It is nice to see it works so well but the pricing is still a mystery.
Yes. I’m seriously considering it for an Internet backup strategy for work from home capability. If it’s not too expensive. OTOH the more expensive it is, likely for the US anyway, the fewer people on it and the better the overall performance. I suspect the ideal price/performance ratio for Starlink will have it be just enough more expensive than cable that people won’t flock to it and thus keep it performant, at least over the USA. Say $150/month (a suggestion).
I just find it ironic that Elon has completely inverted the IRIDIUM paradigm. Back in 1989, I teamed up with two executives at TRW to attempt to get that company in the commercial space launch business. We thought we had struck the mother lode when Colonel Ted Kehl, from the Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems shop at the Ballistic Missiles Office, retired. We learned from him that he was going to Motorola, to procure all of the launch services for the IRIDIUM system of 66 satellites, providing wireless phone service world-wide.
Well, now, there was a market for launch services! Initial constellation deployment, followed by maintenance, could provide a solid market for launch services. The market was what we were desperately trying to find.
Dan Goldin was the VP of our division, and our only executive advocate within TRW. When he was called on to become the NASA Administrator, he recused himself from all decision-making. TRW Launch Services Organization was shut down 5 days later.
I retained my contacts with Motorola, and started my own launch services company in 1993. We managed to get a contract for the launch of 20 IRIDIUM replacement satellites, worth $89 million. It wasn’t financeable, unfortunately, and IRIDIUM went bankrupt about the same time we were doing flight demonstrations at Edwards AFB.
It is the height of irony that Elon managed to get his low-cost launch services company going, and then use it to launch a huge communication satellite constellation! Much bigger than Teledesic, the Craig McCaw/Bill Gates Potemkin communication satellite network, and in fact bigger than the sum of IRIDIUM, Teledesic, Celestri (a Potemkin Motorola follow-on to IRIDIUM), Odyssey (TRW’s Potemkin LEO-satcom farce), and Globalstar.
If you’re wondering why I keep using the term “Potemkin,” it’s because all of the constellations apart from IRIDIUM and Globalstar were financial ruses. Starting with Teledesic, McCaw learned that he could use the very credible Motorola IRIDIUM idea to flip spectrum purchased at the WARC – but only by pretending to build a huge LEO comsat system. Every company engaging in this pretended to be planning a huge satellite constellation, but none of them had any intention of doing so. They did exercise the low-cost space launch startups, heavily, and put most of us out of business writing proposals for launch services they had no actual intent to buy.
My admiration for Elon grows with every one of his projects. I’m really looking forward to using Starlink, myself.
This date: Dec. 21, 2015 changed everything, for this enabled the economics behind Starlink. I was a consumer of GEO satellite Internet in the days of McGraw and Teledesic and was very keen on the concept but well aware that launch costs of around $250M per (at the time) would never enable it.
It’s every bit as significant a date in aerospace as was Dec. 17, 1903.
Craig McCaw, sorry forgot to check the spelling before posting…
I remember wondering at the time why smart, wealthy people would invest so heavily in comsats when there were lower-risk industries at sea level. Now it makes sense.
In all seriousness, cool story.
BtW Michael S. Kelly, that is all great insight. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
It is nice to see it works so well but the pricing is still a mystery.
Yes. I’m seriously considering it for an Internet backup strategy for work from home capability. If it’s not too expensive. OTOH the more expensive it is, likely for the US anyway, the fewer people on it and the better the overall performance. I suspect the ideal price/performance ratio for Starlink will have it be just enough more expensive than cable that people won’t flock to it and thus keep it performant, at least over the USA. Say $150/month (a suggestion).
I just find it ironic that Elon has completely inverted the IRIDIUM paradigm. Back in 1989, I teamed up with two executives at TRW to attempt to get that company in the commercial space launch business. We thought we had struck the mother lode when Colonel Ted Kehl, from the Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems shop at the Ballistic Missiles Office, retired. We learned from him that he was going to Motorola, to procure all of the launch services for the IRIDIUM system of 66 satellites, providing wireless phone service world-wide.
Well, now, there was a market for launch services! Initial constellation deployment, followed by maintenance, could provide a solid market for launch services. The market was what we were desperately trying to find.
Dan Goldin was the VP of our division, and our only executive advocate within TRW. When he was called on to become the NASA Administrator, he recused himself from all decision-making. TRW Launch Services Organization was shut down 5 days later.
I retained my contacts with Motorola, and started my own launch services company in 1993. We managed to get a contract for the launch of 20 IRIDIUM replacement satellites, worth $89 million. It wasn’t financeable, unfortunately, and IRIDIUM went bankrupt about the same time we were doing flight demonstrations at Edwards AFB.
It is the height of irony that Elon managed to get his low-cost launch services company going, and then use it to launch a huge communication satellite constellation! Much bigger than Teledesic, the Craig McCaw/Bill Gates Potemkin communication satellite network, and in fact bigger than the sum of IRIDIUM, Teledesic, Celestri (a Potemkin Motorola follow-on to IRIDIUM), Odyssey (TRW’s Potemkin LEO-satcom farce), and Globalstar.
If you’re wondering why I keep using the term “Potemkin,” it’s because all of the constellations apart from IRIDIUM and Globalstar were financial ruses. Starting with Teledesic, McCaw learned that he could use the very credible Motorola IRIDIUM idea to flip spectrum purchased at the WARC – but only by pretending to build a huge LEO comsat system. Every company engaging in this pretended to be planning a huge satellite constellation, but none of them had any intention of doing so. They did exercise the low-cost space launch startups, heavily, and put most of us out of business writing proposals for launch services they had no actual intent to buy.
My admiration for Elon grows with every one of his projects. I’m really looking forward to using Starlink, myself.
This date: Dec. 21, 2015 changed everything, for this enabled the economics behind Starlink. I was a consumer of GEO satellite Internet in the days of McGraw and Teledesic and was very keen on the concept but well aware that launch costs of around $250M per (at the time) would never enable it.
It’s every bit as significant a date in aerospace as was Dec. 17, 1903.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_first-stage_landing_tests#Flight_20
Craig McCaw, sorry forgot to check the spelling before posting…
I remember wondering at the time why smart, wealthy people would invest so heavily in comsats when there were lower-risk industries at sea level. Now it makes sense.
In all seriousness, cool story.
BtW Michael S. Kelly, that is all great insight. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.