{"id":44712,"date":"2024-06-19T18:43:39","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T10:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ars-live-recap-is-spacex-a-launch-company-or-a-satellite-communications-company\/"},"modified":"2024-06-19T18:43:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T10:43:39","slug":"ars-live-recap-is-spacex-a-launch-company-or-a-satellite-communications-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ars-live-recap-is-spacex-a-launch-company-or-a-satellite-communications-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Ars Live Recap: Is SpaceX a launch company or a satellite communications company?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"ars-video ars-video--horizontal\"><iframe class=\"absolute left-0 top-0 block h-full w-full object-cover\" allow=\"fullscreen\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QybbBmrRvcY?start=0&amp;wmode=transparent\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>      Produced by Michael Toriello and Billy Keenly. Click here for transcript.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Last week, during our inaugural Ars Live event, Quilty Space director of research Caleb Henry joined Ars space editor Eric Berger for a discussion of SpaceX\u2019s Starlink and other satellite internet systems. We discussed Starlink\u2019s rapid road to profitability\u2014it took just five years from the first launch of operational satellites\u2014and the future of the technology.<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">One of the keys to Starlink\u2019s success is its vertical integration as a core business at SpaceX, which operates the world\u2019s only reusable rocket, the Falcon 9. This has allowed the company not just to launch a constellation of 6,000 satellites\u2014but to do so at relatively low cost.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt one point, SpaceX had publicly said that it was $28 million,\u201d Henry said of the company\u2019s target for a Falcon 9 launch cost. \u201cWe believe today that they are below $20 million per launch and actually lower than that\u2026 I would put it in the mid teens for how much it costs them internally. And that\u2019s going down as they increase the reuse of the vehicle. Recently, they\u2019ve launched their 20th, maybe 21st, use of a first-stage rocket. And as they can amortize the cost of the booster over a greater number of missions, that only helps them with their business case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX was founded as a launch company in 2002, first with the Falcon 1 and then the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. But it is clear today that a significant portion of the company\u2019s revenue, if not a majority, comes from its Starlink satellite internet business. So is it still primarily a rocket company?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think today they\u2019re a satellite communications company,\u201d Henry said of SpaceX. \u201cI think it\u2019s interesting that St\u00e9phane Isra\u00ebl from Arianespace\u2014in the early days, like 2015, 2016 when Starlink was just announced\u2014would try to court customers and say, \u2018Do you want to fund your competitor?\u2019 And no one really took him seriously. Now people are taking him very seriously. [SpaceX is] the largest satellite operator in the world. They have literally more than doubled the number of consumer subscribers for satellite internet in the world.. This is a humongous, nearly unrivaled impact that they\u2019ve had on the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Please find our entire discussion in the video above, complete with a transcript.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Produced by Michael Toriello and Billy Keenly. Click here for transcript. Last week, during our inaugural Ars Live event, Quilty Space director of research Caleb Henry joined Ars space editor Eric Berger for a discussion of SpaceX\u2019s Starlink and other satellite internet systems. We discussed Starlink\u2019s rapid road to profitability\u2014it took just five years from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9638],"class_list":["post-44712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ars-live-conversations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}