I want SpaceX to continue to help Ukraine (and I loathed Elon's public crying about it), but I think it's a bit much to ask a private company to just eat the costs and not complain, especially when I don't think SpaceX has a lot of cash on hand. Hopefully there is a remedy, and this can quickly be resolved. $400M just today was added to aid to Ukraine, you'd think SpaceX and NATO/DoD could strike a deal, especially if these have been valuable battlefield tools.
Agreed, but I don't understand the cost structure at all. Basic Starlink service in the US is $110 a month, and all these quotes are for service fees in Ukraine are on the order of $2500-$4500 a month. I totally get that deploying into another country (and a war zone at that) may have some structurally higher costs due to currency conversions and extra support, but 20-40x seems absurd.
I would love to have some explain to me why I am wrong, but this seems like war profiteering to me.
how about 20-40x for 20-40x the traffic? streaming Netflix all day long isn't the same thing, bandwidth-wise as supporting an entire military base. Comcast gets to charge different rates for home vs business, it seems military traffic which runs at a higher priority than business class should be straightforwards to charge more for. We can disagree over the exact price to charge but the different QOS seems justified.
Where did you get 20-40x the traffic? When their business class dish has basically two dishes built in, and you get, basically double the bandwidth. Unless they are setting up arrays of these things, nobody is getting much more bandwidth than a home user. Otherwise that would mean each site has effectively 20 terminals, and each terminal would cost $2500/mo.
And who in Ukraine are they competing with for bandwidth? Did they start selling terminals to civilians too?
The only way I can see justifying the price, is because ground stations are required nearby, as there is no sat to sat communication yet. Getting internet to a ground station in a war zone might be expensive and dangerous.
There are multiple tiers to Starlink (residential, RV, boat, plane, …). I don’t think Ukraine gets the most basic plan with limited bandwidth and meant for stationary dishes.
If I understood correctly some are used as a backbone for their internet infrastructure and some on the field on moving vehicles. The $110 plan wouldn’t cover those use cases.
What is odd is that it's obvious the Pentagon will pay the costs (given their military utility) but instead of quietly reaching out to them Musk made a public complaint, then withdrew it, claiming he'll pay.
It's really difficult to figure out what's going though his head.
Seems to have worked fine to make the Pentagon anxious to get the negotiation done rather than sit on the whole thing for as long as humanly possible (what I’d expect as a default from a bureaucracy of that size):
> “Negotiations are very much underway. Everyone in our building knows we’re going to pay [SpaceX],” the senior Pentagon official told CNN, adding that the department is eager to have commitments in writing “because we worry [Musk]’ll change his mind.”
Whether this was a deliberate negotiation strategy or a simple case of Musk being Musk in public, I can’t tell.
I think him telling the military he doesn't want to pay for it anymore privately would have done the job. It's not like they're short of cash, $44 billion has been allocated to UA's defense.
“Negotiations are very much underway. Everyone in our building knows we’re going to pay them,” the senior Pentagon official told CNN, adding that the department is eager to have commitments in writing “because we worry he’ll change his mind.”
I have no opposition whatsoever to paying for Starlink service - but how much can service actually cost? Transit for a few terabytes of data must be on the order of dollars per day. I guess if the terminal sales price was greatly marked down and they intend to make the rest up on service charges -- even then, this is more of an "opportunity cost" than an actual cost, no?
If you have a bank account with $100 in it, a $10 daily expense will deplete your account in 10 days. A $10 daily opportunity cost would never deplete your account.
>A $10 daily opportunity cost would never deplete your account
Well that's assuming you have no expenses. In your example the difference between realizing the opportunity cost or not is the difference between 10 days of runway and paying the bills in perpetuity.
Bills pile up no matter what, so there's only a limited amount of opportunity cost you can afford to eat.
