SpaceX on Monday plans to send 23 more Starlink satellites into orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast.
Liftoff was pushed to 2:14 p.m., almost two hours from its original time, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Backup launch opportunities are available until 2:48 p.m.
The 10:34 p.m. launch is the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule with a crew on board, a pair of NASA pilots who will check out the spacecraft during the test drive and a weeklong stay at the space station.
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ONE ZERO MICHELLE LIFTOFF SPACEX LAUNCHED ANOTHER FALCON NINE ROCKET JUST OVER 30 MINUTES AGO FROM T
SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center
Updated: 8:11 PM EDT Apr 17, 2024
A SpaceX Starlink mission launched from the Space Coast on Wednesday evening.SpaceX has sent 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit with a Falcon 9 rocket launch. The rocket launched at 5:26 p.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.According to SpaceX, this is the 12th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which includes five other Starlink missions.Following stage separation, the booster landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.Watch the launch below
Florida —
A SpaceX Starlink mission launched from the Space Coast on Wednesday evening.
SpaceX has sent 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit with a Falcon 9 rocket launch.
The rocket launched at 5:26 p.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
According to SpaceX, this is the 12th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which includes five other Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the booster landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX is working with the National Reconnaissance Office to build a classified system of swarming spy satellites, according to a report published by Reuters. And while the $1.8 billion contract was reportedly signed in 2021, news of the program’s ties to NRO just leaked on Saturday—a great reminder that it’s entirely possible for some tech companies to do highly classified work for years without the public learning about it.
Astronomers Could Soon Get Warnings When SpaceX Satellites Threaten Their View
The new satellite spy network is being built under SpaceX’s Starshield unit, which also manages Starlink satellite internet. The program is described by Reuters as consisting of, “hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits.”
The five sources of information on the new program aren’t named in the new Reuters article, though one anonymous source is quoted as saying that “no one can hide” from the new satellite system.
The satellites can track targets on the ground and share that data with U.S. intelligence and military officials, the sources said. In principle, that would enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe, aiding intelligence and military operations, they added.
[…]
The Starshield network is part of intensifying competition between the U.S. and its rivals to become the dominant military power in space, in part by expanding spy satellite systems away from bulky, expensive spacecraft at higher orbits. Instead a vast, low-orbiting network can provide quicker and near-constant imaging of the Earth.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of a new satellite program being developed by SpaceX in February, but Reuters was the first to provide new information about the customer for what sounds like an incredibly powerful new spy system.
SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk have received criticism over the past two years as the billionaire has expressed skepticism that the U.S. should be involved in helping Ukraine during its fight against Russia’s invasion. The war started in Feb. 2022 and has killed tens of thousands on both sides, but Musk has become vocally opposed against the U.S. continuing to help its ally with intelligence and weapons. That would appear to be a big problem for the U.S. military establishment, since Ukraine is so dependent on Starlink satellite internet for command and control in the battlefield.
Musk infamously denied Ukraine use of Starlink to mount a counterattack of Russian forces in Crimea, a story told by his biographer Walter Isaacson, that was awkwardly walked back at Musk’s insistence after the book was published. But whatever actually happened in Crimea, there appears to be nervousness within the Pentagon about how reliant the U.S. military has become on Musk. And the leak of this latest contract between SpaceX and NRO proves the public probably doesn’t know the half of it.
As Reuters explained in the new report on Saturday:
The network is also intended to greatly expand the U.S. government’s remote-sensing capabilities and will consist of large satellites with imaging sensors, as well as a greater number of relay satellites that pass the imaging data and other communications across the network using inter-satellite lasers, two of the sources said.
NRO was formed in 1960 on the heels of some major failures by the U.S. Air Force to get a military satellite program up and running. The shoot down and capture of U-2 pilot Gary Powers by the Soviet Union in May 1960 was a highly embarrassing international incident for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, which made it obvious the U.S. needed to get some proper mechanical eyes in the sky that couldn’t be shot down by adversaries.
The establishment of NRO in 1960 was an attempt to make the nation’s spy satellites an independent agency that could service U.S. military customers and U.S. intelligence agencies without causing turf wars. Giving an agency like CIA, for example, sole control of spy satellites could lead to unnecessary internal competition with other agencies. At least that’s the way Eisenhower’s science advisors thought about it at the time.
While a system of swarming satellites deployed by U.S. intelligence may sound futuristic, it’s important to remember U.S. imaging capabilities are already incredibly advanced and frankly make the 1998 surveillance thriller Enemy of the State look like a documentary. As just one example, the existence of ARGUS-IS, a 1.8 gigapixel camera developed by Darpa and BAE Systems, was revealed in a January 2013 episode of the PBS documentary “Rise of the Drones.”
The ARGUS-IS could provide images of an entire U.S. city, while allowing users to zoom in on any part and see enough detail to capture someone waving their arms. And it’s a pretty safe bet that the realities of U.S. spying capabilities in 2013 were much more advanced than what the public was allowed to see on PBS. The mind boggles to think what kind of resolution America’s eyes in the sky can get a decade later, to say nothing of how SpaceX’s swarming satellites might change the game in low Earth orbit.
The new report from Reuters says roughly a dozen prototypes for this new swarming system have been launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets alongside other satellites presumably with civilian purposes. But that kind of thing is far from new. As Gizmodo reported back in 2017, NRO was intimately involved in the design of NASA’s Space Shuttle, even if we still don’t know many details about the payloads NRO was hitching a ride to get into space. Same as it ever was, it seems.
SpaceX is planning a Sunday evening launch for a number of Starlink satellites from its Florida launch facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:05 p.m. Sunday with backup opportunities until 11:03 p.m., if needed. In the event of a scrubbed launch, the company has a backup launch window opening at 6:40 p.m. Monday, March 11.The Falcon 9 rocket will be carrying 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. The satellites will join a growing constellation of internet satellites providing to more parts of the globe including to areas without terrestrial internet infrastructure.The Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this launch has flown 10 other times, including Crew-5 and Inmarsat I6-F2 among others.SpaceX is expecting to land the first stage booster on a ship stationed offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —
SpaceX is planning a Sunday evening launch for a number of Starlink satellites from its Florida launch facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:05 p.m. Sunday with backup opportunities until 11:03 p.m., if needed. In the event of a scrubbed launch, the company has a backup launch window opening at 6:40 p.m. Monday, March 11.
The Falcon 9 rocket will be carrying 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. The satellites will join a growing constellation of internet satellites providing to more parts of the globe including to areas without terrestrial internet infrastructure.
The Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this launch has flown 10 other times, including Crew-5 and Inmarsat I6-F2 among others.
SpaceX is expecting to land the first stage booster on a ship stationed offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX announced today that it will be sending some 100 Starlink satellites to an early retirement after a flaw was identified that could make them a worry later on. Don’t expect a fiery light show, though, and if you use Starlink, your service should be unaffected.
The announcement explains that “the Starlink team identified a common issue” in this subset of first-generation communication satellites that could “increase the probability of failure.”
I’ve asked the company for further details and will update this post if I hear back, but based on the description and context, it seems likely that the “failure” in question would mean a loss of control. 17 Starlink satellites are “currently non-maneuverable,” but SpaceX did not say whether this was due to the same issue as the 100 being deorbited.
Unpowered satellites are more or less just debris, even if at a low orbit like this one they’ll burn up in a few years rather than in a few hundred. One of the criticisms of mega-constellations like Starlink is their potential to contribute to the space junk problem, and SpaceX doesn’t want to be the one people point at when the sky is full of broken satellites.
That explains why, with these satellites were working perfectly well despite their age, SpaceX has decided to initiate controlled descents to take them out of orbit.
The descents will be triggered “in the coming weeks and months,” but these satellites aren’t capable of big moves, so this is more of a nudge in the downward direction. The deorbit process will actually take about six months, during which they will also “take maneuver responsibility for any high-risk conjunctions,” meaning if they happen to cross paths with another satellites, the Starlink ones will politely move out of the way.
They will fall one by one, not all together, so don’t bother watching the skies.
Users of Starlink need not fear, however, since there are still thousands of functioning satellites up there. Nearly 6,000 have been launched to date, and 406 have been deorbited, and others may not be operational, but there are more then enough of them to serve customers.
The FCC has made a final denial of Starlink’s application for $885 million in public funds to expand its orbital communications infrastructure to cover parts of rural America, saying the company “failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.”
As previously reported, the money in question was part of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, a multibillion-dollar program to subsidize the rollout of internet service in places where private companies have previously decided it’s too expensive or distant to do so. The $885 million was first set aside for Starlink in 2020, corresponding to the company’s bid on how much connectivity it could provide, at what cost and to which regions.
The FCC explained that this first application was a high-level, short one, and that those qualifying for that would receive closer scrutiny. For instance, one organization assigned over a billion dollars in funds turned out to be a regional operation that couldn’t possibly expand the way it hoped to.
In Starlink’s case, it was determined last summer that although the satellite internet proposal had promise, it was a “still developing technology” that required the user to purchase a dish, then priced at $600. Many people won’t pay that much for internet for a year, so it’s a serious consideration given the target demographic of people lacking resources. (In fact the FCC had considered not even letting orbital communications companies apply, but decided to allow them to compete on their merits.)
This was in addition to “numerous financial and technical deficiencies” the agency identified in the proposal and the company’s operations. That’s not to say it isn’t a well-run company with a good service for some, but that for the purposes of this auction and award, there were serious questions:
After reviewing all of the information submitted by Starlink, the Bureau ultimately concluded that Starlink had not shown that it was reasonably capable of fulfilling RDOF’s requirements to deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required to serve the 642,925 model locations in 35 states for which it was the winning bidder.
Starlink asked that the decision be reviewed, as is their right in this situation, claiming among other things that it had been held to an “inappropriately onerous standard.” It (apparently, for the relevant passages are redacted in the latest order) argued that although short-term testing showed declining speeds and other metrics, the company had a plan to launch more satellites and would be able to grow the network as claimed. It even leaned on the promise of SpaceX’s super-heavy launch vehicle Starship as evidence for these claims.
As the FCC points out, though:
A the time of the Bureau’s decision, Starship had not yet been launched. Indeed, even as of today [i.e. over a year later], Starship has not yet had a successful launch; all of its attempted launches have failed. Based on Starlink’s previous assertions about its plans to launch its second-generation satellites via Starship, and the information that was available at the time, the [Wireline Competition] Bureau necessarily considered Starlink’s continuing inability to successfully launch the Starship rocket when making predictive judgment about its ability to meet its RDOF obligations.
In a footnote it is pointed out that it was only after the denial was issued that SpaceX announced it would not be using Starship after all for the second generation of Starlink satellites.
Basically, though they see the merit to the approach, they couldn’t be 100% sure that this was the best use of the better part of a billion dollars. Perhaps in the next fund.
The two Republican FCC Commissioners, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, dissented from this decision. Simington perhaps rightly points out that “many RDOF recipients deployed no service at any speed to any location at all,” while Starlink was serving half a million subscribers at the time of rejection, many in areas not served by other broadband options. He dismisses the launch problems as quibbles in the Bureau’s “motivated reasoning.”
Carr, for his part, calls it politics: “After Elon Musk acquired Twitter and used it to voice his own political and ideological views without a filter, President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight to go after him…Elon Musk has become ‘Progressive Enemy No. 1.’ Today’s decision certainly fits the Biden administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment.”
Of course, the Starlink denial took place well before that acquisition and Elon Musk’s subsequent fall from grace (what of it he had), and the FCC is simply reaffirming the reasoning here today, not issuing it fresh. That’s quite a factual error to lead with.
Both men evince a faith in Starlink that may or may not be misplaced. With $885 million at stake, however, the FCC’s decision to err, if it did so, on the side of caution makes sense. The funding will go to other applicants and programs.
Though this money was never actually given to Starlink, the loss of income (or however such an award would be classed financially) is not easy to bear. That said, it likely knew its appeal of the decision was a long shot and has not been counting on this money for quite a while.
And although the company is not making money, it did recently reach “breakeven cash flow,” if its CEO Elon Musk is to be believed. Certainly its revenue has skyrocketed (from around $222 million to $1.4 billion), but that has come at great operating cost as the satellites required to service thousands of new customers are built and launched. It is behind its own predictions from some years back that it would be billions in the black by now, but it has at least demonstrated its capabilities convincingly both domestically and in warfare.
Maybe it doesn’t need that $885 million after all — the Pentagon’s money is just as green.
Elon Musk has offered his Starlink advanced satellite system to support internationally recognized aid organizations working in Gaza, following a communications outage as Israel steps up its military campaign in the territory.
Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel announced on Friday night that all landline, mobile and internet had been lost on the Gaza Strip after the Israeli bombing destroyed remaining fiber routes serving the territory.
The Israeli military action is in response to horrific terror attacks carried out by Palestinian extreme militant group Hamas in Southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,400 people and resulted in more than 220 people being taken hostage.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday that the military operation in Gaza Strip had entered a “new phase.”
Aid organizations, emergency services and media outlets operating on the Gaza Strip said the communications outage was severely hampering their work.
Cindy McCain, Executive Director Of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) reported on X on Saturday that it had lost contact with its teams in Gaza and that the situation was at a “tipping point”.
Musk offered Starlink’s services in a message on his X platform (ex-Twitter) in response to a post by Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in which she denounced the communications blackout.
“Journalists, medical professionals, humanitarian efforts, and innocents are all endangered. I do not know how such an act can be defended. The United States has historically denounced this practice,” she wrote.
Musk replied to the post: “Starlink will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.”
Starlink will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.
It is unclear whether the communications outage is due to a deliberate act by Israel or is collateral damage.
Senior Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, told the BBC on Saturday that disrupting the communications of an enemy was standard behaviour for the British and American armies during military operations.
However, he would not confirm whether Israel had deliberately cut communications in Gaza.
Musk’s offer follows in the wake of Starlink’s deployment in Ukraine after Russia destroyed its telecommunications infrastructure when it invaded the country in February 2022.
The tech tycoon courted controversy, however, when it emerged that he had refused to allow Ukraine to use the Starlink service to launch a surprise attack on Russian forces in September 2022.
The offer to aid agencies in Gaza was welcomed in replies on X, but some responders asked why it could not also be extended to all Gaza residents who are now cut off from their families in other parts of the territory and the outside world.
Whether you love Elon Musk or despise him, you have to admit he’s interesting. As he himself stated while hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 2021, “I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”
Walter Isaacson has written biographies of Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, and this coming week CBS’ sister company, Simon & Schuster, will publish his biography of Elon Musk. “You just have to say, ‘I want to talk to you about Elon Musk,’ and boom! People love talking,” Isaacson said.
Simon & Schuster
When asked what kind of access he had to Musk, he replied, “I said, ‘I want to be by your side for two or three years. I want to be in every meeting.’ And he said, ‘Fine.’”
As far as what Musk is like, Isaacson said, “There’s no single Elon Musk. He has many personalities. Almost multiple personalities. And you can watch him go from being very giddy and funny, to being deeply in engineering mode. And then, suddenly the dark cloud happens. It’s almost like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Isaacson writes that Musk’s volatility stems from a brutal childhood in South Africa, with his abusive father, Errol. “Everything is related to the traumas and the drives of childhood,” he said. “It made him adventurous. It made him so that he felt more comfortable with drama.”
Musk himself said, in a 2022 TED Talk, “I did not have a happy childhood, to be frank. It was quite rough.”
“It has left deep scars on him, the way his father treated him,” said Isaacson. “When he was bullied on the schoolyard, when his face was pounded into the concrete steps, and his father took the side of the person who beat him up instead of Elon. Errol Musk said, ‘I raised him to be tough.’ So, Errol Musk doesn’t make a whole lot of apologies.”
By age 31, Musk had founded and sold two software companies, making him a multimillionaire. One of them was PayPal. With thatmoney, he founded SpaceX.
Isaacson says the SpaceX factory floor is not like, say, Boeing’s: “Everybody here is willing to take risks, and they know how to move fast. When Musk and I would walk along this corridor and he would see people being a bit lethargic, or not enough people, he’d say, ‘Where’s everybody? Get this moving! This needs to be done by tonight!’ That would never happen in Boeing.”
And why the urgency? “He feels there’s an urgency for humans to become multi-planetary, to get to Mars,” Isaacson said. “He feels there could be a crisis on Earth, or something could happen, and we need to be a multi-planetary species.”
Pogue said, “If you’re the employee, your blood has gotta run cold when he comes by your station.”
“You know, there are people who really try to avoid eye contact, because he can be brutal,” Isaacson said. “He can get really mad. He can unload on people.”
Biographer Walter Isaacson, with correspondent David Pogue on the SpaceX factory floor.
CBS News
Musk is open about his Asperger’s syndrome, but he believes that expressing empathy with his employees will only slow things down. As Isaacson explained, “He’d say to me, ‘Yeah, I don’t have as much empathy. I’m not like you, I don’t want the person in front of me just to love me. I gotta get this mission done.’”
If anyone’s learned how to get along with Musk, it’s design chief Franz von Holzhausen. He’s been at Tesla for 15 years, shaping every Tesla model, including the radically designed, stainless steel Cybertruck. “Sometimes it’s not easy. You have to put some personal things aside, but ultimately the reward’s worth it,” he said.
Pogue asked, “Let’s say I’m Elon, and I’m saying, ‘We have to do it this way.’ And you, based on your entire career and wisdom, disagree?”
“Those moments, you agree to disagree,” von Holzhausen said. “But ultimately it’s Elon’s company. He’s the boss.”
These days, SpaceX and Tesla aren’t Musk’s only projects. There’s his brain-implant company, Neuralink; a tunnelling operation, The Boring Company; Tesla’s solar-roof division; and a new artificial-intelligence company, xAI. Tesla is also developing Tesla Bot, a humanoid robot designed to do our dirty work for us.
And then there’s Starlink, a constellation of 5,000 satellites that can bring an internet signal to the entire planet, including to remote regions and disaster areas.
Last year, Musk shipped thousands of Starlink terminals to help the Ukrainian military at no charge. But when he believed that Ukraine was going on the offensive, attacking Russian ships in Crimea last September, Isaacson says that Musk shut off their service there. “Musk felt that would lead to World War III,” Isaacson said, “and so, on his own, he decommissioned Starlink along the Crimean coast.”
In fact, as Isaacson has now acknowledged, that’s not quite what happened. Starlink wasn’t running in that region in the first place, but when Ukraine asked for service there, Musk did decline to activate it.
Pogue asked, “How does Elon feel about having this much global power?”
“You know, he says to me, ‘How am I in the middle of this?’” Isaacson replied. “But frankly, he loves it. He loves drama. He loves being the epic hero. I think it is a little bit dangerous, because he loves it too much.”
Huh? “He loves the letter X,” Isaacson said. “It’s mysterious to him. There’s SpaceX. There was X.com, his first payments company, that becomes PayPal. His son has a name that looks like a Druid auto-generated password [X Æ A-12 Musk], but they call him X.”
Musk has had 11 children with three women. Isaacson’s book reveals that Musk’s ex-girlfriend, musician Claire Boucher, whose stage name is Grimes, had a new baby boy last year. His full name is Techno Mechanicus Musk.
Isaacson said, “If you ask him what the biggest problem facing America these days is, [he’ll say] that we’re too risk-averse, we have too many referees and not enough doers, and that’s why we don’t build high-speed trains or rockets that can get to orbit.”
Already, the U.S. government hires SpaceX to carry our astronauts into orbit; contracts with Starlink to connect our military; and plans to pay Tesla to open its network of electric-car charging stations to all drivers.
But in a recent New Yorker article, journalist Ronan Farrow writes that the U.S. is becoming dependent on Musk even as he’s becoming more erratic. Farrow notes in his article that members of the Tesla board had expressed concern about Musk’s use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien, and also that Musk has not disputed he uses ketamine.
But whatever his eccentricities, Elon Musk really has changed the world. Tesla’s success triggered a global shift to electric cars, and SpaceX has now conducted 261 successful launches in a row for a fraction of the traditional cost to taxpayers, in large part, because the company figured out how to land its boosters after each launch and reuse them.
After helping launch the Falcon Heavy, its twin side booster rockets detach and then land upright near Cape Canaveral, April 11, 2019.
SpaceX
When asked if he admires Musk, Isaacson replied, “A biographer has to show the light and the dark strands. And you’ve got to be critical of the dark strands, you’ve got to be admiring of the light strands. But then the toughest thing is to show how they intertwine.”
“And how about his legacy?” asked Pogue. “Do you think we’ll be talking about Elon Musk a hundred years after he’s gone?”
“He brought us into the era of electric vehicles when GM and Ford had given up,” Isaacson said. “He said, ‘Yes, we can shoot astronauts into orbit,’ when NASA had decommissioned the space shuttle. So, a hundred years from now, we’ll still be baffled in some ways about how dark he could be, but we’ll say, ‘Yeah, yeah. He put his finger on the surface of history, and the ripples came out.’”
David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on “CBS Sunday Morning,” where he’s been a correspondent since 2002. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years, he wrote a New York Times tech column every week — and for 10 years, a Scientific American column every month.
Washington — Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian Navy base last year by declining Kyiv’s request to activate internet access in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea. Satellite internet service Starlink, operated by Musk-owned company SpaceX, has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk posted Thursday on X, formerly named Twitter.
There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.
The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and…
In the excerpt published by The Washington Post on Thursday, Isaacson wrote that in September last year, “The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.”
Musk had “spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States… (who) had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response,” Isaacson wrote.
Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”, according to Isaacson.
In another post on Thursday, Musk countered Isaacson’s account.
“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” Musk posted.
Russia’s ex-president and senior security official Dmitry Medvedev, in response to Isaacson’s detailing of the incident, lauded Musk.
“(Musk) was concerned about a retaliatory nuclear strike,” Medvedev posted on X Thursday. “If what Isaacson has written in his book is true, then it looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America. Or, at the very least, in gender-neutral America, he is the one with the balls.”
Musk also called Thursday for a truce in the conflict.
“Both sides should agree to a truce. Every day that passes, more Ukrainian and Russian youth die to gain and lose small pieces of land, with borders barely changing. This is not worth their lives,” he posted.
The technology mogul has been embroiled in previous public spats with Ukrainian leaders who’ve been angered by his controversial proposals to deescalate the conflict, including acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
In October 2022, eight months after he says he made the decision to deny Ukraine’s “urgent” request to extend the Starlink coverage, Musk changed course after suggesting he would stop funding the use of his satellite network by Ukraine.
Musk had said that SpaceX would not be able to pay for Starlink in Ukraine indefinitely, but the next day he said in a tweet: “The hell with it. Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
He changed his mind after the U.S. military confirmed it was communicating with the billionaire’s company about the possibility of U.S. government funding for Ukraine to continue using the satellite network.
Elon Musk recently reclaimed the title of the world’s richest person thanks to Tesla shares surging this year. But a spinoff and IPO of Starlink, the satellite-broadband unit of his private space business SpaceX, would make him substantially wealthier—and it may happen sooner than some people think.
In January, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya predicted that a Starlink IPO would happen this year—saying it’d be the biggest deal of 2023. He added that Starlink’s valuation “will be at least half of SpaceX’s current private worth.”
“It would not be legal for me to speculate about a Starlink IPO,” Musk said Saturday when asked about plans for a Starlink IPO by Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance in a glitch-filled Twitter Spaces talk. Then he broke out laughing.
Vance—who wrote a 2017 book about Musk and another one this year about the space industry—noted that SpaceX is private and wondered why Musk couldn’t discuss the matter.
“We’re private, but you cannot—it’s I think against regulations to talk with any kind of specifics about a future public offering,” the SpaceX CEO replied.
Musk in control
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journalreported that SpaceX was seeking to boost its valuation to $150 billion by letting employees sell stock. The company had raised $750 million at $137 billion valuation in January, CNBC reported at the time. The Journal reported last December that a trust associated with Musk owns 42% of SpaceX, down from 54% in November 2016 but still enough to keep him in control.
Starlink had more than 1.5 million customers as of early May and is according to investors the primary driver of SpaceX’s valuation, reported the Journal. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in February, “This year, Starlink will make money. We actually had a cash flow positive quarter last year.”
The Starlink network is designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere on the planet via thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit. Vance said he sometimes questions whether the business case for Starlink makes sense given the “incredible amount of money” spent on something that “may or may not work.” He asked if the business case was clear for Musk or if he had some of the same doubts at times.
“The business case is not subjective, it is objective,” Musk replied. “If you can provide a compelling internet connection, where the quality of the product and the price are competitive with terrestrial options—or often there are simply no terrestrial options—then you obviously have a business. So it’s not super complicated, it’s just, how good is you internet and what’s the cost.”
SpaceX told employees last summer that a Starlink IPO likely wouldn’t happen until 2025 or later, according to a CNBC report at the time.
In the interview with Vance, Musk also said that SpaceX has made well over 1,000 changes to the Mars-focused Starship, which exploded and failed to reach orbit in April during its first test launch. “The probability of the next flight working—or getting to orbit—is much higher than the last one,” he said. “Maybe it’s like 60%.”
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BURLINGTON, Iowa, October 25, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Winegard, the company dedicated to bringing the greatest range of connectivity solutions to the world, announces the addition of the flat high-performance Starlink to its product offerings. This new product provides high-speed, low-latency internet while in motion, is designed for permanent installation, and is more resilient to extreme environments.
The flat high-performance Starlink features a 140-degree field of view, allowing for consistent connectivity to Starlink’s satellites in low Earth orbit while in motion. This feature, along with enhanced GPS capabilities, makes the flat high-performance Starlink the ideal choice for connectivity on the go. Additionally, the Starlink is designed for permanent installation on the roof of an RV or other vehicle, eliminating setup time for users who frequently change locations.
“We’re excited to bring the latest iteration of Starlink technology, providing high-speed, low-latency internet while in motion on land, to Winegard’s customers,” said SpaceX Vice President of Starlink Business Operations Chad Gibbs. “From enhancing entertainment to providing critical safety applications, the new flat high-performance Starlink is a must for travelers and those who live a mobile lifestyle.”
Winegard is an authorized retailer of the flat high-performance Starlink. Winegard is partnering with dealers and installers to provide high-quality installations for customers from coast to coast within the United States. The flat high-performance Starlink can be purchased directly from Winegard.com or Winegard authorized dealers for professional installation throughout the country.
“The flat high-performance Starlink delivers the connected experience that RVers command while camping or in motion, and we look forward to making it available through OEMs, Dealer Partners and by offering to consumers directly,” said Winegard’s Director of Business Development and Sales Aaron Luttenegger.
About Winegard
Winegard is an American technology company that powers connectivity and enables independence. For 65 years, Winegard Company pioneered wireless solutions for people’s evolving needs. We worked with NASA on the Apollo 11 mission when the first humans explored the moon. We continue to explore new and exciting frontiers on the ground and in space. Today, we provide leading technology and foster harmony by erasing the lines between technology and the human experience. Winegard’s high-performance, essential technology solutions are designed and developed for where people live, work and play. Headquartered in Burlington, Iowa, Winegard has locations in Illinois, Indiana, Idaho, and Oregon. www.winegard.com
