What if I told you that a 164-foot tall flying Pez dispenser that spits 450-pound candies into space is about to change how the entire world uses the internet and maybe even create the world's first trillionaire?
No, I did not drop acid with my Wheaties this morning.
On New Year's Eve, SpaceX unveiled the first video render of the company's massive Starship deploying the all-new Version 3 Starlink internet satellites — and revealed two jaw-dropping specifications. Don't worry if you don't have the context for what those numbers mean because your Friendly Neighborhood VodkaPundit™ is here to help.
Before we get to the nitty gritty details, watch the video, and you'll understand why Elon Musk likes to joke about his flying Pez dispensers.
Each of those Pez candies is actually a third-generation Starlink internet satellite about the size of a tabletop and weighing over 400 pounds.
Now, let's talk about the numbers in a way that even a math-deficient layman like me can understand them.
"Soon, Starship will launch our V3 Starlink satellites, which will add 60 Tbps of capacity to the network per launch," SpaceX announced, "more than 20x per Falcon 9 launch today."
These are terabytes per second. A heavy internet user — like my household with two work-from-home parents and two teenagers — goes through about one terabyte per month. If my math is correct, every terabyte of Starlink capacity can serve roughly 2.5 million customers.
In 2024, StapceX flew 89 dedicated Starlink launches at a cost of roughly $30 million each. Call it $2.7 billion in launch costs. Adding the same amount of usable bandwidth using Starship would require 4.5 launches, so let's round that up to five and get some extra connectivity for our happy customers.
The goal is to get Starship costs down to just $2 million per launch, or $10 million to put up more than 60 terabytes of capacity. Falcon 9 — currently the least expensive way to get to orbit — costs 270 times more per orbital terabyte than Starship will. That's a combined function of Starship's lower launch cost and the more powerful V3 satellites that can't launch on Falcon 9.
(I'm ignoring the cost of the satellites themselves, estimated at a mere $500,000 apiece — or about 600 times cheaper than a single geostationary communications satellite. That's for the current V2 mini model. V3 will presumably cost more but will also be much more capable. I'm also leaving out replacement costs. Those Low Earth Orbit satellites must be deorbited and replaced every 5-7 years.)
Currently, Starlink says it has 4.6 million paying customers. But if my estimates are correct, it already has enough bandwidth for another million, even before Starship radically decreases the costs.
Should Elon Musk decide to engage in a price war with Comcast or other terrestrial-bound internet service providers (ISP), it's a war he will win — at least in the 'burbs and rural areas where Starlink makes the most sense. Urban areas can suffer congestion due to population density, and there can only be so many Starlink satellites overhead at once. Then again, I'm not privy to how much bandwidth V4 or V5 birds will deliver. Maybe urban congestion is a solvable problem.
A quick look at the orbital competition reveals... not much competition. "One single launch beats every other satellite provider currently operating in the US combined," one X user noted. "Hughesnet (the largest competitor by far), according to Grok, has a total network capacity of 30-50Tbps." And the service is worse, too. Hughes can't touch Falcon 9's launch costs, much less Starship's.
Starlink is getting into the smartphone game, too, with its "Direct to Cell" service. Partnered for now just with T-Mobile in the U.S., according to Grok, "the service allows for text messaging, voice calls, and data connectivity directly from satellites to your phone without needing special hardware or apps" and "works with existing LTE phones provided there's a clear view of the sky."
It's easy to imagine a future version that would hand your cell service off to a local Starlink transceiver (not necessarily yours) the moment you walk indoors. Just like ISPs, the cellphone service industry is ripe for disruption, and Starlink could do just that.
SpaceX is valued today at $350 billion, with Musk's share at about $180 billion. The company is poised for explosive growth as an ISP and as an almost unimaginably inexpensive launch provider, capable of lifting previously impossible payloads into orbit and deep space.
That flying Pez dispenser might just make Musk the world's first trillionaire.
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P.S. Thank goodness my PJ colleagues are here to cover the unfolding awfulness in New Orleans and Las Vegas, or I might have to break my 2025 resolution to write at least one positive, forward-looking column each day.
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