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:
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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:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#:~:text=He estimated that SpaceX was,Musk and other private investors.
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
Don’t try so hard source two is (checks notes) some guy called Elon Musk, you know the cucklefuck who’s been claiming since 2016 Telsa is about to release fully self driving cars.