[ben_w]

I broadly agree, though I wouldn't call it a Ponzi scheme. Not just because Musk's a bit litigious*, but because a Ponzi scheme is a very specific thing and I think, decades from now, what Musk is doing today will get its own name.

Where I disagree:

> You should be able to do the same thing by pointing dishes at each other long distance and having local nodes broadcast 5g. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than rocket launches and most telecom companies already do it.

Radio is "line-of-site" at these wavelengths, it doesn't diffract much around the environment. Being 500 km up gives you a clear path to a big patch of ground (and sea), which is why they only needed to get to around 10k units for worldwide coverage.

For scale, Czechia has about 700 microwave links; if this scales up proportionately then just the EU is by itself probably has several times as many links in total as number of birds in the entire Starlink constellation: https://www.racom.eu/eng/case/cetin-leverages-ray-technology

* though that's a good reason all by itself; shame he's not practicing what he preaches about free speech absolutism.

[sawyers]

Agreed. Land coverage from space is going to have a larger line of site.

I'm wondering more about unit economics. 10k units for global coverage with ongoing maintenance cost. Or earth bound construction that costs significantly less than a rocket launch.

You could realistically prefab and ship microwave links or base stations. It would be extremely cheap compared to space.

What I'm thinking though is that there's no real estate in space. So you don't have to do any surveying, leasing, etc. You just launch a rocket. Which means if you fund anything in space, you can grow it to scale as long as you have the capital.