some interesting tidbits in that article 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better than the gen 2 consumer dishes. yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full. I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink can't scale" argument David Lang On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote: > SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon: > https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html > > They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things like mobile connectivity. > > Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid? > > Larry > > > ________________________________ > From: Starlink on behalf of David Lang via Starlink > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM > To: Kurtis Heimerl > Cc: Starlink list > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army? > > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure > is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent > (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works > out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high. > > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be > driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he > also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related" > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be > either) > > David Lang > > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote: > >> This thread (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$ ) >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but >> not on the basic model. >> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink >> wrote: >>> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the >>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If >>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows >>>> raise way above the hairline. >>> >>> Uh. Hmm. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Starlink mailing list >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$ >> _______________________________________________ >> Starlink mailing list >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$ >