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Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet. (arstechnica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/spacex
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This will be the first Ars Live event we've done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18:00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.

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[–] threelonmusketeers 2 points 8 months ago

2 - A lot of Starlink income currently is from selling terminals, which is a very finite market.

3 - Nobody can actually check these numbers, since they’re not public.

Excellent points.

I am less convinced by your first point. While they haven't had many satellites reach end-of-life yet, they certainly haven't slowed their pace of Starlink launches. Are the cost of these launches factored into the FCF calculation? (I know very little about economics)

Also, they will likely want to switch Starlink launches over to Starship as soon as possible, as that will allow them to launch more, larger satellites (v3) for cheaper. If they can have positive cash flow while they are still building out the constellation using a (relatively) expensive launch vehicle, would that not bode well for long-term profitability?