They’re spending Monopoly money.
It also seems like SpaceX is poised to Hoover up all of Elons companies so it’s might not be “just a space company” for long.
The majority of their revenue is overseas. But there they can’t reasonably charge $99/month. And there labor and land are cheap such that you can get fiber laid cheaply and quickly.
While they may not be ideal or people living in Urban areas, they also aren't limited to selling to people who are physically connected by cable like a regular ISP would be.
I think you're underestimating the market here. Especially on the enterprise side when you start thinking of things like airliners, cruise ships, etc...
Starship is trying to get launch cost down to $10 per kilogram to low earth orbit. At that cost it is not clear to me that cables are better except for short distance point to point backbones. One other issue with cables is regulation or monopoly.
At a time when state actors are becoming increasingly non-cooperative, it may not be wise to put all your eggs in someone else's basket.
Launching a starlink satellite costs $1.5-2M per satellite for the current design. Each satellite lasts around 5 years and they need 42k of them.
Do the math and you get $13B to $17B per year ignoring inflation and ignoring the massive ground infrastructure that is also needed (costing billions more per year).
Residential plans range from $55-175/month and will make up almost all subscriptions. Most people will get the $85 middle plan, but we'll round up to $100/mo or $1200/yr.
Breaking even with no profit requires 10-15 million subscribers.
As starlink claims to have around 12k subscribers and just 10.5k satellites, I'd guess the system is profitable.
The cable question is still compelling though. Rural fiber costs around $25k per mile. This means that an average $15B/yr buys 600,000 miles of installed fiber every single year.
My conclusion is that the ideal solution would be Starlink keeping total satellites closer to the current 10k number ($4-5B per year) and spending the other $10B/yr running fiber to new areas.
Their subscriber base would drop as new fiber got installed in rural areas overlooked as "not profitable enough", but stabilize at still profitable enough from travelers and truly inaccessible places.
There are people whose current behaviour/situations will happen to benefit from this, and that may be a niche, but seems like there's a really solid chance many more people actually will change their behaviour in response to this being available. That's how disruption happens.
To be honest I can easily see the default changing if the service is good enough. I mean it seems like you basically get most of what is good about wired plus a whole load of extra previously totally unavailable benefits. For a price, to be sure, but that'll come down.
There is a huge market even just in the US for Starlink. The worldwide market for people who need internet access in remote places is positively gigantic.
Additionally, Starlink could be hugely profitable if they exclusively sold access to ships and aircraft. You'll never be able to run fiber to those.
They can indeed reasonably charge $99/month to many many millions worldwide who don't have any options for low latency, high speed internet access. You vastly underestimate the need for the service.
On the other hand your margins are amazing because all you do is fly little boxes over everyone’s heads launched with government subsidized rockets. No linemen or plant-hire or contractors to sap your profits.
The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite, until it’s only applicable to 1% of the population (and the poorest 1% at that.)
I flew from Zürich to Bangalore via Qatar and both flights had starlink.
There are many many uses for it, besides rural homes.
More like 8.2 out of ten. Either way the remainder is still a pretty decent market. And that's just talking about people in the USA. About 75% of Starlink subscribers are outside the USA.
> and the poorest 1% at that
Not by a lot. People who live in remote areas in the USA tend to have much less money overall, but they tend to spend much less money overall, leading to a similar amount of buying power. Someone who lives remote is more likely to own their home outright or have a relatively small mortgage. Their socio-economic status can appear numerically depressed because the numbers generally don't account for non-monetary consumption. (You got paid a salary and bought salmon from the supermarket. Remote dude fishes for salmon in a local stream. You both traded your time for salmon, but remote dude's salmon is invisible to GDP statistics.)
And furthermore, for them, Starlink would be budgeted for like an essential service rather than a luxury convenience.
As someone who has lived and worked remotely for the bulk of time since 1960 or so, it's not essential ipso facto; myself and most of the people I know have somehow managed to survive sans this supposedly essential service for 60 odd years (since 1935 in my fathers case, he's not dead yet).
Its more compelling use case is a relatively cheap way to integrate vehicle GIS data across four to ten thousand hectares or so (ten thousand to twenty five thousand acres) for farming, mining, exploration, etc.
Globally, its not especially attractive for non civil applications (military use, etc) as it creates a reliance that can have a plug pulled at the worst moments.
That doesn't make it useless though. Ukraine certainly finds Starlink attractive for military use. Despite all the misleading headlines and de-contextualised quotes, SpaceX has been reliably on Ukraine's side of the conflict and has been an essential communications fabric for both military and civilian.
What on Earth are you talking about?!? Half the people on Earth don’t have any sort of internet access at all.
> government subsidized rockets
The Starlink launches are not subsidized in any way. Now it’s clear you are either totally uninformed, or actively trolling.
> The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite
This is actually one of their biggest market opportunities. How do you think the backhaul for 5G towers works in extremely remote locations?
Like I said, terrible take.
If you hooked up every single cargo ship on the planet to starlink, you'd only add around 100k connections and average wages on most of those vessels is $5-8/hr (very few US/EU sailors these days) for a handful of people which tells you how much businesses actually care about their workers who do dangerous jobs.
If anything this should make you more bullish.
That plus satellite comms. Both Russia and Ukraine were very fond of how it improves communication.
Edit: meant to say that in the time of global instability, weapons tech is going to be valuable.
For interest:
An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions (2025)
Our calculations show the CRASH Clock is currently 5.5 days, which suggests there is limited time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm. This is in stark contrast to the pre-megaconstellation era: in 2018, the CRASH Clock was 164 days.
Which is why all of sub-saharan Africa is crisscrossed in fiber, and every hut in those villages has an ONT zip-tied to the straw walls where they get their symmetrical gigabit service.
It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.
It counts and it's not wrong.
Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.
The goal is to give Elon his 2012 award package but making it his 2018 one.
For Tesla ops milestones they would be waived, this is fine because accusition is a chance for Tesla shareholders to cash out at that price.
The text written in the link you did not read, states "Notwithstanding Sections I, II and III above, in the event of a Change in Control, the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded".
And that doesn't get any more by 50% increase with the same dilution.
I took a look at the proxy statement as they have it outlined in this [0] document (Proposal 4). As currently formulated, Musk has 12 operational goals (like ship 1 million robots or hit 50 billion EBITDA) and 12 market cap goals. These need to be paired together for the shares to vest; so, if he reaches the first market cap number, he also needs to fulfill an operating goal for the first set of shares to be earned. These earned shares vest in ~5 years.
This comes with a huge caveat. If Tesla changes control, those operational goals go out the window and his stock award is based solely on market cap (along with the shares immediately vesting). The share price for this is the greater of:
1. The last traded Tesla price prior to the acquisition, or 2. The per share price outlined in the acquisition.
The "easiest" way to take advantage is to IPO SpaceX (which he did), pump up the market cap, acquire Tesla for a sizable premium, and vest as much of the stock award as you can. It means you get to avoid the operational goals entirely and vest a bunch of Tesla (but soon to be SpaceX) stock.
[0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925...
[0] The Doctrine of Fascism is available, for free, in several places. Start there.
Is Musk wielding the apparatus of state to ensure that any speech that he disagrees with is suppressed, e.g. on college campuses?
He does not need to do that, he has his army of people like you that go around on all socials and wherever you can to post praise, defend him and attack any critics as he was some sort of uber genius savior of mankind. The Musk cult is real.
The whole thread (and to be fair, Musk himself most of the time) has lost the plot, since the phrase "freedom of speech" is about the government not restraining or punishing speech. Honestly, what Twitter allowed or not before or after Musk is entirely irrelevant to the concept of free speech. Twitter/X is still just some guy's website.
The Trump administration spent considerable effort strong arming colleges on account of speech that they did not like. Even if you subscribe to FIRE’s “Chicago Statement”, you should find the government interfering with colleges like this a break-glass scenario. “Individual Rights in Education” surely include the right to hold beliefs and teach in a way that the current administration is uncomfortable with.
So yes, these are fascist activities wholly consistent with the other fascist activities that MAGA movement is engaged in.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
I'm not sure HN is for you.
* He suspended multiple journalists from Twitter/X in December 2022 after they had reported on or criticized him [0]
* He has been accused of retaliating against critics and employees through threats, lawsuits, or firings, rather than tolerating dissent. [1]
* He selective enforcing Twitter/X platform rules. Here's 10 examples: [2]
He tolerates speech he likes and often punishing speech he dislikes. That's not being a "free speech" absolutist.
[0] https://truthout.org/articles/free-speech-watchdogs-condemn-...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-...
[2] https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-user...
One doesn't need to be a free speech absolutist to not be a fascist, far from it; and the exceptions prove the rule - those examples are the definition of exceptional. "10 times…" I can remember people getting banned en masse for changing their profile pic to an NPC character. The difference is night and day.
> If Tesla changes control
Does selling Tesla to SpaceX actually satisfy "changing control" if he remains the largest shareholder?
I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.
Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.
The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.
This could really cut either way. Like assume you mean he’s trying to do something good or noble (lmao) but the other obvious way to read this would be that he’s interested in becoming wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh.
It’s just funny how the markets seem to want to value him as some sort of AI visionary when his companies are not even in the top 5 for AI, despite his endless resources.
The only answer is the dude is a self-service piece of shit. He has no principles and is not trying to accomplish anything other that exploit for the sake of exploitation.
"You know how every once in a while you read one sentence and it snaps your whole perspective into place? I remember reading that book “Going Clear,” about Scientology, and there was one sentence about how if famous people aren’t treated in a certain way, it makes them think they’re not as talented as they wish they were. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I have to wait 20 minutes for a table instead of them just seating me right away, am I not as talented as I thought I was? If someone has a nicer hotel room than me on the press tour, does that mean I’m not as good an actor as I thought I was? I think that’s how a lot of famous people interpret how they’re treated."
I think the same applies to Musk. The money is a proxy for how much everybody thinks he is a special genius. Anything in his life that makes him feel less special requires more validation that he is, and money is the easiest validation he is able to acquire.
Also, dude was raised by terrible rich people and turned out to be...a terrible rich person. Color me shocked!
He won.
Let's move on.
Speaking just for myself, I've lost respect from Elon Musk. I admire Musk's accomplishments, especially Starship and the Falcon rockets. But I don't respect Musk's personal judgement, his moral integrity or his ethics.
He doesn't know me, and he doesn't care about my opinion (or care about ethics for that matter). But there are a lot of people like me who used to respect him and no longer do. He's surrounded himself with fawning sycophants. At some level he's got to know this, and that the people pretending to pay him respect aren't themselves worthy of respect.
Is that winning?
I think you're over-complicating this.
It's literally just Score Points.
That's all he cares about.
D'oh.
Their motivations are often cartoonishly superficial and... well... stupid. Stupid in ways that are baffling to most people (even most other neurodivergent). The kind of stupid that drives somebody to secretly pay pro-gamers to play games for them so they can pretend to be a pro-level gamer, only to then expose their own fraud by playing the game themselves on a live stream, without knowing how to actually play it. And then pretending to have connection issues when people start noticing.
I have no trouble believing Musk has simply internalized the identity of being the world's richest man and now has a pathological need to maintain that status, no matter what
So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone.
Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.
If you're writing a prospectus right now and want a lot of large institutional investment you put AI between every letter. We are in a bubble, I don't think there's any disagreement about that, when the bubble will pop nobody knows - but while we're in this bubble everything is AI. I think it's unwise to read that prospectus in good faith given all the other factors (the court case against OpenAI, the race to IPO first, Google's additional stock grant, Elon's history of corporate bailouts) that are pretty plain to see.
The radiators on the ISS radiate maybe 200kW all up. That's _one rack_ in a normal earthbound DC.
Not saying I think it's the best idea, but it is theoretically feasible.
To say that this is pure folly is an understatement. It is not folly, and it is not foolishness. It is fraud.
One of the most cited papers: https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
Does not contain the word "nuclear". Instead its just breathless gushing about how much more efficient the solar power is.
What is "hostile distillation" please?
I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.
I’m not denying that his companies are awash in zany financials, but I don’t think that’s ever been the point
But when he is interested in actively interfering with elections the world over and probably spends more time on twitter than anything else, I am not so sure.
The thing with the sell out routine is that they think it is all working until it suddenly isn't. The money isn't about living the high life it is about having the high score. Bezos is probably trying to figure out how he can take the No 1 spot right now. If Elon is smart, we will cash out right before the fall.
They also seem to be desperate to buy their way into a monopoly, even though the company itself has a long track record of failing to deliver anything noteworthy.
I don't think anybody actually believes SpaceX will be worth it. I think some still believed Tesla would be, but their competition has caught up. Everybody is just there to ride the wave of mass hype and FOMO, thinking everybody else is an idiot.
This has been coming in a few waves over the years in Tesla, cryptocurrencies, the Everything Bubble, etc.
Nah, not in a bubble or anything at all.
I called bubble on Tesla and Bitcoin both over 10 years ago.
Still going strong.
It's a whole lotta chaos, fueling some pretty messed up stuff. It is hard to watch.
It's easy to predict what will happen. It's hard to predict when or the second and third-order effects.
No, it is not. This is not legal or financial advice, but I believe the stock could easily rise 2.5x - not because of its current or future financial condition, but because it is run by what may be the most skilled fraudster our planet has ever breed. Charles Ponzi himself couldn't have pulled this off. While most CEOs are careful about what they publicly say or "predict," Musk's companies are fueled by increasingly fantastical projections. The consequences have amounted to some $1.5 million in SEC fines that, relative to the value created, were negligible - and that was under the previous administration. The current one won't be any more aggressive. The closest comparison I can think of is Trevor Milton and his famous "electric" truck that was filmed rolling downhill under its own momentum. He went to prison for that, although he was later pardoned by Trump. Many people have lost fortunes betting against Tesla based on fundamentals. SpaceX's shareholder list includes so many influential and powerful names, including people closely connected to the current administration, that I find it hard to imagine the stock being allowed to fail in any meaningful percentage. Obviously I'm exaggerating when I say the government would send agents door-to-door to collect valuables from American households to plug any hole in the balance sheet before allowing the stock to fall significantly. But that's honestly closer to how protected I think the company is than what traditional financial analysis would suggest. I'm nobody special, just someone with about $1.8 million in a stock portfolio. Yet this thing called SpaceX stock gives ordinary investors like me a chance to ride alongside the biggest players on their way to even larger fortunes. They are guaranteed not to lose money, and to me its not personal.
And this is before getting to worrying about what kind of large-scale market manipulations we're up against (e.g. relevant example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/signifi...) Compounding this is the fear that even the indexes seem to be compromised (fast-tracking SpaceX etc.) I'm paranoid but at times the entire US stock market looks like a gigantic pump-and-dump. (Seriously, some of the stocks, like NET, rise and fall with highly predictable regularity.)
I can't tell, and I know I'm not nearly smart enough, attentive enough, and definitely not well-connected enough to have the perfect timing required to survive a sudden shift or whatever game it is the big players are playing, so I'm just trying to play it safe (which is also hard, because everything is impacted at this scale!)