The fact is that Elon, one man, has done more to support Ukraine in the fight against Putin than most countries on earth.
In fact even if Ukrainians weren’t receiving it for free Elon would still deserve credit FOR CREATING Starlink in the first place. Thereby allowing Ukrainians to have critical infrastructure in wartime.
The Russians would be parading Zelenskyy’s corpse through the streets of Kiev, if not for Elon’s help.
Sources:
Tired of the echo chamber? Join the right side of history
Obvious … is obvious.
Do…do you feel better now? Sounds like you needed to get that off your chest.
Sorry but Elon will not visit you in your sleep, no matter how much you praise him online.
Your sources are 11 months and 17 months old. I don’t think that refutes your basic argument, but it does certainly cause me to doubt the specific $3M figure. For example here is an article from 6/2023 that describes a new contract between SpaceX and USDoD: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-buys-starlink-ukraine-statement-2023-06-01/
It doesn’t include costs, but it’s hard to believe a new contract wouldn’t increase the $3M originally paid last year.
It’s also interesting to consider the marketing impact of donating terminals and service to Ukraine. Does that drive paid service in other parts of the world that exceeds the cost of operations in Ukraine? I think that data is not likely to be available outside SpaceX, although Wikipedia does list pretty steady growth of subscriber numbers (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Subscribers). So Musk’s support of Ukraine may not be entirely altruistic.
It’s estimated that 85% of spaceX funding comes from the government:
Why is the government buying launches a bad thing? SpaceX provides a service that they want. The money would just have gone to Lockheed and Boeing otherwise
