Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow | Hacker News Reader

Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow

twitter.com

111 pointsarcadeparade190 comments

I know a lot of people with access to fiber in cities discount Starlink and I miss my 1Gbps fiber. Also the Elon hate train probably has something to do with it.

Starlink is life changing for a lot of people. You would not believe how many different communities ISP market has been shaken up by Starlink. Many people went from high latency metered internet measured in kilobits to 100Mbps at 30ms. I've seen this both in the US and outside the US. Not mention previously unthinkable things like living on a sailboat and working remotely.

The biggest issue at this point is cost. It's mostly a premium product for high income people. I hope access gets cheaper as they scale. I think in general having a globally connected planet with high speed internet is going to make the world better (once we overcome the negative side effects of things like social media addiction)

It replaced not just my old slow DSL, but also my landline phone service. Every cent I was paying the small regional phone company now goes to Starlink, for usually about 20x the performance. The small regional telephone company did not sound happy about it when I left.

If I didn’t live in a city I would absolutely get one

Who knows what this even means. Breakeven including launch costs? Breakeven on only satellite operation costs? Breakeven when you exclude all satellite and ground infrastructure costs? Breakeven when you exclude all costs except Elon’s ego stroking expenses?

Likely Starlink operates as a distinct business unit, having its own financial statements (income, balance sheet, and cash flow). Breakeven means that the unit didn’t lose cash (but didn’t necessarily produce positive cash). Launch costs are very likely capitalized and amortized over the useful life of the equipment that was launched. Any costs hit cash flows as soon as invoices are paid, but is not recognized all at once on the income statement.

Being cash flow positive is an extremely important milestone for a startup, but no, it doesn’t indicate profitability.

Some background from Gwen Shotwell back in February[1]:

> While Musk said in October that Starlink was losing money, Shotwell offered a more upbeat assessment. “This year Starlink will make money,” she said, noting that the company’s Falcon launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, and other unspecified work, already makes money.

> “We actually had a cashflow positive quarter last year, excluding launch. This year, they’re paying for their own launches, and they will still make money,” she said.

> She said cash flow from operations pays for development, supplemented as needed by outside investment. Tackling both Starlink and the Starship launch vehicle at the same time, she argued, drives that need for outside investment.

> “If we had done Starlink and then Starship, or Starship and then Starlink, we probably could have funded them through customer contracts and revenue from Falcon and Dragon. But you do both of them at the same time it’s a lot of money every year.”

Combining this with today’s statement I think we can answer your questions:

> Breakeven including launch costs?

Yes - cash flow breakeven for the Starlink business unit which includes it’s launch costs.

> Breakeven on only satellite operation costs? Breakeven when you exclude all satellite and ground infrastructure costs? Breakeven when you exclude all costs except Elon’s ego stroking expenses?

No to all these alternatives. But why the dumb ad hominem?

[1] https://spacenews.com/shotwell-ukraine-weaponized-starlink-i...

It definitely does not include the cost associated with polluting our atmosphere

Did you check any numbers before being so sure?

Each launch burns about 120 tons of kerosene for about 360 tons of CO2.

If we take this Nature study as accurate, a ton of CO2 has a societal cost of about $185. If we add that all up, it's $70k per launch? Let's round up to $100k per launch.

Multiplied by launch count, that's only a few million dollars. They're still at breakeven when you include it.

It says right in the description: cash flow break even.

This is not the same as some fiscal year net income calculation.

Edit: fixed

EBITDA is an approximation of cash flow profit. I think you mean net income.

For those who don't know, capital expenses are depreciated over their useful lifetime (for StarLink sats, estimated at 5 years) and aren't accounted for by cashflow.

Cash flow positive tells you they're not going to go broke, at least until they need more capital expenses (5 years...), which is a milestone, sure.

But profit is a better measure of a business's value as a going concern. What happens in 5 years when they can finance with interest rates at 5% and they have competition? I don't know... If they were profitable and could give returns investors needed, that would tell you they can survive.

> capital expenses are depreciated over their useful lifetime (for StarLink sats, estimated at 5 years) and aren't accounted for by cashflow

This is incorrect. Cash flow is cash flow. Net income smooths capital expenditures. Cash flow does not. What that means is if you have a ten-year capital asset, year 0 cash flow will suck while year 1 will be exaggerated. (Starlink is currently in year 0 as it’s building out its constellation. Presumably, capex will fall when it’s in maintenance.)

I get where this comment is coming from, but isn't it much more complicated?

They're cashflow breakeven and could run net income negative over the next five years as a subscription market grab with the capex amortization over the 5 years.

It is possible they could become incredibly profitable when the capex investment in 5 years is much less than the initial capex.

Equipment costed $5 or $1/yr. Replacement equipment could cost $2.50 or $0.50/yr.

I see this plenty with business capex for on-prem/datacenters. What costed $5M over 5 years on a refresh replacement for 1:1 replacement is usually more than half the cost.

Starlink also has capex and subsequent opex for ground stations. Even with inter-satellite communications links in the 1.5gen satellites, it needs ground stations and interconnection with backbone operators.

It is unclear if, as bad as many terrestrial ISPs are, Starlink has a TAM big enough. It's going to be slower and less reliable than terrestrial wireless, and expanding terrestrial wireless coverage is going to be cheaper for a very large percentage of potential customers. Starlink is not competitive with terrestrial fiber.

> expanding terrestrial wireless coverage is going to be cheaper for a very large percentage of potential customers.

If that's the case, why has it taken until SpaceX for there to be viable Internet service to many of the rural areas they service? People are replacing 3Mbit DSL links, or even dial up (yes, in 2023, dial-up) service with starlink. terrestrial fiber beats Starlink handily, except where it hasn't been run. Which, even many urban areas still don't have gigabit fiber Internet service available, never mind when suburban or rural areas will get it (if ever). The other part of the addressable market is airplanes and boats/ships, and remote bases like McMurdo in Antarctica. Not sure how you're proposing we run fiber Internet to them.

Because ISPs suck and they defrauded the government of the money that was supposed to pay for expanded broadband coverage.

Elon has a nose for picking feckless, evil, competitors: People hate car dealers. People hate their ISP. Elon absolutely saw these opportunities.

You only need downlinks to backbones if the internet is terrestrial. Who will be the first to offer the LEO datacenter?

They might be able to sustain just simply via country contracts using it as a breakglass in the event of a telecommunications attack.

I'm also seeing more commercial entities looking at it simply as a backup.

There are a lot of terrestrial options for backup links: optical, microwave, fixed 5G. Generally any terrestrial link, wired or wireless, will be both higher-capacity and more reliable.

Whatever you think of Musk personally, he's one of the few people trying to move the needle.

According to Wikipedia design started in 2015, which means it's taken them more than 8 years to get to cash-flow break even. This is why you need billions of dollars to get started. And that doesn't include the fact that they had to build a rocket company to launch their birds.

Looks like they picked the right 60 engineers.

They presumably also had to build all the ground stations and infrastructure to manage all those devices...unless they're using AWS Ground Control, which would be hilarious.

Sorry, you make good points but rocket man makes mean tweets so none of that matters. Jokes aside, I really wish we could just discuss the article instead of it turning into a flame war but this happens everytime someone posts anything that has anything to do with Musk.

> make good points but rocket man makes mean tweets so none of that matters

Surely you're aware that this sort of comment is exactly what sparks and fans the flames of said flame wars?

I can’t understate how revolutionary this technology is for those outside of dense urban center. It has even been well utilized by Ukraine in the war and is jamming resistant.

I think the military implications of Starlink/Starshield are actually the most revolutionary. The "unjammability", low latency, high throughput and the sheer amount of them (which makes it very difficult to destroy them) makes a lot of unmanned military platforms very viable. Another aspect is that it might be accessible to smaller countries which can't afford their own military satellites.

Unless the jamming is being performed by an anxious and needy tech mogul after a phone call with a dictator.

Yeah - this is why critical military infrastructure should not depend on the private sector.

All military technology in the us is built by the private sector, and much of it is operated by the private sector, like the military communications.

One of the major problems in Ukraine’s case is they depended on the private sector _without a contract_ leaving them up to the pro bono will of the owner.

Last I heard Elon wasn't able to get more than a Secret Clearance and does not know a decent amount of what happens with Starshield

Starlink was already shut off in Crimea because of the war. He denied a request by the Ukrainians to turn it back on in that geofence that they made specifically so that they could use it to conduct an airstrike.

I’d have denied that request too.

Please make sure you communicate the facts correctly when spreading this meme.

More generally though: why do people love spreading false narratives? It’s ok not to like tech billionaires but I don’t get why they go around lying about stuff. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Elon Musk without making stuff up.

> turn it back on

It was never turned on in the first place.

It has been turned on, according to Kyrylo Budanov, commander of Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Directorate:

[KB] There have been no problems since it's been turned on over Crimea.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-wi...

Yes, the Department of Defense is now in control of the geofencing in the Ukraine theatre.

It's cool that Starlink is sustainable. Space-based, fast internet is the infrastructure we never knew we needed. It seems too useful to fail, there are a lot of areas where satellite internet is the best choice, from airplanes, boats, remote science outposts, emergency situations, and rural communities.

This is huge. Space-based individual consumer services being profitable was a pipe dream a decade ago.

You mean like the numerous space-based services that have been making money over the past ~30 years?

I mostly remember them going out of business like Iridium did in 1999. Clearly the market wasn't there as no one I knew used satellite services for anything other than TV, and that model failed against broadband. Starlink is first time regular consumers like my family members actually paid for a satellite service.

Uhm, no? Do you think all communications satellites operate at a loss?

For literally decades.

Exactly this.

Someday I would like to understand how we got here as a society.

Do you think these faceless comms companies could have achieved what a superhero's company only just now achieved?

All current communications satellite constellations are operating profitably now, but they all went through bankruptcy proceedings before becoming profitable.

Edited for clarity. Something like starlink existing and being profitable was a pipe dream a decade ago.

Is cashflow break even in the middle of a 5 year lifespan profitable? It includes the ongoing depreciation of that limited lifespan I guess?

I personally think that Musk is kind of a dipshit when it comes to his political views, that he is a bit of a charlatan (FSD this year, I swear), that Tesla jumped the shark tank about 2-3 years ago, and I laugh every time I see more bad news about X/Twitter...

BUT I am really rooting for SpaceX and Starlink. Honestly I hope the shiny toy that is X/Twitter keeps his attention for a while and he leaves those orgs to run as they have been.

I read an analysis by Morgan Stanley that it costs $40B to launch the entire constellation. That doesn't include the cost of the satellite, just the launches.

According to SpaceX their satellites last 5 years. That means Starlink must make, at minimum, $8B/year to maintain the constellation.

`$8B/yr / ($200/mo * 12 mo) = 3.33 Million users`

3.3 million users paying $200/mo in order to break even. The starshield contract probably covers a good amount, too.

That's a number wrong by an order of magnitude - there's been 118 starlink launches (with many of those being rideshares).

Falcon 9 costs 67 million for external customers, for internal use the cost will likely be lower. Let's say 50. 50 * 118 gives us a HIGH estimate of 5.6 billion, but i'd expect it to be much closer to 3-4 b.

Satellites are relatively cheap. Total cost below 10b, certainly not 40b

This is break-even on just one cost aspect though. If you add satellites, bandwidth/internet connectivity (a significant portion of the cost to service a user for traditional ISPs), renting/maintaining ground stations, marketing, and eventually R&D/offices/etc, that all rapidly increases.

Additionally, $200/m is not price competitive compared to traditional ISPs in most of the world, $20-50 is more typical for many areas, less in Africa/Asia. Yes Starlink has a USP over traditional services, but that USP won't benefit users who are already well served by traditional ISPs, so to expand outside the remote market they will need to drop prices to compete.

The maths could easily end up being $12bn/year / ($30/mo * 12m) = 33.3 million users. Is that a reasonable goal? That's a lot of paying users. That's a 4% market share in Europe and the US where there are highly developed telcos with decades of experience in this. That's a hard one, particular to achieve it in the near term (~5 years or one replacement cycle).

I should have been more clear. I agree with you 100%.

SpaceX has never raised or made up to 40 billion. It's not hard to estimate the cost of launch and figure out that headline number is wrong

Also, the business roaming plans used on airplanes, cargo ships are quite costly, I think around $2000/month.

"Elon Musk has repeatedly stated his intention to offer an initial public offering (IPO) for Starlink once its revenue is growing predictably enough to attract investors"

I'll buy some shares if Starlink go IPO. this break even cash flow might bring the IPO one step closer.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/spacex-wins-a-$70-million-sp...

It'll be interesting to see how they break up SpaceX employees if they IPO Starlink. SpaceX is still supposed to only IPO when they hit mars

Quick math puts the total mass of all currently orbiting starlink satellites at 1582 metric tons, which is about 3.5 x the mass of the ISS. Unless I'm mistaken, this should make them responsible for the most mass in orbit.

Whomever and whatever is what % of constituents in the user-base: it was charging governments and large operators lots of money that was going to fill the coffers.

If this is true then its a tipping point.

Starlink is going to start making obscene amounts of money

I don't trust a single thing he says at this point without evidence, I just can't possibly see it as breakeven without it, which we likely won't receive as they are a private corp.

Why does it matter to you? I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk, particularly on the negative side. The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all).

Personally, I hope it’s true. Starlink is good for the world.

Equally, I'm fascinated by people who white knight for him. I assume to some extent it must just be ideology. Objectively, he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition, or are delayed for years. Being skeptical of what he says is the rational choice.

> have probably been positively impacted by him

Well, every time my Model 3's wipers go batshit insane, I get a little irritated with his decision to forego a known good solution that the rest of the world has been using for decades. Not feeling positively impacted at that moment ;-)

I have good internet because of Starlink. Before I had absolutely terrible options and there was no hope on the horizon. Starlink specifically is very good for the world, it's giving rural people access to the full experience of the internet, which people in cities have taken for granted for a long time.

Developing reusable rockets was thought to be impossible and there was no hope for lowering the cost to orbit on the horizon _at all_ by anyone in the world, country or company. Rocket technology developed by governments is laughably bad compared to what SpaceX has built. Now, Starship promises to lower the cost to orbit to an incredibly low number and open up access to space to normal people. This is not a pie in the sky plan, the rocket is literally sitting on the pad in south Texas, waiting for bureaucratic rubber stamping so that it can launch.

I am not white knighting, I don't care about the personal foibles of the man running the thing, I am cheering on science, technology, and the progress of the human species.

> he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition

To my knowledge, he has never lied about the present financial state of his companies. That gives him credibility in a way e.g. Yaccarino bullshitting about what fraction of Twitter’s advertisers have returned does not.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-funding-secur...

Then a jury ruled in Musk's favor, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit...

The end result is left out every time the "court finds" articles are linked. The jury found the opposite, which is what actually matters.

The jury finding was that he was not personally liable for investor losses, not that his tweet was in fact accurate.

The facts are not in dispute here. He tweeted "funding secured" and funding was not secured. He announced intentions to take it private at a given price, which did not happen.

He misrepresented the financial state of his company.

Musk was railroaded by the judge and the Saudis on that one.

Luckily the jury had sense that the tweet was harmless in the end.

The judge ignored his stake in SpaceX he could have leveraged and mainly the Saudi Arabia firm that he was in talks with in taking Tesla private would not testify and then said the exact opposite:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23040961/elon-musk-saudi-...

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/1/23/musk-on-trial-sa...

So in the end it's do you believe Elon or the Saudis?

The judge sided with the Saudis.

Well, a jury also ruled that his pedo comments were totally okay, so I don't know if I'd use that as a metric for what constitutes truth.

Well, courts have also persecuted and jailed innocent people so if you don't trust what a jury of your peers say you should also have a hard time trusting what a "court finds".

Do you agree with that logic or do you trust the courts over your peers?

(ie. what "metric" would you use "for what constitutes truth"?)

I mean its jury - https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/23

Timely! Now do the courts (or have those been perfect over the decades?)

Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.

Jury is mob-based justice. If mobs likes you, then you are basically immune to consequences as illustrated by the link above.

You ignored my statements. Evaluate the courts.

We're all waiting on the edge of our seats to know what your ideal judicial system is.

Btw you've never had jury duty? Did you vote in a mob form? I sure hope not. I haven't.

Anything else than jury mob rule is better judical system.

You still didn't answer the questions.

No jury I've been on has functioned that way. Have you acted that way?

If you don't support a system of a jury of your peers determining your guilt, what do you support?

> Jury is mob-based justice

Have you served on an American jury?

I'm mostly neutral in all things Musk. I can make arguments without appealing to his virtue or criticizing his flaws.

I've been reading about low-orbit satellite since at least the late 1990s when it must have been Slashdot articles then. There have been several plans, but the one whose name I remember was Iridium. I believe it became operational, but only ever managed to be used for voice telephony. It's been bankrupted and bought by other companies since then.

This is an absurdly difficult market to break into, and everyone has failed to one degree or another, with the degrees of failure all clustering around the really extreme end of that spectrum. This is ignoring any technological challenge (of which there are apparently more than a few).

He is claiming to have done a (business) thing that has been demonstrated to be nearly impossible. A thing which, if he hasn't done it and is merely lying about, we might not know for months or years.

It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of this, and no one owes him the benefit of doubt on this issue or any other. It is perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical even if you do not believe the man a liar. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.

See: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Capital Raise

4,281 days since Elon Musk said Tesla will never need to raise capital again. (2/12/2012)

"Tesla does not need to ever raise another funding round." Elon Musk, quoted by John Voelcker in Green Car Reports

4,052 days since Elon Musk raised $195.7M in common stock. (9/28/2012)

3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $313M in common stock. (5/16/2013) 3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $600M in convertible notes. (5/16/2013)

[...]

1,157 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (9/1/2020)

1,059 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (12/8/2020)

With Tesla stock as overvalued as it is, he'll be really dumb to not sell issue more. Tesla is the original meme stock: if people are willing to pay much more for AMC/BBBY/whatever meme stock than it would otherwise be worth, you should get in front of the money printing machine and issue more stock. Good for him.

In fairness, and while Musk cerainly has a fan club, the "white knighting" tends to be in response to the aforementioned hating. Not the inverse.

There are few such men, and arguably fewer who have the enthusiastic haters that Musk does.

I understand criticism. However, a (multiple) path of innovation is always going to be riddled with mistakes and failures. Within this context, the specific enthusiasm for hating Musk, by some, seems petty to others.

So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights? I like to push back against the crowd when I see irrational dog-piling. Why is it that when Facebook is mentioned, the comments aren't trashing Zuckerberg in every other comment like when Musk is mentioned? Like he gets a free pass. That actually seems more ideologically driven, especially when you compare what Musk has done for humanity versus the destruction that Zuckerberg has brought. And I have deep concerns about Musk but I'm not irrational about it and I'm not constantly outraged and triggered when I see his name or companies mentioned.

Edit: Lol, bring on the downvotes, it only serves to prove my point.

The funny thing about Zuckerberg is that he's also shifting to the right if you watched some videos about the FBI discussing covid. I mean come on, Zuck showed up on Joe Rogan!

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights?

No, white knighting is accusing skeptics of being emotional haters who just don't appreciate all the good that Musk brings to the world. Accusing them of being short sellers, etc. Jumping to the defense of someone who is more than capable of defending himself.

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights?

The problem with bringing up those other tech CEOs vs. actually defending Musk is it starts looking like whataboutism.

I personally think there's enough hate for tech CEOs to go around and we don't need to ration it out.

Sure, but it's just when I see Facebook, Google, etc mentioned in a headline, I see rational conversation about the topic, but when I see a Musk company mentioned in a headline, I already know what the comments are going to look like.

Do you assign any responsibility for that to Elon? Compared to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, etc, Elon engages in far more incendiary rhetoric every day. He's chosen to become an outspoken public figure, criticism comes with the territory. Especially when it is tribal politics.

Sure, he has full responsibility for it and he seems to have embraced it but while Elon is outspoken, the other big tech CEOs are just as engaged in politics, they are just more effective and quiet about it which to me is much more insidious. I'm sure they love watching Elon get all the attention, it takes the pressure off of them. As they influence policy, have armies of attorneys and lobbyists, buy senators, etc. At this point they are more powerful than our own government and our representatives are useless except for the rare virtue signal about keeping big tech accountable. I don't put Elon or any of his companies in that category when it comes to power, so he is less of a threat in my opinion. But I get it, HN is definitely a place where the tribal outrage comes out of the woodwork, it's likely because of the demographic here is of people that mostly benefit from the technocratic system so they see Elon as a threat to that or something.

You missed his point. He's saying not picking up a mob pitchfork and challenging irrational statements does not mean you are white-knighting.

He's not saying "look over at that other CEO".

Even still, it's not whataboutism to put things in perspective as you may see that you're blowing one thing out of proportion due to bias if those same values are being violated by another entity but you are okay with it because of the entity itself.

It's always a good exercise to check for contradictions in your values.

What a ridiculous standard for deciding whether you respect someone or not. Public figures can give you plenty of valid reasons for disliking them without having met them. I could list endless public figures from past and present which you almost certainly don’t like because of their words and actions.

I haven’t met him, but he has bought out my favorite social media website solely so he can insert his insipid opinions and comments, so I think the negative reactions are warranted.

Why do people always talk about needing to meet a guy to have an opinion on them? I haven’t met Dick Cheney either

> he has bought out my favorite social media websites solely so he can insert his insipid opinions and comments

Can you share a link that documents him saying this? Every statement I've heard is something to the effect of "to preserve a space for free speech." If you can't produce evidence, you're assuming intent. That's your bias, and it isn't rooted in reality.

> Why do people always talk about needing to meet a guy to have an opinion on them?

I think its more a question of the degree to which people care. Dick Cheney was integral in launching wars that spent trillions and killed millions. Compare that to Musk who is probably more responsible than any other single person for reviving both the electrification of transport and the reviving of space exploration. All via companies that you're perfectly able to completely ignore. Meanwhile, Cheney used public treasure to mire the U.S. in foreverwars. Do these two people seem even remotely equivalent to you? Do both seem worthy of your very strong opinions?

> Can you share a link that documents him saying this?

His actions speak louder than words: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

When I say insert his insipid comments, I literally mean _his_ comments. His tweets. His stupid fucking tweets.

Are Dick Cheney and Elon Musk equally as evil? No. It’s an analogy.

I don't think that's the main reason he bought it. It looks to me like he's trying to create a knockoff of the baidu app for the non chinese language sphere where one can conduct their whole life through the app (think twitter + whatsapp/telegram/signal/teams + your banking + online purchases + delivery). If he pulls it off he's going to be a lot richer regardless of the up front pain point of far leftie aversion to freedom of speech kneecapping legacy revenue streams in the short to medium term.

As with everything Elon does, one should wait and see because he has had decent success turning things that seemed stupid money pits at the time (i.e. electric cars and rockets) into legitimate companies disrupting what was thought to be entrenched markets. Also, to my knowledge he has never pulled share structure Bullshit in his companies which makes it possible for his shareholders to fire him if enough don't like what he is doing, something I can't say about the other big tech CEOs, and something that deserves respect in its own right regardless of your opinions of anything else the guy has done.

> regardless of the up front pain point of far leftie aversion to freedom of speech kneecapping legacy revenue streams

Musk is not in favor of free speech, he is in favor of allowing speech he likes to get a free pass while limiting the speech of people and groups he disagrees with. The left does not like what he is doing because they disagree with which speech he is allowing and which speech he is blocking. What I have seen lately is users reporting trouble for accounts which support Palestine (which are not making any posts which violate twitter rules). And of course Musk is supportive of accounts which primarily exist to harass trans people, which is justifiably upsetting for people who just want trans people to be able to exist without harassment. But it's not about "free speech" it's about who gets to control the speech. The "free speech" line is just a convenient narrative.

I don't think you are correct about free speech being a means to a different end rather than an end in itself for him. He has stated he is in favor of free speech and has converted the rules and enforcement to focus on things breaking the law, which is a reasonable thing to do if your position is supporting freedom of speech because the refining system for the law is based around constitutional ideas of free speech (among other things). I agree that that would make him supportive of accounts that violate far left ideas of what should be allowed to be said to anyone because freedom of speech necessitates putting up with a bunch of ugly things being said that fall short of illegal speech rather than just irrationally and incorrectly claiming words are violence and banning all ugly from the conversation.

It's not just permitting speech the left doesn't like. I don't care enough to follow this closely and have a bunch of sources at the ready, but it seems that left leaning accounts which do not violate the rules are being targeted by twitter in various ways. There was a pro-palestine account which people said they would follow and then go back and somehow see they were not following it. And some words can imply violence - for example doxxing is "just words" but presents real world risks to people, and there are other forms of harassment which are seemingly against twitter rules which is being permitted. Famously the libsoftiktok account posts a lot of harassment of trans people, and internal leakers at twitter show that this account has been flagged to prevent it from being banned even when it violates community standards.

So actual rule violating accounts are purportedly being protected, while left leaning accounts which do not violate rules are being manipulated behind the scenes, if the reports are to be believed.

Again I recognize that I have not provided sources and I don't expect you to just take me at my word, but I wanted to correct what you think I am saying. I am not just concerned with uncomfortable speech, but outright harassment and the apparent suppression of certain left leaning accounts. That is why I say it is about controlling the narrative.

EDIT: Did a couple of quick searches. Banning journalists for being critical of Musk/Twitter isn't very free speech oriented!

December 2022

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/journalists-who-wrote-ab...

April 2023

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-st...

I don't care about Musk one way or another, but let's not forget how the previous Twitter management frequently used their position of power to censor and suppress messages they didn't like.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/02/twitter-invented-a-reason-to-h...

https://reason.com/2023/01/02/under-government-pressure-twit...

I don't really see why it would be surprising. He is an influential figure that is greatly impacting tech, culture and politics.

For better or worse is up to the individual opinion, but its not really weird to have a strong view on a polarising figure, especially one with the influence of musk.

Truth in tech matters to this audience, at least to the engineers. Musk had repeatedly overpromised and undelivered ("full self-driving"), made preposterous claims (2019: Tesla Semi convoy FSD is "something we can do today"), and engaged in fraudulent behavior (SolarCity or the "funding secured" tweet).

You can love him because rockets, EVs, and enormous satellite constellations are pretty cool, but you'd be a fool to trust him.

Many people have strong opinions about Musk because he is intentionally inflammatory. He works hard for those negative opinions. To choose just one example of him clearly trying to generate engagement/outrage:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888

I don’t think you have to hate Musk or Starlink to be skeptical about any claim he makes about the cash flow of his non-public businesses. He’s spent the past year saying ridiculous things and making promises about Twitter that didn’t check out. Credibility is a non-renewable resource. With that said, you don’t have to have strong feelings about this particular issue. But if you’re commenting on this article it’s a very reasonable sentiment.

Musk has gone to substantial lengths to undermine his own credibility and you wonder why people question his statements? It's not even a 'strong opinion' at this point, it's just reality: Musk can be trusted for what he says. It may be true, it may not be true. It may be technically true. But you'll never know until you've seen the evidence with your own eyes.

Having met Musk is irrelevant when deciding whether to trust the public statements of someone who has a long and well documented history of lying in public statements. In particular he has repeatedly lied about business related details, most notably claims of self driving readiness.

It doesn’t require strong opinions about Musk to understand the value in taking what he says with skepticism.

People value trustworthiness, and Musk's track record with public statements about his businesses definitely isn't the best in that regard -- though that largely concerns the utopian predictions/promises he likes to make, I suppose. Maybe statements of his about the current state of affairs are more reliable.

Here's him not knowing what he is talking about, very confidently and to the detriment of those who actually do know, about something really basic.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/14/musk_twitter_rpc_spat...

Do you actually limit your opinions to people you've met, based on your personal interactions with them? Do you consider your personal impressions of someone to be a better way of evaluating their truthfulness than the public record of their past statements?

Musk's record is quite clear at this point: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

OP has only expressed lack of confidence in the statements Elon makes. Objectively speaking, there are plenty of examples where it has been the case that let's say, there were "alternate facts" involved.

And no, it is not about predictions of this being done by that year alone.

You do not need to meet someone to form an opinion of them.

> The vast majority have never met him and, if they were honest, have probably been positively impacted by him (or not at all).

Why would people most probably been positively impacted by him? He seems to constantly have knee-jerk reactions to things happening around him, and his companies seems to frequently have issues with overworking employees.

2 examples:

He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

He didn't create Tesla, though I'll grant him some credit for creating a combination of product and hype that made for a popular EV.

Gwynne gets all the credit for SpaceX IMO. Elon gets credit for letting her succeed.

> Gwynne gets all the credit for SpaceX IMO

It was nice of her to have the idea, pursue that idea through financial hell across many years, bankroll the start of the business top to bottom, use all of her connections to get it outside funded, and sustain it financially personally to the direct threat of personal bankruptcy.

Good thing she did all that and gets all the credit.

Do you think she could have done it without him?

Everyone loves the Teslas and hates the Edisons, but the world does need Edisons.

Tesla was an idea. The Tesla you see today is his doing. Eberhard would have ended up like Wework without the Newmann payout.

Remember the Tesla deathwatch blog?

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

Which, in today's industry and world might have been too early as we still haven't figured out if mining all that lithium is better for the world or not, right now.

> He's made transport to space a lot cheaper, saving a lot of taxpayer's money.

Yeah, for ~4% of the world's taxpayers. We'll still see if SpaceX is a net-win for humanity, too early to tell.

Even ESA member countries are saving money these days.

> He's accelerated the switch to electric cars.

There's not evidence for that. In fact, by being willing to lose so much money on each car Tesla likely discouraged the broader industry from investing in electric cars for many years. Tesla may have, in fact, made the switch to electric cars slower than it otherwise would have been.

Overworking is subjective. In his opinion that’s just how hard people should work on things that matter and that they care about.

I agree with you. I don’t think it’s worth working that hard for someone else. No one will remember someone who works for Musk. They won’t earn more than they could somewhere else. To each their own, though. I worked incredibly hard on much stupider things in my past.

not him. but I just can't trust any words of him since many years ago without any hard proof. as for his impacts, I spent the last 20 minutes thinking what has he done that positively impact me and found nothing.

I don't think starlink's private ownership is good for the world. I don't know enough about space but I hope there is room up there for a publicly owned satellite internet system.

Musk has and is changing the world, change always makes people nervous.

It's possible to admire the impact of Musk's products while also scrutinizing the things he says on Twitter

I think Starlink has colossal potential to do tremendous good in the world. That's exactly why I care so much about how much control and impact a character like Musk has. Would suck if my ISP suddenly just started sending me dank memes and poop emojis one day because the CEO got broken up with.

The fact that, at this point, this is not a totally ridiculous thing to be concerned about is very surreal but also pretty funny honestly.

It’s absolutely hilarious when it’s something like Twitter. When it’s an ISP or a rocket or an autonomous car, I laugh a wee bit less. XD

Isn't he in trouble with the SEC for things he's said on twitter about his companies? I think it's entirely reasonable to be skeptical of the things he says, particularly ones that make himself look good, with no evidence, and is unverifiable since Starlink isn't public.

Conversely, I am fascinated by people who have such strong opinions about Musk in the other direction. Those who jump to defend him. Those who put all his lies, deception, xenophobia, and record of publicly humiliating himself.

I'll never take anything he says at face value because anything that's ever come out of his mouth is posturing.

I'm frankly tired of billionaire windbags like him. I have no idea how someone could be a fan of his.

Well here we are talking about his latest statement. I think it bears examination whether what he says is trustworthy.

It doesn't bother you to see someone take advantage of people's naivety with false promises?

People are just making a friend-enemy distinction. If they judge Elon positively (friend), they minimize his flaws; if they judge him negatively (enemy), they minimize his contributions.

honestly it is from Elon's own history....

1. His only software contribution at PayPal was torn out and discarded 2. After his software at paypal was rejected he was fired by the board at paypal.

It is not that he does not have business skills to market. It is that he presents himself as someone that does quality engineering..which in fact is somewhat false.

After the shit he has said and pulled in the past few years, you are "fascinated" that many people don't like Musk? Really?

> Starlink is good for the world.

It wasn't good for Ukraine when Musk pulled the plug on them.

Which is overshadowed drastically - 1,000 to 1 at least - by the good Starlink has done for Ukraine. That's about the weakest straw argument I've seen against Starlink.

Musk's SpaceX is the only reason Ukraine has been able to maintain its Internet infrastructure throughout the war. It would have been a communications disaster otherwise, particularly for all non-military (NATO would have done its best to provide patch-work communications for the military).

Maybe, but he also interfered in a rather large Ukrainian operation to Russia's benefit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-uk...

> Elon Musk foiled an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet last year

> Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, accused Mr. Musk of enabling Russian aggression. Because of Mr. Musk’s decision, “civilians, children are being killed,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.”

> a SpaceX executive said that Starlink had taken steps to curtail Ukraine’s use of the technology to control drones, infuriating Ukrainian officials.

You don't receive it, but there a several large institutional investors who do, and who could sue for billions if he's lying. It's not something non-actionable like saying "FSD this year".

More significantly, both NASA and the Space Force receive SpaceX financial statements because they require reassurance that all their vendors are viable ongoing concerns.

IOW, if this is a lie, then he could lose his 2 biggest customers. And I wouldn't be surprised if lying to the Space Force is an actual crime.

Huh. So Space Force, which I was really sure is a joke, appears to be an actual thing complete with employees and things with wings. At least Wikipedia thinks so. Strange world to live in.

Space Force was created by breaking out existing capacities from the Air Force into a new subordinate organization within the Department of the Air Force (similar to the way the US Army Air Forces were split off into a new service to create the Air Force, but with a relation to the parent like the Marines have to the Navy.)

It was a reorg with elaborate branding impacts, not a from-scratch creation.

Or it's Twitter/X's "not including the cost of servicing debt, the company already is cash flow positive."

https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/x-linda-yaccarino-debt-...

I own some SpaceX, am happy to take the chance without access to audited financials. Could go to zero, or maybe my kids will go to the moon.

How'd you get in on that? Sounds like it could be an interesting story.

Private equity marketplace as an accredited investor. I am a degenerate gambler at heart.

Cool. If I die childless I'm considering willing my assets to a company like SpaceX or Blue Origin - any suggestions on which or should I just split it among the leaders at the time?

No suggestions on who unfortunately. A potential methodology is establishing a living trust, funding it with all of your wealth, a pour-over will to clean up anything you missed, and assign the beneficiaries accordingly based on your post life wishes (you should be able to trivially get SpaceX, Blue Origin, etcs EIN/taxpayer ID, although you would want to speak with someone at those orgs so they know your plan and someone can admin whatever is sent their way). Same as you would with charitable bequests as part of your estate, directed towards charities and non profits.

Not an attorney, not your attorney, speak with one for estate planning purposes. Hope this helps!

The "trick" here is that he is likely speaking of operational cashflows (i.e. the 'correct' metric for low CAPEX companies).

The rub, of course, is that most of the cost for something like Starlink is designing, building, and launching the satellites, which shows up in investing cashflows.

Put differently, if the company was actually generating more cash than it consumes on all levels, start the IPO right now and SpaceX will be a $1tn+ company (instead of a $100bn+ company that people expect will one day generate cash and then be a $1tn+ company).

SpaceX will never have an IPO because being publicly traded means ceding a certain degree of control. The founders' goal is to make life multiplanetary, and the typical goal of rando shareholders is to pump up the stock price. They don't want to have to deal with the latter. They may at some point spin off Starlink and IPO that, but not until it's fully deployed and not heavily dependent on frequent, super cheap, low bureaucratic friction launch services from SpaceX.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacex-fu...

They already have shareholders? And as you point out, if the founder really wanted to, he could have self-funded most of SpaceX (instead of buying X for example).

He's a public company CEO already - he has no qualms about taking SpaceX public.

I suspect government contacts. And not US government contracts necessarily.

Cash flow break-even is measured over a specific accounting period, which could be monthly, quarterly, or ...over the last hour... Without specifying the time frame, the statement is not relevant.

I’m not a huge Musk fan, but his shortcoming seems to be more having unreasonable projections about the future. I’m not aware of him lying about things in the present.

“funding secured” was him lying about the present

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit...

So is Tesla is private now? Funding was not secured. He lied that it was secured. The court just decided his lie did not warrant payment to a class action lawsuit it didn’t determine he did not lie.

> "unreasonable projections about the future"

I've heard a few of them, like concerns about AI which I don't think are unreasonable but I'm curious about what other projections he's had that are unreasonable?

The Cybertruck's supposed to be out by now. Also self-driving.

Ah, okay, yeah in those cases it seems he is overly optimistic, disingenuous, or just really bad at estimating projects. In the case of the Cybertruck there were major engineering issues that came up along with manufacturing issues, apparently it turned into a nightmare, I'm surprised that it actually looks like it may ship in the next few years.

https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

If it’s privately owned then he has less reason to lie

So you trust public corps? Like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Are you this outraged anytime Sundar is mentioned or Satya or Zuckerberg, or any number of these other mega corp CEOs are mentioned? Because they are deeply corrupt and actively work against the people in the name of profits and power. I don't understand how Musk has become some boogey man to the chronically online types, sure he is self interested and focused on profits and power but no more so than all of these other tech CEOs.

Isn't Starlink basically a part of the US military-industrial complex hiding behind stories of private enterprise, just like many other Silicon Valley companies intricate relationship with the security state as laid out in Yasha Levines Surveillance Valley?

you're thinking of Starshield

Actually not, infrastructure has great geopolitical and geostrategic importance as laid out in the book just mentioned by Levine.

Those who control the data flow, access, search etc. control surveillance and the minds of the masses which is why funding is often seen from the sec state.

most definitely yes. they can see me typing now

Military industrial MEDIA complex.

Seems highly credible!

Congratulations.

Wait, all the HN commenters who asserted this would never happen were wrong?

That doesn't seem like a common sentiment here at all.

Here's a great video by Ordinary Things that talks about the development and proliferation of satellites over the past century, space debris, and how things could play out in the near future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90N6IZnV85c

Especially relevant because Starlink has been causing numerous near-collisions over the past few years.

No near collisions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com