The tech billionaire and Trump adviser “donated” Starlink service to the White House. The move resembles a previous maneuver by Microsoft, which used “free” trials to lock in costly upgrades across the federal government.
After all of the sketchy contracts that musk seems to be getting under this regime, the next administration should nationalize SpaceX. With their corrupt self dealing, perhaps give him a dollar or so for it.
So there were some military contracts that were just awarded.
54 missions total:
SpaceX: 28 missions, $5.9 B = $210.7 M per launch
ULA: 19 missions, $5.4 B = $284 M per launch
BO: 7 missions, $2.4 B = $342.9 M per launch
SpaceX did get the most money, but they were also the cheapest provider due to their reusable 1st stages.
Just with those 9 extra launches over ULA SpaceX saves the US government and taxpayers 668 million dollars.
If SpaceX didn’t exist, it would have been
82 billion more but actually worse since the other providers can’t supply that much and wouldn’t have had as much competitive incentive. Just look at BO the next one which was almost 60m more than ULA. It easily could have ballooned to 4b more adding a 3rd even more expensive option.Doesn’t seem so self dealing to me, they were able to bid lower and win more, and saved, (I’m assuming you given your
rageupset) a shit load of money.This is what SpaceX has been doing for years, well before he got in bed with Trump.
That‘s how silicon valley has been operating for longer than I live. You bet that‘s what‘s happening as has been happened a million times.
The difference here is that felon charges the government a fuckload to use Starlink already. Trial was years ago.
Not really though. Starlinkn doesn’t scale up well. And it only makes sense in niche circumstances. And it is vulnerable. You could easily imagine a future president just taking it over for national safety reasons.
“There’s nothing more expensive than a free gift.” - Michel de Montaigne
