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by JumpCrisscross 1264 days ago
> order of magnitude lower launch costs to LEO (about $1K/kg now for Falcon 9) and another two magnitudes with Starship.. is a blocking advantage

If they used it to block, sure. Starlink’s advantage is SpaceX’s margin.

> lasers don't work to the ground unless there are no clouds and stable atmosphere

Relay.
1 comments
marcusverus 1264 days ago
> If they used it to block, sure. Starlink’s advantage is SpaceX’s margin.

As long as Starlink competitors use SpaceX to reach orbit, the advantage is realized on both Starlink launches (as savings) AND on competitors’ launches (as profit). Doesn’t that make SpaceX’s advantage 2x their margin?

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JumpCrisscross 1264 days ago
> the advantage is realized on both Starlink launches (as savings) AND on competitors’ launches (as profit). Doesn’t that make SpaceX’s advantage 2x their margin?

Sort of. Every dollar of competitors’ launch margin doesn’t go to Starlink. SpaceX’s near-infinite fundraising capacity, and thus low cost of capital, is far more significant. (There are also orbital trade-offs between imaging and comms.)

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wpietri 1264 days ago
> SpaceX’s near-infinite fundraising capacity

I have to wonder how sustainable this is. From the perspective of an investor, I would not be excited by Tesla being down 70% off peak and Twitter becoming the most notable corporate clusterfuck of the year. Investing in SpaceX these days seems like a bet that the CEO will be so distracted by his other problems that he won't have time to mess with the people actually running it.

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bboygravity 1263 days ago
Do you have ANY substantiation for Twitter being a coorporate failure or are you just parotting the biggest Twitter competitors (newspapers)?
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wpietri 1262 days ago
What I actually said is "most notable corporate clusterfuck of the year".

We don't know how it's actually going. Musk is a notorious BSer, and as a privately held company, they don't have to release actual numbers.

But Musk took a company that was doing just fine, made a weed-joke-priced offer, changed his mind, tried to BS and wriggle his way out of the deal, and grudgingly went through it when it became obvious a chancery court judge was likely to force him to buy it anyhow. With that alone it was probably the most notable corporate clusterfuck of the year.

And that's before the actual takeover, where he loaded it up with so much debt that -- and this is according to him -- it could very well be bankrupt in short order. He then flailed around with his amateur-league management dramatics for months in ways that if you somehow missed, you can Google. All while ignoring a much more valuable company that's the source of his wealth as its stock price plummeted by 70%.

If you think there's a more notable corporate clusterfuck in 2022, please do name it.

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