Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink internet indefinitely | Hacker News Reader

Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink internet indefinitely

reuters.com

14 pointsjmeister13 comments

Absolutely incredible to make a big deal about "donating" all this stuff, and then decide what you actually want is a big fat Pentagon contract.

iIf the war keeps going for a decade or longer, is SpaceX supposed to provide free service forever?

I don't want to take Musk's side here, but I don't think your take is entirely justified too. They donated a lot of hardware and free service for more than half a year. That's a lot, and I don't think donating that much means they have to keep donating forever.

More relevant than that, the constellation is already deployed and serving the rest of the planet's surface. What is the cost (not in terms of lost revenue, but in terms of actual operational cost) of supporting Ukraine?

I'm assuming the cost is marginal. What he's concerned about is of becoming a military target, something he should have considered before he decided to become a military telco service provider.

What do you mean, not in terms of lost revenue? That's the cost a business and its shareholders care about. If you wanted to care only about operational costs, you should've put up your own constellation (e.g. government-tax funded).

Don't become Russia while fighting it.

Is it reasonable to be able to extract any revenue from Ukraine during a war? If not, then there is no loss of revenue. There is also no increased operational costs - the constellation is up there already, and replacements need to be sent up from time to time, regardless of whether they fly over Ukraine or not and regardless of whether they keep their radios on while doing so. The operating cost of a satellite constellation cannot be split by country served and stopping service to one country does not change the overall cost.

They may stop sending dishes though, but, apart from that, not much would change.

It is not reasonable to be able to extract services and hardware for any/no cost from a private business just because they built something that could be used.

AFAIK that'd only be possible in a limited way if the US itself was at war.

Why should SpaceX have to provide services and hardware for operational costs only, while Lockheed Martin, BAE, Raytheon, etc can keep their profits?

If there was no expectation of profit, why did they send it in the first place?

That's what a donation is. Corporations usually do it for indirect "profit" - PR mostly. But that doesn't mean they have to donate forever and in unlimited quantity now, does it?

I also donated money to Ukraine, do I have to keep sending more money because of it? No, I don't, that's entirely up to me, and my operational costs are nobody's business.

From the article:

>"SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely and send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable," Musk wrote on Twitter on Friday.

The anti-Musk sentiment is reaching ludicrous levels.

You can downvote me, but can you explain your point?

Musk has provided $80 million in Starlink services for free - is your claim that he was supposed to continue this indefinitely?

He explicitly mentions not asking the Pentagon to recoup the $80 million, but to fund the continuing donations of Starlink - how is he intending to profit with this proposal financially, as you imply?

I also did not see him "make a big deal" about his Starlink donations.

Elon Musk suggests he is pulling internet service from Ukraine after ambassador told him to ‘f** off’

‘We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine,’ says Space X

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-starlink-intern...

“Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you,” tweeted Andrij Melnyk, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany. “The only outcome is that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing Tesla crap. So good luck to you.”

I guess that kicked it all off.

Elon Musk seems to be playing a great long-con on the American tax payer. $300m per launch, $16bn in hand-outs.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/12/spacex-seeks-16-bi...

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