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Musk Faces Many Challenges. And He's a Threat to Rural Broadband. [1]

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Date: 2025-02-11

DailyKos has been doing a fine job of noting Tesla’s current state of affairs. The stocked peaked at $488 and is now at $328, grinding its way down to who knows where. The proverbial falling knife. Every dollar it drops brings Musk’s net worth down by over $600,000,000. Today’s tab is around $13 billion. Perhaps there is a lesson there somewhere. The one about not biting the hand that feeds you. Tesla’s customers tended to be people who were environmentally sensible. You know, the ones that MAGA hates. Tesla is not in danger of failing anytime soon, but the spectacular valuation days may be drawing to an end, along with a big chunk of Elon’s net worth.

That twitter purchase didn’t exactly pay for itself either. X is a private company, but is estimated to be worth about 80% less than the $44B he ponied up for the company. Advertiser boycotts and fleeing subscribers aren’t helpful, I’m sure.

SpaceX has been a spectacular success for Musk. Who doesn’t like to see those Falcon 9 boosters returning to earth? Wonderful engineering. SpaceX has absolutely dominated the space launch business for several years now, with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy carrying payloads for many customers, reliably, at relatively low cost, and with few competitors.

But launching is a tough business, and the days of no competition are coming to an end. Blue Origin’s New Glenn has now successfully launched. They’ve not yet demonstrated booster recovery, but that will happen. It can carry a significantly heavier payload than Falcon Heavy flown with recovered boosters, and a much larger volume. ULA’s Vulcan is in the mix as well, and has quite a few national security payloads booked. Options are a good thing for launch customers.

And now it seems SpaceX is now more of a satellite ISP these days than it is a launching service. They make more money from Starlink than from launch fees. And they need to, because that Starship development is enormously expensive to fund. And the future utility and cost effectiveness of Starship are very much unproven at this point. Especially for that upper stage. Starlink is his most important source of income, and will be for quite some time.

With his Doge co-presidency, Elon Musk is in a position to cement Starlink into a role that could lock in a reliable revenue stream for the foreseeable future. Biden’s infrastructure funding has been key in expanding options for rural broadband. Competition for Starlink. And he’ll want to stop it. And, while he’s at it, he can get the FAA out of the way of his Starship launches. No more time-consuming investigations for raining down debris. What more could he want?

I confess to being a reluctant Starlink customer, because I have had few options. Starlink, slow satellite, or a low-bandwidth wireless ISP. Starlink has done the job for me, reliably and relatively cheaply. But I hate what I’m funding. And now there is an option, with the rural broadband initiative funding fiber to our neighborhood. Thanks to Biden. Higher speed and lower latency. Cheaper, too. And it will be operating soon.

There really are not many other options. Kuiper is a long way off, and only benefits another billionaire. And it will bring the same sky pollution as Starlink. Rural broadband via fiber is the key to bringing internet access to those of outside the city. Just like rural electrification and rural telephone service was just a few decades ago. But it is a threat to Musk’s most important revenue stream, and I’m sure it is high on the de-facto president’s kill list.

We have so many battles to fight, but this one is more important than it looks. Reach out to your Representatives and Senators. We don’t need a monopoly, controlled by Musk, providing an indefinitely supply of money for whatever he wants to do.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/11/2303031/-Musk-Faces-Many-Challenges-And-He-s-a-Threat-to-Rural-Broadband?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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