u/hermxt4lyfe

Yet another interference issue with SpaceX when will markets wake up to ASTS technical capabilities

If Starship is struggling this hard then it probably means Starlink V3 may be delayed and therefore Starlink D2C V2 will be delayed. ASTS securing 10 launches even if pessimistically assuming End 2027 is looking good in comparison…

ASTS manufacturing cadence is improving as well. Proven technology with BBs with proven launch F9 vehicles seems like a better bet than inferior, not fully proven technology Starlink V2 D2C + unproven launch vehicle Starship.

Anyone knows if our ASTS birds are susceptible to this?

Napkin math for the cost of starlink terrestrial/satellite hybrid strategy. 

A COSTS

Everything I am quoting here is based off the top result on google. So if it may be off please feel free to correct me.

> The total area of the United States is about 105.8 trillion square feet(105,773,400,000,000 sq ft).

> Starlink dish Gen 3 Router Wi-Fi coverage range: Covers up to 3,200 square feet in open space.

> Therefore the number of dishes aka “cells” to cover the entire area of US that would be 105.8 trillion sq ft divided by 3200 sq ft is 33054187500 starlink dishes aka 33 billion dishes

> As per google AI search result Gen 3 Starlink dishes costs roughly 400 - 600 for Starlink to manufacture. 

> 33 billion dishes x 500 dollars = 16500 billion dollars = 16.5 trillion dollars.

Suppose for some reason I am off and the number of dishes required is only a fraction maybe 10% e.g not all the land needs to be covered by the dishes, only high density area which lets just say is 10% of the total US land. That is still 1.65 trillion dollars to deploy. 

1.65 trillion is just about the size of their market cap. WTF? 

B. BEYOND COSTS

And manufacturing cost is just the first step.

1. Who is going to deploy these dishes? How long will it take to deploy these dishes?

For those saying that the costs will be borne by starlink customers, why would they be incentivised to pay the 500 dollars for the dishes when they can just rely on their old MNO service with maybe a few dollars per month to ASTS?

Starlink runs into a “catch 22 situation” where people will only subscribe to the service if the service is really has good coverage. But to get good coverage, you need all these 33 billion dishes up in the first place. So ultimately starlink needs to be willing to foot the initial cost to deploy at least a large portion of the dishes maybe at least half which would be 1.75 trillion/2 = about 850 billion dollars.

Similar to how people will only buy electric cars if there is enough charging stations. So Tesla had to invest huge amounts to build the charging stations first.

C. HOW MUCH DID US MNOs SPEND ON CAPEX TO BUILD OUT TERRESTRIAL NETWORK?

Again, as per Google search:

Over three decades, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have collectively invested hundreds of billions of dollars—estimated well over $400–$500 billion combined—in capital expenditures (Capex) and spectrum acquisitions to build, upgrade, and maintain their national terrestrial cellular and fiber networks.

bullish for companies like PL ASTS and bearish for SpaceX rocketlab firefly?