News
ViaSat asks FCC to halt SpaceX Starlink launches because it can’t compete
Under the hollow pretense of concern for the environment, Starlink satellite internet competitor ViaSat has asked the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to force SpaceX to stop Starlink launches and threatened to take the matter to court if it doesn’t get its way.
A long-time satellite internet provider notorious for offering expensive, mediocre service with strict bandwidth restrictions, ViaSat has also been engaged in a years-long attempt to disrupt, slow down, and even kill SpaceX’s Starlink constellation by any means necessary. That includes fabricating nonsensical protests, petitioning the FCC dozens of times, and – most recently – threatening to sue the agency and federal government as the company becomes increasingly desperate.
The reason is simple: even compared to SpaceX’s finicky, often-unreliable Starlink Beta service, ViaSat’s satellite internet is almost insultingly bad. With a focus on serving the underserved and unserved, SpaceX’s Starlink beta users – many of which were already relying on ViaSat or HughesNet internet – have overwhelmingly described the differences as night and day.
In simple terms, if given the option, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that a single public ViaSat subscriber would choose the company’s internet over SpaceX’s Starlink. While Starlink currently requires subscribers to pay a substantial upfront cost – ~$500 – for the dish used to access the satellite network, ViaSat internet costs at least as much per month. Currently, new subscribers would pay a bare minimum of ~$113 per month for speeds up to 12 Mbps (akin to DSL) and an insultingly small 40GB data cap. For a 60GB cap and 25 Mbps, subscribers will pay more than $160 per month after a three-month promotion.
With a fixed cost of $99 per month, truly unlimited data, and uncapped speeds that vary from 50 to 200+ Mbps, any ViaSat “silver” subscriber would receive far better service by switching to Starlink and save enough money to pay off the $500 dish in less than a year. While Starlink is currently in beta and often unstable and unreliable as a result, users continue to notice major improvements in speeds and uptime as SpaceX works to continuously improve the network.
In the US, ViaSat has less than 600,000 household internet subscribers, all of which are almost certainly liable to switch to better alternatives. Short of local and state governments actually standing up for their citizens and forcing monopolistic ground-based internet service providers (ISPs) to fairly serve rural customers, Starlink is currently the only real hope for rural Americans who are tired of settling for second-class internet service.
ViaSat began its latest push to hamstring a looming competitor with regulation when it asked the FCC to perform an environmental review of Starlink’s impact last December. The FCC unsurprisingly failed to heed the company’s spurious, nakedly self-serving demands. Since then, the FCC approved a long-standing SpaceX request to modify its Starlink constellation by lowering thousands of satellites, thus improving service and drastically decreasing the debris risk posed by satellite failures, which would take a few years to reenter from 550 kilometers instead of decades for spacecraft orbiting at 1000+ kilometers.
To a very small extent, there are some real questions worth asking about the environmental impact of megaconstellations. A few recent studies have begun to do so, though it’s such a new field of inquiry that virtually nothing is known with any confidence. However, ViaSat is transparently disinterested in the actual environmental impact given that its petition for the FCC to immediately halt all Starlink launches focuses on Starlink alone and not competitor OneWeb – also in the process of launching satellites – or prospective constellations being developed by Telesat and Amazon.
What ViaSat actually wants is for the FCC to catastrophically hamstring Starlink, thus saving the profit-focused company from having to actually work to compete with an internet service provider that is all but guaranteed to capture most of its subscribers on an even playing field. Incredibly, ViaSat actually removes its greenwashing mask in the very same FCC request [PDF], stating that it “will suffer competitive injury” if Starlink is allowed to “compete directly with Viasat in the market for satellite broadband services.”
Elon Musk
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
Musk disputes NASA estimate of 22 Starship launches for Moon landing, predicting 6 to 8.
Elon Musk is disputing a new NASA safety panel estimate of how many Starship launches it will take to put astronauts on the Moon, saying the real number will be less than half the panel’s figure.
On Thursday, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its quarterly public meeting. Panel member Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut, flagged the fueling process for SpaceX’s lunar lander as a major risk for Artemis IV, the mission planned to land a crew on the Moon in 2028. “We need to keep our eyes on numerous required fuelings for the lander,” Precourt said, according to Ars Technica. “I think the last estimate is around 22 flights.”
Ars Technica’s Eric Berger posted the comment on X, and Musk replied. “That’s way too high,” Musk wrote. “Actual number will be more like 6 to 8.”
The disagreement comes down to a basic problem with sending a ship as large as Starship to the Moon. Starship burns nearly all of its propellant just reaching Earth orbit, so it cannot continue on to the Moon without stopping for a refill. SpaceX’s answer is a gas station in space. First, a Starship that works as a storage tank, called a depot, is launched into orbit. Then a series of tanker Starships launch one at a time, dock with the depot and pump their leftover propellant into it. Once the depot is full, the lunar lander version of Starship launches, docks, fills up and heads for the Moon.
Every tanker trip is its own full rocket launch, which is why the count matters. More launches mean more time, more cost and more chances for something to go wrong before astronauts ever leave Earth. Berger estimated that even if SpaceX reaches twice weekly Starship launches by the end of 2027, filling a depot at the panel’s number would still take roughly three months.
How many tankers are needed depends mostly on how much propellant each one can carry to orbit and how much is lost along the way. Starship’s fuel and oxygen are stored at extremely cold temperatures, and some of it slowly boils off while waiting in orbit. More is lost in each transfer. NASA appears to be working from what Starship can lift today, while Musk’s range assumes a more capable rocket.
Musk has pushed back on higher counts before. In 2021, after a government document suggested 16 launches, he called that “extremely unlikely” and said eight tankers would be the most required.
Much of the answer depends on hardware SpaceX has not finished flying. As Teslarati noted earlier this year, the company plans to carry out the refueling process with its upgraded V3 Starship, and Precourt described Artemis IV as carrying “a large number of firsts.” He also praised NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s team for working to clear obstacles for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, whose Blue Moon lander does not rely on orbital refueling for its first mission.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s secretive “Project Crystal Sun” gets a big green light in Texas
Fort Bend County approved four incentive agreements Thursday for Tesla’s proposed $10.1 billion solar factory.
Fort Bend County commissioners on Thursday approved a package of tax incentives for Tesla’s proposed $10.1 billion solar cell factory near Needville, Texas, giving the company one of the last local approvals it needs before it decides where to build. All four Tesla agreements passed 4 to 0.
The votes covered a property tax abatement inside Reinvestment Zone No. 34, a Chapter 381 economic development agreement, a foreign trade zone non-objection paired with payments in lieu of certain taxes, and a separate payment in lieu of taxes “true up” agreement, according to agenda notes from the Fort Bend Commissioners Court meeting.
The project, known internally as “Project Crystal Sun,” would make solar cells and finished modules on roughly 3,000 acres near FM 762 and FM 1994, south of the Brazos River. As Teslarati reported when the filing first surfaced in August, Tesla’s application under the state’s JETI Act splits the investment into $1.5 billion in real property and $8.6 billion in equipment, with 9,712 permanent jobs projected by 2033 and commercial operations targeted for the first quarter of 2029. The plant would handle the full chain from ingot and wafer production through cell testing.
Inside Tesla’s secretive $10 Billion “Project Crystal Sun” filing
Thursday’s approval does not lock in the site. Tesla has told the Texas Comptroller it is still weighing other locations, and site selection adviser David Dennison told Lamar Consolidated ISD trustees in September that the race had narrowed to Fort Bend and one out of state rival with a “very compelling package,” according to the Houston Chronicle. Tesla hopes to decide before the end of 2026, and the incentives still need sign off from the Comptroller and the Governor’s office.
Local officials have now done nearly everything within their control. Commissioners created the reinvestment zone in an August 24 special meeting, with Interim County Judge Daniel Wong formally withdrawing himself over his engineering firm’s past work with Tesla. Lamar CISD trustees voted 7 to 0 on September 15 to advance a JETI agreement that would tax Tesla’s qualifying property at 50 percent of its value for maintenance and operations from 2029 through 2038.
The plant lines up with a target Elon Musk set on Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call in January, when he said the company would “work toward getting 100 GW a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.” In March, Tesla was reported to be negotiating a $2.9 billion purchase of Chinese solar manufacturing equipment bound for Texas. The Houston area already hosts Tesla’s Megafactory in Brookshire, where Megapack 3 production has started. Tesla said on its Q3 call that Megapack supply for 2027 is nearly sold out, and Musk wrote on X Thursday that the company is “increasing production of Megapacks as much as possible,” as demand from data centers climbs.
Tesla revealed plans to develop its own maps internally to fix Navigation issues and give owners more control over their routing.
On the company’s Q3 2026 Earnings Call, a question was asked about FSD Navigation issues, particularly speed limit recognition, parking, and routing. These are issues that surface from version to version and seem to be seriously challenging for Tesla’s AI team to resolve.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said in response to the question:
“You’re totally right that we shouldn’t be depending on external people’s maps. So we are building our own maps, but not like the same way as OneMoreMap. We are building an entirely new architecture with essentially AI-based mapping and navigation.”
He continued:
“It’s going to be super awesome. It’s going to be integrated with voice. You can talk to it, ask for different routes. It’s going to learn your personalized preferences, plus the fleet preferences. The collective intelligence of all the cars is going to flow into making the maps and navigation super cool.”
Elluswamy said this issue should be confronted, and the mapping should be available for people by the time the v15 release starts deploying to customers.
“And over the next several months,” he added, “it’s just going to take over all of the navigation functions, parking, destination handling. And it will know you better than you know yourself in some regard for the driving task, and then handle it fully.”
Tesla Summon got insanely good in FSD v14.3.2 — Navigation? Not so much
Navigation is perhaps the most notable complaint with FSD, and although it has gotten better, it is still flawed. Much of the time, FSD will take people on routes that are not preferred by the driver, but Tesla tried to combat this with a routing feature in the Summer 2026 Update.
Tesla currently relies on Google for map data, but it is sort of counterintuitive to believe the company would rely on a third party for this. These improvements will be welcome, as routing and navigation have been such a pain point for so many owners for so long.
Quotes via Motley Fool
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
Tesla’s secretive “Project Crystal Sun” gets a big green light in Texas
