Can you point to some of those cost estimates?
Latency absolutely matters for "high speed internet". Once you have reasonable bandwidth, that's the dominant factor in the user experience.
Latency absolutely matters for "high speed internet". Once you have reasonable bandwidth, that's the dominant factor in the user experience.
NSR estimates for SpaceX are higher than what SpaceX claims (Gwynne Shotwell just claimed some Morgan Stanley estimates of $1M launch + $1M to be way off [1]), but still, I wouldn't expect them to be able to launch the 4,409 satellites of their intial design for less than $10B. And it's not clear that they will be able to raise such amount of money without a clear path towards profitability.
I agree with the shaklee3, Tim's blog is very legit. As full disclosure, I am the first author of the MIT study he mentioned, and the more I look into LEO mega-constellations, the more skeptical I become.
[1] https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/11877454453611806...
Please see this blog for approximate cost estimates, or the MIT study comparing leo constellations.
The blog you're citing claimed Starlink was getting canceled a year ago, so I'm a bit skeptical of its use as an oracle.
http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2018/09/18/420000-km-funding-s...
> Another hint that Starlink is going away was the statement that BFR is expected to consume the majority of engineering resources after the commercial crew development has been completed for NASA next year, despite Starlink supposedly costing more to develop than BFR ($10B+ compared to ~$5B) over the next 5 years.
TMF is probably the most accurate consultant in this industry if you read the whole blog. He tends to be opinionated, which you won't find on places like spacenews.
Either way, it's not productive arguing. It's like the Tesla versus anti-tesla camp, and that certainly won't be settled anytime soon.
http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2019/12/12/reality-and-hype-in...