Comment by kortilla

> Spacex is a private company; this means "we" know nothing about actual costs. Fundraising documents dont show this either, as they are a washed-down version for, well, fundraising purposes. As an investor, it is common practice to sign an NDA just to get access to actual somewhat relevant numbers, so any actual relevant info isnt public.

None of this is correct. You don’t get fidelity as an investor repeatedly publishing fraudulent documents.

Also, it’s not like spacex can hide costs. There is no other supply of money to cover operations.

> You also seem to not be aware that there are multiple internet satellite providers with south pole coverage, as well as other regions in the globe.

They are a joke. Completely different leagues of access. Coverage of the South Pole (not McMurdo) got effective continuous bandwidth around the throughput of dialup and periodic passes from a polar sat to upload scientific data.

GEO is absolutely terrible in terms of latency and cost. Starlink is currently the only good option for the entire ocean and any remote place on earth not reachable by fiber infra.

The only up and coming potential competitor is Amazon’s Kuiper/Leo. China is also experimenting here but it’s not clear that will be available to the world.

Claiming there are alternatives to Starlink is extremely ignorant. It only takes a brief glimpse of what it’s doing to both maritime and aviation to understand that it’s unique.