NSR estimates for SpaceX are higher than what SpaceX claims (Gwynne Shotwell just claimed some Morgan Stanley estimates of $1M launch + $1M to be way off [1]), but still, I wouldn't expect them to be able to launch the 4,409 satellites of their intial design for less than $10B. And it's not clear that they will be able to raise such amount of money without a clear path towards profitability.
I agree with the shaklee3, Tim's blog is very legit. As full disclosure, I am the first author of the MIT study he mentioned, and the more I look into LEO mega-constellations, the more skeptical I become.
Streaming uses lots of bandwidth, but it's not necessarily the majority of browsing activity. High latency is painful if you're doing things like browsing Reddit.
The blog you're citing claimed Starlink was getting canceled a year ago, so I'm a bit skeptical of its use as an oracle.
> Another hint that Starlink is going away was the statement that BFR is expected to consume the majority of engineering resources after the commercial crew development has been completed for NASA next year, despite Starlink supposedly costing more to develop than BFR ($10B+ compared to ~$5B) over the next 5 years.
Browsing Reddit is perfectly fine on satellite internet. It's obviously not as fast as cable, but it's not the satellite internet of 10 years ago people judge it on.
TMF is probably the most accurate consultant in this industry if you read the whole blog. He tends to be opinionated, which you won't find on places like spacenews.
Either way, it's not productive arguing. It's like the Tesla versus anti-tesla camp, and that certainly won't be settled anytime soon.
NSR estimates for SpaceX are higher than what SpaceX claims (Gwynne Shotwell just claimed some Morgan Stanley estimates of $1M launch + $1M to be way off [1]), but still, I wouldn't expect them to be able to launch the 4,409 satellites of their intial design for less than $10B. And it's not clear that they will be able to raise such amount of money without a clear path towards profitability.
I agree with the shaklee3, Tim's blog is very legit. As full disclosure, I am the first author of the MIT study he mentioned, and the more I look into LEO mega-constellations, the more skeptical I become.
[1] https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/11877454453611806...