This will be the first Ars Live event we’ve done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18:00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites five years ago this month.
SpaceX has now launched about 6,000 satellites with its Falcon 9 rocket and has delivered on its promise to provide fast Internet around the world.
In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base of about 3 million, SpaceX has also managed to control costs.
Based upon its model, therefore, Quilty estimates that Starlink’s free cash flow from the business will be about $600 million this year.
Are there credible competitors to Starlink in OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, or other planned megaconstellations?
During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day.
The original article contains 324 words, the summary contains 116 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Impressive. In the world of high-amounts-of-capital-required-to-start businesses, I think space internet is up near the top. That gives de-facto monopoly status to anyone who can launch.
I guess it helps when you also control the rocket company, which had government money to help develop.
There were a number of high profile attempts before this and they all sucked or failed.
Either way I’m pretty uncomfortable with Elon being in charge of this thing and hope he gets some competition soon.
I agree with everything you said and especially with the hope for competition (which in some ways there is, SpaceX is just miles ahead), but I just wanted to point out that basically every rocket ever developed was done with government funding :)
