Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for satellite services in Ukraine

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html

by lysp • 4 years ago

49 47 4 years ago

sega_sai3• 4 years ago

Call me conspiratorial, but I do find it weird that first there were these 'peace plans' from Musk, than reports of Starlink problems in Ukraine, then claims about the conversations with Putin (that Musk denied), followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk, otherwise he'll have to stop operating Starlink over Ukraine.

Maybe there is no connection between all these events, but I'm a bit sceptical of that.

wmf3• 4 years ago

The "problem" is that Ukrainian troops are advancing into cells that were not activated because they were Russian-held. You can see this on the map (assuming it's up-to-date): https://www.starlink.com/map No conspiracy theory is needed to explain this.

sega_sai3• 4 years ago

That sounded plausible to me initially, but then other news came in (as well as continued reports of issues with starlink). But it is possible that there is nothing sinister here.

superchroma• 4 years ago

Musk likes to look good. He weighs in on notable events to boost his brand. He is also an extremely savvy investor who is very greedy, and has routinely manipulated markets for profit. Considering he is willing to roll over for the chinese (with a direct link between tweet and outcome), I don't trust him. It's not cute anymore.

sega_sai3• 4 years ago

Yes I agree. I don't care if Musk trolls about twitter or about crypto or gamestop stocks, but here we're are talking about people's lives.

jhgb6• 4 years ago

followed now by the request for money from the Pentagon by Musk

As far as I'm aware, this didn't "follow" but was actually the first event, predating the other by weeks.

danso• 4 years ago

More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire.

Putting aside the costs, I'm curious how Musk reconciles giving critical support to the Ukrainian military with his apparent conviction that Russian victory is inevitable. If he truly believes that the threat of nuclear war increases the longer that Ukraine successfully defends itself, then it seems Musk would be keen a way to withdraw Starlink services from Ukraine.

fyfid47uddj• 4 years ago

Is this actually hard to understand? Because this sort of visible opining just seems like an extension of the "It's unethical to support people fighting for their freedom" propaganda that's popular with the anti-war crowd. It's not particularly hard to understand wanting to give an underdog better odds even if you can't gurantee a win for them.

jstarfish3• 4 years ago

I'm assuming he's playing both sides here. Why alienate a massive potential consumer market?

Maursault4• 4 years ago

A common narcissistic tactic to manipulate a victim is to provide what is needed, allow that support to become relied upon if not essential, and then all support is discontinued without warning. Maybe Musk is applying variation on a theme, maybe he's just honest to goodness unreliable and irresponsible for getting involved. Maybe Musk isn't a narcissist. Maybe he's also a sociopath, though sociopaths have no conscience and are prone to yelling a lot, they are also irresponsible and unreliable, mostly due to incompetence. Could Musk be incompetent? Though difficult to believe, it would explain some things.

jstarfish3• 4 years ago

It's only Narcissistic when the victim gives up something up in the process of becoming your dependent-- like a spouse forgoing a career to raise your children, and then you threaten them with a divorce that will leave them destitute and unable to provide for themselves. So they stay trapped in an exploitative arrangement.

What you're describing is the opposite-- a very entitled (and I daresay Narcissistic) interpretation of charity.

If you give a desperate man a dollar, you don't owe him the rest of your wallet.

more_corn• 4 years ago

I’m sure it has nothing to do with Ukraine embarrassing Elon by calling him out for a stupid ideas this week. For anyone who missed it, he posted some stupid tweet about ending the war by capitulating to russia’s demands and they told him to fuck off. Curious timing if you ask me.

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

Believe it or not life is complicated and some people realize that life is about probabilities and not about black and white the vast majority of time. I'm sure he's shoring up his bets both ways as it is a fairly low cost of entry for him and SpaceX on all fronts.

Rapzid• 4 years ago

The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service.

Dang, SpaceX is taking them to the cleaners.

wmf3• 4 years ago

For comparison, consumer Starlink service costs 230 PLN ($47) per month in Poland. AFAIK the consumer plan is not throttled, so what are they getting for $4,500?

simonh3• 4 years ago

They’re not the same devices. The premium terminals support higher data rates up to double those of the basic consumer units. There may be other improvements and advantages as well, there was talk of wider field of view of the sky, multiple simultaneous satellite tracking and redundant connections but I don’t know if those features made it into these devices. Starlink prioritised Ukraine for the latest gear.

mlindner• 4 years ago

You're pumping a lot less data through than military guys constantly using cell phones on the internet while sitting in trenches 24/7 and/or streaming steady real time video from drones and video chat.

Elon posted a graph of the data usage in Ukraine here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088

cyanydeez• 4 years ago

Russia has kompromat.

All the best conservatives have it

asojfdowgh• 4 years ago

Sounds more of a case of not realizing that spacex was supposed to negotiate with internet providers instead of taking the first value they offered.

Reminds me of ISPs harassing netflix to pay extra in addition to the prices they charged their consumers

https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/24/5541916/netflix-deal-with...

Assumably something similar is happening to SpaceX's offering

viczsaszbo• 4 years ago

$4,500/month is a bit less than Starlink maritime at $5,000/month. I can't imagine it's cheap to provide the support needed for a warzone. There aren't any similar services with public numbers to compare this cost to that are in an active warzone.

attentive2• 4 years ago

what sort of support is there that is specific for "active warzone"?

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

Seems like this is a drop in the buckert for the military $$ we're sending and they are definitely getting a lot of bang for the buck, I wonder if the DOD is dumb enough to let this program die out?

nocoiner3• 4 years ago

So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine (and funded by USG) at 5x retail? And now they’re attempting to extort the USG (who, by the way, is also their primary customer)?

I’m not a socialist, but SpaceX should be nationalized now. The capabilities that it provides cannot remain in the hands of its current majority owner. I’m happy to see it re-privatized, in the very near future, with ownership sold to more responsible, and less flighty, stewardship.

DeWilde3• 4 years ago

How do you know the service is zero marginal?

jhgb6• 4 years ago

So SpaceX cannot continue to maintain the zero-marginal-cost service for the terminals they sold to Ukraine

It makes absolutely no sense to say that this has "zero marginal costs". Internet connectivity for the ground stations has costs. Operation of the ground stations has costs. Supervision of the whole system has costs. Ongoing fighting of Russian countermeasures has costs. Ground stations and ground terminals even have opportunity costs -- possibly very large opportunity costs, considering the money the same hardware could be generating in rural US instead.

I’m not a socialist

Good for you.

but SpaceX should be nationalized now.

Now you are a socialist by definition. Congratulations. It started in my country in 1948 with large industrial concerns, then this trickled down all the way to self-employed people. You're at step 1 now.

nocoiner3• 4 years ago

You were so eager to write your rejoinders that you literally could not finish reading the final two sentences of my post? I think I fairly clearly anticipated and addressed most of your points in my post.

If you want to debate the wisdom of the U.S. Defense Production Act (apologies, I do not know what country you live in, based on what you said about nationalization of your industries - but if you’re unfamiliar with that law, feel free to look up it, or I’m happy to give you a capsule description if you like - I assume you have something analogous where you live, or maybe even a stronger version of it based on what you said in your post) or “too big to fail” and how I think that implies the necessity of temporary nationalization under exigent circumstances, then those are topics we could probably have an interesting discussion about. I bet we’d have some interesting disagreements!

But I do think it was fairly clear that I wasn’t calling for perpetual public ownership of formerly private enterprise.

VikingCoder• 4 years ago

I desperately want to know what exactly is the difference between the $60 per month for retail customers, $500 per month "Premium" (that Ukraine apparently requested) for businesses, the $4,500 Starlink is giving them, and the $5,000 maritime version.

TheLoafOfBread• 4 years ago

Markup, nothing else.

DeWilde3• 4 years ago

Security options?

Your average consumer doesn't have to worry about nation state hacking attacks, electronic warfare, and artillery strikes.

jhgb6• 4 years ago

SLA? My understanding is that this is typical for connectivity options. Whether you're on a 1:50 aggregation or 1:10 aggregation or 1:1 aggregation may massively affect costs of an X Mb/s connection for any offered value of X.

This gets especially important considering that businesses, militaries, and ships will already aggregate many users on a single link which means that with the aggregate traffic they'll already be using a higher proportion of the nominal bandwidth on average -- AND require higher guarantees for the service on top of it.

jelliclesfarm• 4 years ago

That Musk wants the US military to foot the upcoming cost of the Ukraine Russia war is entirely reasonable.

What’s unacceptable is that it’s discussed by him on Twitter and with his 108 million followers.

How can he be trusted with any more govt contracts if he is a blabbermouth?

revolutukr• 4 years ago

For us old-timers, this reminds me a great deal of the plot of "Operation Canadian Bacon".

Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for satellite services in Ukraine

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