Re: [Bloat] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Ajit Pai caves to SpaceX but is still skeptical of Musk's latency claims

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2020, David P. Reed wrote:

> On Saturday, June 13, 2020 1:43am, "David Lang" <david@lang.hm> said:
> 
>
>> Remember, Musk already sacked the starlink leadership once for being to stuck in
>> 'the way satellites are always built' so if it doesn't work well under load and
>> they can't fix it, he will find people who can.
> 
> He just might. Depends on who he asks. The fact that ATT literally couldn't 
> fix its network for at least a year, and spent most of that year blaming Apple 
> and the design of the iPhone, asking the right people isn't what arrogant 
> organizations are good at.

Musk has shown that he is not stuck on "this is the way we've always done 
things" and conventional wisdom. He's also shown a willingness to scrap existing 
plans and infrastructure when it is shown not to work.

> And firing people appeals to those who think Trump 
> is brilliant as a manager - he appeals because he says "you're fired". I think 
> sacking whole teams is an indication of someone who has risen to his level of 
> incompetence, but that's just my opinion.

he sacked the management team, not everyone, and when you are doing new stuff 
and you have people playing the "we'll just ignore the bosses instructions 
because we know the industry better" they deserve to get sacked.

take a look at the first pair of starlink test satellites (before the change) 
and what they are launching now. What they are doing now breaks a TON of 
'industry best practices' in satellite design, but the result is much cheaper, 
and much cheaper to lunch that allows scalability that wasn't possible with the 
old model.

traditionally, satellites are very expensive, because the cost to lauch them was 
so high that it made sense to put lots of money into each satellite. As launch 
costs plummet, you can afford a slightly higher failure rate potential to a 
drastic cost reduction.

Musk is overly optomisitic, but that's a good thing because without that 
optimisim he wouldn't even try the things he's doing. He has a solid track 
record of failing to meet his initial goal/deadline, but continuing to work and 
eventually exceeding his initial goals (even if it's a bit later than he 
planned)

I see no reason that starlink would be any different.

David Lang