"We aren’t trading speed for scale; we are demanding both," says the military's program manager.
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US Space Force confirms SpaceX will build sensor-to-shooter targeting network
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Ah good. More rent seeking to bolster the world's richest white supremacist's resources.
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At least it's on the contractor to deliver at that cost. That it's SpaceX could be good. But with a pie-in-the-sky IPO based on orbital data centers, that kind of undermines a hell of a lot of confidence in their future.
They could make good money just building rockets and launching shit. But no, they had to fuck around with the recipe and potentially lock themselves into a collision course with insolvency when AI crashes to Earth. Time will tell, I suppose.
Maybe someone can buy SpaceX as part of the insolvency and keep it going, sans Musk and his delusions. But that's a TBD kind of thing.
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He's going to be a trillionaire before Trump leaves office - regardless if you like it or not.
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Probably, but with a little luck maybe fate will do the funniest thing.
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All of this reliance on SpaceX, especially when this administration has basically neutered government oversight and public accountability, is going to end up making a single person far too powerful.
He’s already too wealthy to be held accountable for anything, and the deeper this goes the more powerful he will become, eventually reaching a point where he’s essentially untouchable.
And that’s all before you even take into account that he’s a racist pos who acts like a spoiled 12 year old when he doesn’t get his way.
He’s already too wealthy to be held accountable for anything, and the deeper this goes the more powerful he will become, eventually reaching a point where he’s essentially untouchable.
And that’s all before you even take into account that he’s a racist pos who acts like a spoiled 12 year old when he doesn’t get his way.
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Shame.
I liked MILNET more.
About the starlink issue...Starlink is cool! As far as Musk. Meh, either his luck runs out and Starlink/SpaceX get acquired by one of the other SpaceCo, or a bunch of asshole techbros who worship Musk will set a trillion dollars on fire to chase xAI. I am neutral to Maga on Maga securities fraud.
I liked MILNET more.
About the starlink issue...Starlink is cool! As far as Musk. Meh, either his luck runs out and Starlink/SpaceX get acquired by one of the other SpaceCo, or a bunch of asshole techbros who worship Musk will set a trillion dollars on fire to chase xAI. I am neutral to Maga on Maga securities fraud.
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I saw this same wishful think years back, when Obama was in office...
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There's conflicting claims out there. Can we get an update on the following questions here:
How's this relate to StarShield? Will all or some of the StarShield services (and satellites) be folded into SDN?
It appears that with StarShield, SpaceX footed the bill for the satellites, their launch, and operation/maintenance while using terminal costs to recoup the costs and make a profit?
But, unlike StarShield, the military will pay SpaceX $2.29 billion to deploy SDN. Stephen is waiting on an answer as to whether the government will directly operate SDN or if they'll pay SpaceX to operate it. But, what about the terminal costs - with the government owning the SDN, does that mean that the terminal pricing will reflect hardware costs instead of being used to defray the sat constellation cost?
How's this relate to StarShield? Will all or some of the StarShield services (and satellites) be folded into SDN?
It appears that with StarShield, SpaceX footed the bill for the satellites, their launch, and operation/maintenance while using terminal costs to recoup the costs and make a profit?
But, unlike StarShield, the military will pay SpaceX $2.29 billion to deploy SDN. Stephen is waiting on an answer as to whether the government will directly operate SDN or if they'll pay SpaceX to operate it. But, what about the terminal costs - with the government owning the SDN, does that mean that the terminal pricing will reflect hardware costs instead of being used to defray the sat constellation cost?
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I detest Musk as much as anyone here, but there genuinely isn’t a good alternative for SpaceX’s rocketry at this point for this use case. Which is why so many new contracts for things where there IS real competition have been given to BO and Rocket Labs. The Mars Telco orbiter contract going to RL should help them in a big way as should the new Luna contracts for BO.
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That's got to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever seen on Ars
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That's what you get for huge contributions to a political candidate and to not be named in the Epstein filez. Rewarded.
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If you detested musk as much as I do, you would recognize that the wings falling off of his plane wouldn't really make much difference to SpaceX's core competencies.
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Musk has a lot of blood on his hands from what he did while dismantling government agencies and organizations. It might not meet the legal definition of murder, but he knew what was going to happen, and did it anyway. Joyfully, no less.That's got to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever seen on Ars
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That's got to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever seen on Ars
Mass murderer.
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I'm pretty sure they're referring to DOGE cutting 80% of USAID's budgetThat's got to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever seen on Ars
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Mostly Ignorant
Ars Centurion
"Rent" in rent seeking is the excess payment an entity would receive for their services. Considering this is a fixed-fee contract, going against decades of cost-plus space and military contracts, you're 0 for 1 there.
One other aspect of rent seeking is providing little to no incremental value. Simply transferring wealth from one entity to another, in this case the public sector to the private sector. SpaceX has innovated lift and satellites services to a point that they can provide heretofore impossible levels of capability at a fraction of the price it would have even a few years ago. The value they will provide will be substantial by any objective metric (to say nothing of one's thoughts on the military applications of that value). So you're 0 for 2.
This isn't a defense of SpaceX or the US military, simply a response to a bad comment.
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No, actually, it doesn't mean that. Not to claim that Wikipedia is the end-all and be-all of knowledge, but rent seeking
Launching an unprecedentedly large number of satellites which are actually useful ("creating new wealth"), using a launch system (that you built) that is more efficient than any previous launch system ("creating new wealth"), and then charging a people a fee to use those satellites that you built, launched, and operate, is not "rent seeking".
It may be environmentally destructive--the environmental impacts of all those space launches and orbiting (and re-entering) satellites may outweigh their benefits--or it may be monopolistic (if no one else can or does launch their own satellite mega-constellation). But it's not like the Evil Billionaire just noticed this huge number of communications satellites up there--put there by God or aliens or whatever--and persuaded King Donald to grant him a monopoly over access to the things ("Cha-CHING, baby! Now let me have a monopoly on...THE SUN!!!"). Nor did the Evil Billionaire get a law passed prohibiting The Phone Company and The Cable Company from rolling fiber out to all the rural locations which didn't have decent Internet access (not to mention all the ships at sea). The Phone Company and The Cable Company were already failing to do that all by themselves.
And if SpaceX is in danger of becoming a monopoly--and it seems damned close to that, and that's bad--they did it by being better than their competitors*, so it's not really a surprise that everyone outside China has to grit their teeth and hire SpaceX when they need something done in space.
*And, okay, yes, it was more complicated than that. There were some lawsuits involved, not to mention some prior art made freely available by the U.S. government. But, it wasn't necessarily that much more complicated than that--the lawsuit was actually justified, and in the public interest, and the prior art was there for everyone to use, not just SpaceX.
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Can I quote you on the inevitable failure of SpaceX you are claiming?
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Mention Space-X and all the low information crazies get triggered, regardless of what the article is about.
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AI generated output. Great source to use on Ars.
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Don't modify people's quotes in an insulting way, or call them dumb
I would add to your downvotes but I'm happy I don't need to, the Ars community will take care of that.
Even from far away Europe I know what USAID was used for...
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Well in this case, the google AI output is a valid summary of articles posted on the web sites of well known universities. AI may be mostly hot garbage, but it's not always wrong.
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Not just their budget, but most of the USDH, LE, and PSCs as well. The ripple effects have decimated the aid ecosystem as USAID’s implementing partners lost their contracts.
It’s also crippling Ebola response, and violence is rising rapidly in a lot of countries where USAID was working. Worst of all, those doing the cutting knew exactly what was going to happen as a result, and welcome it.
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What is the cost of a starshield satellite? I don’t believe that’s public, nor the number of satellites being purchased for SDN, so not clear how this claim is verified?
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Please, the space-weapons tech bros in these comments don't like it when you talk about their leader like this. musk and spacex can do no wrong in their eyes. Ethics don't matter to sociopaths.
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The hypocrisy in the Ars comments is amazing.
(Not you).
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It’s like they are in a race to make every dystopian fiction reality in our lifetimes.
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Mostly Ignorant
Ars Centurion
Usually when I'm proven wrong, I double down and make a fool of myself. Kudos to you for going the other direction. Genuinely commendable.
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I try to make sure that I'm at least a correct douchebaggins and it's shameful when I'm not. Always improve your fighting position.
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Anyone else reminded of the news bulletin in RoboCop about the satellite misfire?
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So SpaceX have pivoted from Occupy Mars to Grok in Space and yet another way of killing people. If that’s the light of consciousness they’re allegedly sending to the stars, I think the stars would be better off without it.
Screw SpaceX. They can build all the fancy rockets they like, and yes, the technology involved will probably be very impressive. But I couldn’t care less about the technology if those are the kind of uses it’s being put to.
May the AI bubble burst and take their (SpaceX’s) house-of-cards, robbing Peter to pay Paul, financial foundations with it.
Screw SpaceX. They can build all the fancy rockets they like, and yes, the technology involved will probably be very impressive. But I couldn’t care less about the technology if those are the kind of uses it’s being put to.
May the AI bubble burst and take their (SpaceX’s) house-of-cards, robbing Peter to pay Paul, financial foundations with it.
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