allocation based on the physical aperture (size) of the antenna arrays on each side. And they keep selling smaller ground terminals, although those might get fractional performance. Something like a cell phone (which I've seen them rumoring support for) can't really do anything other than hit up every satellite in the sky.

Bandwidth has to be shared between every user in, effectively, an area of some size (I haven't run the numbers), and at some point even more satellites doesn't help. Bigger antennas on both sides would, though.

I'm sympathetic to this. If we are going to incentivize rural internet, but the provider underdelivers according to original promises, then they shouldn't necessarily have the entire reward taken away.

To make up numbers: 80% of original promised speeds from Starlink is still an enormous benefit to rural communities. It's not like that is hard failure deserving of nothing.

If they consistently take an all or nothing approach to rewards then I'm fine with them doing it now. If they did it now to stick it to Elon then I'm not fine with it. I have no evidence they are spitefully sticking it to Elon.

Isn’t it worth looking at the folks who haven’t done as well yet didn’t get their grant pulled? Or all of the other legal nonsense against Musk?

Question for the group:

What size contract, awarded to Musk-related-entities next year by the Trump-II admin, would you consider similarly presumptively corrupt?

I'm honestly not sure how to feel about a guy who made his money largely thanks to government regulations and contracts getting heavily involved in politics.

This and the CA decision seem targeted and corrupt to me, but I'm going to feel even ickier when the Trump admin awards SpaceX a billion dollar contract or tariffs Tesla competitors.

I'm honestly not sure how to feel about a guy who made his money largely thanks to government regulations and contracts getting heavily involved in politics.

All government contractors are run like this. This is the entirety of the economy of Washington DC, which is surrounded by 8 of the 20 wealthiest counties in the country. The entire industry is an elaborate defense mechanism against government and contractors sucking their own dicks being seen as corrupt. Occasionally, incidentally, some technical work gets done.

This depends heavily on our definitions of corrupt.

  • If you mean "corrupt" in the sense of what is prosecutable under current SCOTUS interpretations of corruption statutes, it's almost impossible that any deal would qualify because Musk's companies do produce things that serve some legitimate government purpose.

  • If you mean "corrupt" in the sense that the word is used colloquially to refer to someone receiving an obvious benefit that's outsized compared to the delivery, I would consider it an object-level question of what was contracted, what was delivered, and what was the price.

  • If you mean "corrupt" in the sense of political patronage, I would agree that it is this for anything where Musk's company isn't the clear best choice. Of course he's going to get the benefit of the doubt.

  • If you mean "corrupt" in the sense that a libertarian might use it, I would say anything above roughly $37 is a corrupt relationship because Musk has always relied on the government for massive grants and subsidies for projects of questionable utility.

Truth be told, my gut instinct is towards the latter. I remain unconvinced that Teslas are anything other than silly toys with superficial environmental signaling value. My inclination is to distrust large programs directed at friends of the government. But really, if pressed on the matter, I would lean towards the patronage model as a more realistic way to think about the world. Patronage seems very important to understanding how power structures actually work, is so ordinary in history that complaining about it being corrupt is about as useful as bitching about nepotism, and I don't really even have that much of an objection to it

On the other side, I think a lot of the issue here is about this being as much a jobs program as a broadband program. Satellite broadband doesn’t employ a lot of backhoe drivers.

Have you drive a Tesla? I own one and they are great cars (and honestly not that expensive). I don’t think they are anymore a toy compared to any other car. It truly was a feat building a new freaking car company and yes they did benefit from subsidies but so did a lot of other EV cars that failed. Musk is great at building companies.

Similarly SpaceX gets a lot of government contracts. So does Boeing. One is a good company. The other is Boeing.

[T]his seems blatantly partisan and all culture war. Is there a not-culture war aspect to this? $885 million seems like small potatoes compared to all the other numbers that have been floated around lately. I have a hard time strong-manning the decision to not release the funds. It seems like another pebble in the bucket of reasons why Musk, for the sake of his ambitions and livelihood has to support Trump. People can get mad about it, but what else is the dude supposed to do with the power of the Dems fully against him?

This would be more or less my definition, reversed as the case may be.

I'm deeply uncomfortable with government contractors lobbying openly, in the same way that it's often argued that people on welfare shouldn't be able to vote. Which of course becomes an argument about what is a government contractor and what is welfare.

But Musk, here, feels like a special case, in either direction, and I don't really have an answer other than being deeply uncomfortable.

tariffs Tesla competitors.

Why do you think the republicans are going to do that? The democrats have actually already placed a 100% tariff on Tesla's competitors, specifically the Chinese.

Because they said they would?

What size contract, awarded to Musk-related-entities next year by the Trump-II admin, would you consider similarly presumptively corrupt?

There is no amount that I would consider presumptively corrupt. If Trump-II gave Elon a $1 trillion dollar contract to put a man on Mars, I'd be perfectly OK with that.

Seems like a reasonable concern. My estimation would be something over $1.5 billion. Something like, "here's the original money, plus another contract." I'd be ok with that. Much over $2 billion--specifically for Star Link--might seem unreasonable without some caveats, like, say, increased deliverables.

The challenge I have with getting upset about SpaceX and Tesla's contracts is that, compared to where the money has been shunted otherwise, they seem like great fucking deals.

If the dollar amount and lack of delivery got anywhere close to "Business as Usual" at NASA or the EPA with the legacy MIC contractors and environmental grifters, then I would be upset.

Everyone's seen tweets summarizing the reality of the situation. NASA is pouring $2.7b (originally $383m, lol) into a far-less capable launch system than what SpaceX just proved is feasible, and spending hundreds of millions more on DEI grift, or bragging about the first PoC and Woman on the moon.

Funnily enough, there are plenty of MtF transgender people working for SpaceX and Tesla. They just want to actually accomplish something.

Whoa, whoa. That $2.7B isn't what's being poured into the launch system, it's what's being poured into the launch tower. The money that's gone into SLS is more than ten times that (or a touch less if you don't adjust for inflation; development started in 2011).

To be fair, the Mobile Launcher 2 tower is indeed mobile, and its Ground Support Equipment includes plumbing for liquid hydrogen, a cryogenic that makes even other cryogenics look easy.

To be snarky, ML2 doesn't even have any giant robot arms.

To be fair, the Mobile Launcher 2 tower is indeed mobile

That is … why? Couldn’t they have built a mobile transport, maybe with a simplified support pillar so the rocket can’t topple over, and then at the flame trench a launch tower as a static structure? That would have simplified the requirements for both.

I'd assume they worry about the difficulty of either transferring the rocket from one platform to another as a whole and/or robustly (re)assembling the rocket on the static launch platform.

Fun fact: each of the two 5-segment SRBs on an SLS stack weighs twice as much as the entire dry mass of the Starship stack put together. A liquid rocket stage can be stacked while empty to make it light enough to lift easily, but with a solid rocket stage the only way you can empty it is with the on switch (and you can't refuel it so much as you can remanufacture it, and there is no off switch...).

Surely they assemble the SRB segments in-place, but yeah it's still quite heavy. They work well for what they do, but I do question their use for crewed flights generally.

I would say that size is irrelevant, as opposed to value delivered. A contract for $10 million that delivers nothing of value, I would presume corrupt. A contract for $10 billion that actually delivers, say, a moon base, I would not. These FCC grants have long seemed corrupt to me because huge amounts of money get paid out to companies that result in hardly anybody getting new connectivity. Questionable value for the amount provided, and then execution and delivery far below expectations.

Is your opinion at all altered by the other comments pointing to contractual provisions that were not reached?

No. To the extent the provisions were not reached (which evidence seems sketchy at best to me), they still delivered much more, in a much shorter period of time, than the other competitors.

This feels like a legal technical answer. If person A fulfills 5% and person B fulfills 85% it would seem per se corrupt to cancel Bs without cancelling As.

I agree, but once we get into legal technical questions it's realistically beyond the ordinary person's ability to parse. You get dueling experts and the result is mostly determined by burden of proof.

Simple spherical cows a=5% b=85% sure, it's simple. But what if there's evidence that B has maxed out their approach at 85% while A is working on infrastructure that could eventually deliver 100%? B is a mature company while A is a startup? Or if the experts argue that one or another of the statistics turn out to be massaged? Etc etc.

I tend to agree with your comment that Musk/Tesla's achievement in creating a new standard setting luxury car company cannot be overstated. How many other manufacturers have poured cash into trying to make Cadillac/Lincoln/Infiniti/Chrysler/etc into legitimate luxury competitors and failed? Tesla has upended the upper end of the car market in a way comparable to the quartz watch's impact on horology.

But it's never going to be easy to figure out who gets government grants, which is why I tend to oppose them.

Sure one could in theory conclude A is better than B. But would you be on that? 9/10 B is going to be better at the end of the day and if you are going with the 1/10 you really really really need to show “here is the unimpeachable crystal clear rationale.” Especially when you have an admin that has been hostile to Person B.

Here is the letter where the FCC denies Starlink's long form application. The relevant paragraph (emphasis added):

The Bureau has concluded its review of LTD Broadband’s (LTD) and Starlink’s long form applications. LTD proposes to deploy gigabit fiber to 475,616 estimated locations in 11 states. Starlink, relying upon a nascent LEO satellite technology and the ability to timely deploy future satellites to manage recognized capacity constraints while maintaining broadband speeds to both RDOF and nonRDOF customers, seeks funding to provide 100/20 Mbps low latency service to 642,925 estimated locations in 35 states. The Bureau has determined that, based on the totality of the long-form applications, the expansive service areas reflected in their winning bids, and their inadequate responses to the Bureau’s follow-up questions, LTD and Starlink are not reasonably capable of complying with the Commission’s requirements. The Commission has an obligation to protect our limited Universal Service Funds and to avoid extensive delays in providing needed service to rural areas, including by avoiding subsidizing risky proposals that promise faster speeds than they can deliver, and/or propose deployment plans that are not realistic or that are predicated on aggressive assumptions and predictions. We observe that Ookla data reported as of July 31, 2022 indicate that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, including upload speeds that are falling well below 20 Mbps. Accordingly, we deny LTD’s and Starlink’s long-form applications, and both are in default on all winning bids not already announced as defaulted. Because LTD has defaulted on its remaining winning bids, we also dismiss as moot LTD’s petition for reconsideration of the Bureau’s denial of its request for additional time to obtain an ETC designation in Nebraska and North Dakota.

Sounds like the FCC was skeptical Starlink could deliver the speeds it promised on the required timeline for the program.

So they are merely incompetent and not corrupt? My money is on both.

I like that they had some data, but I can't help but feel like they were searching for post-facto justification.

How reliable is Ookla data compared to actually testing the networks themselves? I only speed test when I know something's wrong or when I hook up a new line, initially.

AFAIK their data is fine; the proposal was for 100/20 Mbps down/up, and Starlink currently only promises 25-100 down and 5-10 up on their standard plan; even the priority plan is still 40/8 at minimum.

The timing of the data is what had everybody stunned. In the FCC's START DATE FOR PERFORMANCE MEASURES TESTING last year they say, "For the carriers participating in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), pre-testing will begin on January 1, 2025, and testing will begin on January 1, 2026." You'd think this was a first draft, but I can't find the final version with "unless we don't like you in which case we started testing in 2021 and what are you going to do about it" added for accuracy. Must have been a version control snafu.

I mean, I'm on Starlink, and depending on usage, my upload varies from 10 Mbps to 20-ish Mbps. Right now it's 17.90 Mbps. I've never noticed. It's been life changing. Satellite is the only thing available where I am, and the competition is dog shit. 700 ms latency versus 20 ms, maybe enough bandwidth for SD video content versus the 320 Mbps down I just measured. It was straight up impossible for me to do Zoom meetings from home half the time. I don't know how the FCC arrived at 20 Mbps up being the litmus test, but I think it largely fails to capture the enormous improvement Starlink is over all the competition. I live in an area where subsidies have been promised for rural broadband for over a decade, and absolutely fucking zero has ever come of it. The money goes somewhere, and nobody ever gets internet.

I'm not shocked Starlink got cut out, they threaten to end someone else's corrupt grift. I can draw no other conclusion.

I'll be honest, I assumed they were talking about download speeds, I misread. That makes it a lot worse.

Demanding 20mbps upload is stupid for rural internet. I barely use that as a software expert in an urban area. It seems like this was specifically designed to exclude even the most state-of-the-art satellite systems from the jump.

A lot of the initial theory was based around small business and education web services, such as video streaming, collaborative media work, so on, and at that often included multiple simultaneous users per residence.

I'm a real severe skeptic of that -- and the Cloud focus that drives no small part of it -- but having set up remote users or small offices on <5 Mbps lines or long chains of P2P microwave links, there genuinely are a surprising number of really common functionality that either doesn't work, or doesn't work consistently, in those environments. Even if you're focused on atoms rather than bits, 'simple' things like security cameras, backup systems, file shares, and all pretty much have to be hosted locally for all but the most minimal of setups.

The more you get into bits, the harder, even for stuff you wouldn't think of as online. A short internet outage can turn building a Java program into an ordeal; even moderate packet loss can make OnShape unusable for collaborative CAD, and gods help you if someone turns on OneDrive for their machine.

I think it's wrong, but it's not self-evidently crazy.

(On the gripping hand, it's very far from clear that StarLink won't be able to achieve these results by 2026, if it doesn't already.)

I think it was pretty clearly written to encourage investment in running fiber in rural areas. Except in case of backhoes, good fiber should last decades with minimal maintenance and an frequently can be updated with only new parts on each end. I know relatively rural folks that have gotten fiber in the last decade funded by programs like this and they are all pretty happy with it.

While Starlink might meet some of the listed requirements, it seems in some ways not the investment they were trying to push, and doesn't necessarily end up with a durable infrastructure product to point to as a success even if the company folds. Free space RF also has inherent bandwidth limits compared to point-to-point fiber.

Granted at this point it seems on slightly better footing than a few years ago -- I have my doubts about it's financial case, but as a private company they don't have to publish the numbers and they do seem to sell like hotcakes.

I also am not entirely sure how the economics of Starlink work out. Supposedly it's profitable. But I don't know how many red numbers have been moved from the "Starlink" column to the "SpaceX" column. However they do the accounting, the fact that Starlink gets to take advantage of Falcon 9 launches virtually at cost is enormous. The fact that SpaceX has dropped the $/lb cost by almost a factor of 10 helps a lot too.

Yeah, even if they've cut the launch costs by a factor of ten, they've still launched something like 200 flights just for internal use -- around two thirds of total flights this year. And as a LEO constellation that is (at least in part) an ongoing cost to replace satellites over time. And that's presumably all getting paid for (plus the satellites themselves, the ground stations, and operations) by a bunch of users paying around $1400/yr. I haven't recently run numbers on that, but it feels at least ambitious without a deep-pocketed anchor customer willing to guarantee the bills get paid (which they may quietly have, so I'm not betting against them).

And performance degrades (something folks funding them for rural bandwidth care about!) as they start oversubscribing areas.

it feels at least ambitious without a deep-pocketed anchor customer willing to guarantee the bills get paid (which they may quietly have, so I'm not betting against them).

That customer is supposed to be high-frequency traders once they get the inter-satellite laser-link running -- light in a vacuum is enough faster than light in glass that it's attractive for comms between (for instance) NYC and London.

I think the latest version of the satellites is capable of this, but there aren't enough in the constellation supporting it yet? Haven't heard recently.

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So, Bing's AI response to "Starlink Customers" was

1.5 million customers Starlink has "well over" 1.5 million customers worldwide, including consumer users and businesses. Around 80% of Starlink’s customers are located in North America, while 18% are located in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Starlink's Roam plan alone has over 300,000 customers subscribed, which likely nets SpaceX a minimum of $30 million in revenue every month.

Although I see a more recent PCMag article says 2.7m customers. Assuming they are all paying the same $120 a month I am, that puts them closing in on $4B in revenue per year. If I did my math right (2.7m * 12 * $120 = $3,888m).

$1400 a year... deep-pocketed anchor customer willing to guarantee the bills get paid

Airlines (United and Hawaiian air have deals), Starlink is $10k per month per airframe, and cruise lines at $5k per month. Combined with other corporate operators (biz jets, oil platforms, etc) all of whom are frigging starved for reliable high speed internet in-transit and on remote locations, frankly Starlink is going to be printing money in exponentially increasing volumes.

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The whole thing was a grift of the worst kind. $45 billion for rural internet? And they didn't even connect anyone?

And now they're going after the person who did what they couldn't, for a fraction of the headline cost, and at no taxpayer expense.

It's like "Atlas Shrugged" is a true story.

Personally I demand that the little postage-stamp-sized picture of my face on Teams be downsized from Blu-Ray-quality video. If you're only throwing away DVD-quality data when downsampling what's even the point?

I had the same thought. Presumably they have some type of detailed records and it's not just an intern running SpeedTest on their browser. Also, one might presume that part of the investment would be to bring more routers online to increase bandwidth and some amount of service decrease could indicate the need for greater funding. Of course, a For-Profit compnany should have it's own money so I'm not that sympathetic.

I mean, didn’t California just deny him some permits explicitly due to his tweets?

The California Coastal Commission are pretty equal opportunity assholes, to be fair. I wouldn't be surprised if "Rocket Man Bad" was the excuse and general pigheaded misanthropic NIMBYism was the reason.

Some previous discussion here, second header.

The steelman is that StarLink was genuinely new technology at the time, and dependent on a number of other downstream systems that were in turn new technology -- if you cut this chart at late 2021 numbers, a lot of people would not guess remotely accurately the later ones. But given that Starlink has, as far as I can tell, completed the requirements now, still before the actual time target, and that awards to 'settled' technologies aren't always retracted even after a due date has come and gone, it's not a terribly strong steelman.

((By contrast, the EEOC-SpaceX lawsuit is probably politically motivated, but the underlying principle that some types of legal residents are not banned from access to ITAR-covered materials predates the Biden administration. So it might not be politically motivated, albeit unlikely.))

cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements

failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service

So when are they cutting off the spigot to the cable companies?

People can get mad about it, but what else is the dude supposed to do with the power of the Dems fully against him?

He could have bent the knee and done what they wanted, such as continue to censor Twitter on their behalf.

I remember "Musk Man Bad" starting before he tried to buy Twitter, I could believe that from his perspective the leftists started gunning for him back when he was nominally apolitical.

I know I saw some screed about colonizing mars being bad because it was colonialism, and colonialism bad, in 2020. When there's genuinely no native people to exploit, or even a biosphere to damage, all that's left is tall-poppy slave morality and braindead word-association snarl.

I think it started with the Thai cave incident.

As I remember it, they were talking about how their plan, training the children to use the diving equipment, was an extremely dangerous gamble. Mr Musk probably heard this and was trying to offer a safer solution. The chattering classes objected to Mr Musk not privileging social consensus over his own reason (many such cases!) and one of the divers told Mr Musk to 'take his publicity-stunt submarine and shove it up his', &c., &c. Mr Musk was probably hurt by the accusation that he was motivated by tribal status-seeking, rather than seeing a problem and trying to fix it; this led to him reaching for the nearest insult he could think of, invoking the widely known image of the Westerner taking advantage of lax enforcement of statutory-rape laws in less well-off nations.

It is my impression that this is when the Blue Tribe started aiming the Two Minutes' Hate at Elon Musk.

Yeah, I think it started here and escalated from there.

And in fact musk will probably get what he wants back if he goes progressive enough.

HAH! I think that as well. Give the guy 5 years and he'll be a progressive sweetheart again... if it's convenient, of course. The ire directed at him has always seemed superficial to me.

If it happened to Lord Vader Dick Cheney, it can happen to anyone.

But never underestimate how much the Left actually hates success. I don't know how Musk can be a progressive now without fundamentally changing who he is.

Bill gates is objectively extremely successful.

I would argue that Gates became too successful to criticize. It's not even the Gates Foundation offsetting his capitalism--he just won so hard at making money that he effectively achieved social escape velocity.

If you're a leftist, what's the point of trying to take Gates down a peg? He won ages ago (in Internet reckoning, anyways), made all his money, and fucked off before politics got really heated. Windows is still fairly dominant in the PC space, Microsoft's war against the government and other OSes ended long ago, and Gates is now free to do whatever he wants.

Musk is also in that category, though? Like I don’t think ‘amount of success’ is a massively relevant difference.

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