News
Elon Musk says SpaceX will fund Starlink services in Ukraine
Elon Musk announced on Saturday that his company, SpaceX, would continue to run its Starlink internet service in Ukraine for free, a day after the tech billionaire claimed that the company could not indefinitely fund the service in the war-torn country.
“The hell with it,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
In September, according to a report by CNN, SpaceX wrote to the Department of Defense, requesting the Pentagon to take responsibility for covering the costs associated with Ukraine’s Starlink satellite internet use.
According to SpaceX, maintaining access to Starlink for the Ukrainian government will cost the business more than $120 million in the remaining months of 2022 and about $400 million in the following 12 months.
In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations & pay telcos for access to Internet via gateways.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2022
We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder.
Burn is approaching ~$20M/month.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” the company wrote in the letter.
Ukraine’s communications in its struggle against the Russian invasion have been largely dependent on Starlink, a network of more than 3,000 tiny satellites in low Earth orbit.
Watch Falcon 9 launch 52 Starlink satellites to orbit → https://t.co/bJFjLCzWdK https://t.co/GEWEJDLphl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 24, 2022
After news about the letter came out, Musk defended his company’s stance stating that SpaceX was not asking for the Pentagon to pay for previous expenses.
“SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “This is unreasonable,” Musk wrote.
It is unclear whether the Pentagon will move forward with Musk’s request, however, the US military acknowledged that it was in touch with SpaceX regarding funding for the crucial communication network.