SpaceX Raising $500 Million To Help Build Its 'Starlink' Satellite Broadband Network (cnbc.com) 116
According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is raising a $500 million round of fundraising to help build its massive satellite internet project, called Starlink. "The new funding puts SpaceX's valuation at $30.5 billion," reports CNBC. "The report says the capital comes from existing shareholders as well as new investor Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment firm." From the report: Starlink -- a name SpaceX filed to trademark last year -- is an ambition unmatched by any current satellite network. The company is attempting to build its own constellation of 4,425 broadband satellites, with another 7,518 satellites to come after. SpaceX will begin launching the constellation in 2019. The system will be operational once at least 800 satellites are deployed. Starlink would offer broadband speeds comparable to fiber optic networks.The satellites would provide direct-to-consumer wireless connections, rather the present system's redistribution of signals, transforming a traditionally high-cost, low reliability service.
Orange Man Bad. New Steve Jobs Good. (Score:1)
Great news everyone!
You can now preorder satellite internet that will totally be 100GB symmetric with a ping speed that exceeds the speed of light thanks to AI blockchain autopilot for 3,000 USD right now. You know all those routing problems when there's more than a couple dozen entries in the route table? No worries, thanks to machine learning in Elon Musk's hair plugs, over one hundred million links between thousands of nodes changing every 90 seconds wont be a problem at all.
Only a pedophile wouldn't tak
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Re:Thanks Rei (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thanks Rei (Score:5, Informative)
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Wear did he go?
They share Elon and little else (Score:2)
You do realize that Solar City/Tesla/Boring Company/SpaceX is all the same thing, right? It is just a shell game and the different companies just shuffle money from one account to another.
I'm sure you want to believe that but it's quite simply not true and demonstrably so. Solar City and Tesla are one organization under the Tesla aegis. Boring Company and SpaceX are independent. They share Elon Musk with Tesla and that's close to all they share. The finances of SpaceX have no meaningful relationship to Tesla and vice-versa. If you have evidence to the contrary please provide it.
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You realize that when Tesla bought solar shitty, they bought all their obligations too.
Teledesic (Score:2, Informative)
IMHO, USA cost of broadband is from monopoly, and they'd simply drop the price to just below the cost. You cannot reliably deliver broadband by satellite, since television is no longer delivered by satellite primarily. This is wishful marketing at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic
"Teledesic was a company founded in the 1990s to build a commercial broadband satellite constellation for Internet services. Using low-Earth-orbiting satellites small antennas could be used to provide uplinks of as much
Re: Teledesic (Score:1)
Lucky for us, technology doesn't change in 25 years. Or does it?
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visiting Dr. covfefe (Score:4, Insightful)
[visiting Dr. covfefe.....]
patient: Hey doc, I don't feel right. Maybe something has changed.
covfefe: Let me look at you.... organs in body, teeth in head, shoes on feet. Just like last year. Let me know when that changes.
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Re: Teledesic (Score:2)
You think making a list of things which (to you) don't appear to have changed is evidence that technology hasn't changed?
Nice. Hey, if we look back 10,000 years, people wore clothes, ate food, and had fire. Clearly our technology hasn't changed in 10,000 years.
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Clueless snark (Score:2)
1) Paved streets. Asphalt. Street lights, painted lines. Nope.
Look a little closer. The chemistry of the pavement has improved. The street lights use LEDs. The paint has improved chemistry too and sometimes isn't paint at all.
2) Houses. Wood, plastic, foam, glass, bricks, mortar, aluminum, copper.... Nope.
You seriously think there hasn't been any improvement in building materials or technology?
3) Cars. Rubber wheels, chemical fuels, pistons. Some electric cars. They had those in 1925. Nope.
Umm, yeah, the state of the art in cars clearly hasn't advanced at all since the Model T. [/sarcasm]
4) People. They wear shoes. Clothes. Nope.
What are those clothes and shoes made of? How are they made? Do they look the same? Do they cost the same? Were you buried under a rock somewhere?
5) Airplanes in the sky. They had those in 1975. They even had supersonic passenger jets in 1975. Not anymore... Oops.
I th
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You cannot reliably deliver broadband by satellite, since television is no longer delivered by satellite primarily.
That's not how it works. What are you on about?
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You underestimate the number of underserved rural customers. It could be profitable without taking away a single customer that already had true broadband.
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You underestimate the number of underserved rural customers. It could be profitable without taking away a single customer that already had true broadband.
Exactly. Not just rural US and EU customers either... think of all the under-served rural customers in the entire world. Urban/Suburban folks are not going to be the target consumer.
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SpaceX has reduced launch costs by more than 10X, pre-SpaceX a typical launch for a non-heavy payload would be around $600million. SpaceX was offering launch costs of $80million though recently raised prices to around $120 for government launches. This includes all SpaceX's profit.
This massive reduction in launch costs makes putting a bigger installation of more birds cheaper, the bigger the constellation of birds the lower you can put it and the better the latency.
Get enough birds and you can be low enough
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Maybe where you live (I assume the US) but where I live satellite is the primary form of receiving television, heck we can still "tune" in to broadcasts from transmission towers for some channels. They were supposed to change to digital to free up spectrum but have failed to do so due to utter incompetence.
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What Tesla has pulled off in the last twelve months is absolutely monumental. Intentionally or otherwise you're shamefully misinformed. I'm getting to the point where Tesla denying is my new Apollo Program denying; let your hate for achievement illuminate your utter lack of it you pathetic fud-spewing swine.
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Re:Latency? (Score:4, Informative)
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/spacexs-satellite-broadband-nears-fcc-approval-and-first-test-launch/ says "SpaceX has said it will offer speeds of up to a gigabit per second, with latencies between 25ms and 35ms. Those latencies would make SpaceX's service comparable to cable and fiber. Today's satellite broadband services use satellites in much higher orbits and thus have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements."
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Today's satellite broadband services use satellites in much higher orbits and thus have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements."
Wow, I must have clear signal, I'm getting ping times of only about 620ms. On a foggy/rainy day, it can be as high as 1000.
Re:Latency? (Score:4, Informative)
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The hop up and down will make other sat look slow.
But is any sat ping too slow?
What people expect and need from the sat ping will be telling.
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They are claiming around 35ms (altitude is only around 1100km)
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Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the negative publicity surrounding Elon, Tesla, et al, the South African continues to have no trouble attracting capital for new ventures.
We could do much worse betting on a vanguard, since so few seem hellbent on guiding us to a better future outcome.
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He's African American now.
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Informative)
no trouble attracting capital for new ventures
That's because he lands rockets and cranks out more than half of the EV's in the world. And builds tunnels under LA. Does he still run a school in his spare time?
Wrong, Boring Company faster and far cheaper (Score:3)
And builds tunnels under LA at a slower rate and at a higher cost than competent tunneling companies.
Not sure about speed but the Boring Company just had a presentation - the 1.3 mile tunnel under LA (one of the trickier drilling locations because of soil and regulatory issues) cost about 10 million to complete, vs.2 miles of NYC subway costing $3 BILLION dollars, and 2.5 miles of LA subway expansion costing $2 BILLION dollars.
Going back to speed, the stated speed goal for the Boring Company machines is to
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NYC geology is completely different than LA geology.
The boring company half assed tunnels meets zero of the safety requirements that the LA subway meets. Here’s what an actual expert in tunneling had to say.
So for those of you still interested I did a little digging around and found the permits TBC used to construct the Hawthorne Tunnel and Elevator, be warned they are 160 pages and 157 pages long respectively. See below: http://hawthorne-ca.granicus.c... [granicus.com] http://hawthorne-ca.granicus.c... [granicus.com] A few interesting things that jumped out at me when reading through these: 1. When detailing planned operations for the test tunnel TBC specifically stated that the public would not be allowed in the tunnel and that the skates would not be occupied while being tested in the tunnel. I haven't been able to find anything modifying this, so I'm not sure how Elon is allowed to give rides to people in this tunnel. 2. The tunnel fire safety plan requires everyone entering the tunnel to be provided and trained in the use of a W65 1 hour self rescuer, and only calls for the of combination fire extinguishers for fire suppression. This works for a test tunnel closed to the public, but its worth pointing out that NFPA 130: Standard for Fixed Guideway Transit and Passenger Rail Systems requires things like fireproofed ventilation systems, automatic fire detection, standpipe and sprinkler systems. Emergency tunnel egress points to the surface every 2,500 ft or cross passage egress to another tunnel every 800 ft. I'm curious how Elon will fit all these features as well as the skate within his stated 12 foot tunnel cross section. 3. In detailing their construction plans TBC said they anticipated tunnel advance rates of 60ft/day and a construction duration of 5 months. So they definitely fell short of that goal. Ironically perhaps it seems they came up with the 60ft/day number based on what the TBM performed on previous tunneling projects. So TBC managed to tunnel at less than half the speed the previous TBM owners Super Excavators did with the same machine. Now its not entirely apples to apples since geology is different, and TBC supposedly spent time tinkering with the machine. 4.They have the spec sheet for the TBM they're using attached towards the end of the tunnel permit. It states the machine as delivered had a total installed power of 1400hp or just over 1MW. Additionally, the machine is intended to be fed directly from the grid apparently because it is listed as having a primary voltage of 13.2KV three phase. This is interesting to me because Elon has talked about wanting to make these machines a)more powerful and b) run off of batteries. The permit restricts TBC to working between the hours of 7AM and 7PM or twelve hours. To run the machine continuously during this period off a battery you would need 12MW/hr of storage, a Tesla powerpack like those installed in Australia has a storage capacity of 210KW/hr each so you would need 58 fully charged powerpacks (rounding up from 57.143) to run the TBM for a full 12 hour shift. Assuming you placed these all side to side at 32.4"wide you end up with a battery 156.6 feet (47.7m) long without leaving any clearance in between units. Additionally you have a weight of 76.7 tons (69600Kg). Mind you this is all per the manufacturer's spec sheet, Elon has talked about wanting to increase the power considerably, so I am left wondering why he wants to make it battery powered when it would take a massive battery installation to last a single shift, especially considering the machine can be plugged directly into the grid.
As far as tunneling speed, I suggest you look up the Gotthard Base tunnel. It was built in ~16 years. At the rate it took the incompetent boring company to build their smaller tuner with zero safety measures, it would have taken them 22 years to go the same distance assuming they used two machine
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Yes, and Mr Musk never over-estimated anything. Before real life proof is given these are just words on a page.
AFAICT he's never under-estimated anything. He seems to accomplish all of his major goals, except being on time. I can forgive that, personally, given all that he's accomplishing.
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That's because he lands rockets and cranks out more than half of the EV's in the world. And builds tunnels under LA. Does he still run a school in his spare time?
I have no idea if I like Elon Musk as a person. I do like everything he is doing and the report of him smoking marijuana and deciding he didn't like it was just a bonus (I like an open mind).
Your words describe why he has no trouble finding funding... but to me, they indict the likes of Bill Gates and friends. Bill could pay for all of SpaceX in CASH. And yet, what is Bill doing? He is securing his wealth rather than doing fun (risky and potentially EXTREMELY profitable) things.
Honestly, it is up to each in
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We could do much worse betting on a vanguard
You certainly could! [youtube.com]
Musky math (Score:2)
So its valuation earlier this year was externally estimated to be $26 billion [forbes.com] and just two months ago was self-reported at 27.5 billion [seekingalpha.com], and securing an additional half billion in funding suddenly pops it to $30.5?
Ali G [youtube.com] would be jealous.
Re:Musky math (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies trade at a multiple of cash-on-hand, plus the funding will be launching an unprecedented communications constellation next year which will itself be a major driver of ongoing revenue (some from me).
Yeah, that's worth more than $4B.
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Companies trade at a multiple of cash-on-hand
The question isn't whether there's a greater fool in existence who's willing to buy stock at a multiple of a company's cash on hand (or a company's value, for that matter). The question is whether cash on hand increases the value of a company beyond the amount of cash on hand. Any basic textbook you care to pick up will readily confirm that it doesn't.
which will itself be a major driver of ongoing revenue
This is closer in that future cash flow is one factor that can be used to calculate enterprise value, but since Starlink has been in the pipeline for quite
5g maybe not so baked in (Score:1)
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The peering around the rest USA from a sat?
Whats the next hop with sat? In the same city?
What 5G can do over a very short distance and a good series of tubes back to the internet will be the winning tech.
Hardware isn't the problem. (Score:1)
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Making people pay for the ping, peering and lag back from the sat "network" will be the funny selling part.
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Beat me to it. That was my concern; he plans to add well over 12,000 satellites to an already overcrowded orbital environment (not sure if LEO, MEO, or GEO though)
If China were to pull a stunt like they did in 2007, where they tested destroying a satellite but which resulted in thousands of dangerous pieces of high velocity debris, he could see billions of investment $$ smashed to bits in short order.
Teledesic (Score:1)
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Look guys, I found a project from 28 years ago that failed, so this too must fail! Ha ha, I am very smart.
From wiki - the only prototype for the Teledesic constellation was launched at a Cost per launch: US$40 million. That's for one satellite weighing in at around 300kg. A Falcon 9 can lift up to 22.000kg to LEO for an advertised cost of ~50-60 million USD. That's the commercial cost, the true SpaceX cost will be of course lower. You are right, the two projects are identical! You are so so smart!
Don't know if we will get broadband everywhere... (Score:3)
Can Elon ever come up with a fresh idea? (Score:2)
Someone call Ted Nelson, Xanadu has been re-branded.
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