Elon Musk’s Starlink business going gangbusters

Make Me Smart November 6, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Surprise.

Kimberly Adams 

Surprise let’s do it.

Kai Ryssdal 

There we go, there we go. Hi everybody I’m Kai Ryssdal, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make the day makes sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams, thank you everyone for joining us on this Monday, November the 6th.

Kai Ryssdal 

We’ll do some news, some smiles, and then get you on your merry way. We will begin with the news. What Miss Adams do you have?

Kimberly Adams 

I discovered today because you know, you gotta learn something new every day that I am personally responsible for the declining birth rate in this country.

Kai Ryssdal 

Really do go on?

Kimberly Adams 

So The Washington Post has a section which I love called Department of Data. And they had a piece out a couple days ago that says, “Millennials aren’t having kids. Here are the reasons why.” And originally, they were looking into data about the declining birth rate, and they thought they were going to see an increase in the number of families with just one kid, because kids are so expensive. And so maybe a lot more families were choosing just to have one child. But actually, that’s not what they found. The number of, you know, zero single child households has remained steady, along with the, you know, three kid families has gone down a little bit, but not much, four kid families pretty steady, five kid families pretty steady. Two kid households down quite a bit. But the biggest spike is zero children. And so the number, the chart that they have, the number of times women have given birth in their lifetime average ages 25 to 44. The zero number has just shot up. And so let me just find this. So something like one in five American women ages 25 to 44 are one and done, which is bizarre given birth rates. But then if you look down, the number of women who had zero children soared, only children held steady. To be sure this is partly because women are starting their families later and thus having second children later maybe after 44. But even among women in their early 40s, the share of only children has barely budged in more than three decades, crawling from 17% in 1990, to 19% and 2022. That suggests a simple explanation. If people want kids, they want more than one, consistent minority stops at one be it for biological, philosophical or logistical reasons. But otherwise, children seem to be a multiple or nothing proposition. And yeah, anyway, there’s a bunch of interesting data in this. Bigger families coming back in style because apparently a lot of people think that it’s kind of mean to have just one kid because a child will be lonely or something like that. You know, I don’t know. My my good friend has an only child and she’s weird. So yeah. She listens to the podcast. She knows.

Kai Ryssdal 

She will know, she will know. Let’s see. So mine is different. I was about to make some joke about whether Elon Musk is an only child, but I don’t know. I know he’s in business with his cousin. Anyway. The reason I bring up Elon Musk is because now,

Kimberly Adams

He has a lot of kids though.

Kai Ryssdal

Yes, yes, he has so many kids, by by with several different women that should be pointed out. So Elon Musk, SpaceX, here’s an article in Bloomberg today. And I bring this up only because I’ve been critical of the way Mr. Musk has handled the whole Starlink thing and the way, frankly, that he has been allowed to handle the whole Starlink thing. Anyway, SpaceX is on track at Bloomberg reports to book revenues about $9 billion this year across its rocket launch and Starlink businesses, sales for Starlink in particular are expected to outpace and exceed the launch business next year as the product becomes available in more regions around the world. Now, let’s remember what Starlink is. It’s the series of micro satellites, thousands of them, which are providing, among many other things, internet service to Ukraine, except near Crimea, and internet service in around Israel, except over Gaza. So I’ve commented about this before. It’s really scary that one guy who has troubling tendencies has so much power over geopolitics and the future of this planet. And yet more and more people or countries rather not people, countries are signing up for his service, which makes sense they need it and God bless his entrepreneurial spirit. But can you imagine what would happen if let’s just say Boeing or Raytheon, another couple of big defense contractors turned off their product in midair, shall we say? And said no, you can’t use it over I don’t know like Russia or something. Just kind of bizarre, just kind of wild. But still, he’s going gangbusters with his business.

Kimberly Adams 

I just wonder, you know, think about a company like Boeing or Raytheon that has sort of a very traditional corporate structure, you know, with a CEO, most people can’t name for its most people don’t know who’s on it. versus, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, you know, whatever. Where, everyone knows, it’s Elon Musk. And Elon Musk is in charge. And Elon Musk is making all of the decisions. And, you know, how much does that factor into the power? You know, because he can’t, the CEO of Raytheon, and Boeing, they, in theory could be given the boot. Elon Musk cannot be and so that, in some ways, empowers him even more, because he has such a grip on those companies.

Kai Ryssdal 

Because you bet and, oh, totally. And we should point out here for those who may not be aware, SpaceX is a privately held company, Musk controls it. And so he gets make all the decisions. So there is, I’m sure some advisory board or something of SpaceX, but they’re there to power. Right, exactly. You know, he ignores the board of Tesla too, and Tesla’s publicly traded so that’s a whole different thing. But, but yeah, it’s it’s just, it’s really scary. It’s really scary. Anyway, yeah. Anyway, that’s what I got.

Kimberly Adams 

Okie dokie.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, go ahead.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, so my smile hat tip to Courtney Bergsieker who sent this to me last week, and it definitely made me smile. It’s a story in NBC news about a 33-year-old woman who has made more than 1,000 Wikipedia bios, for relatively unknown female scientists. Her name is Jessica Wade. And she began writing Wikipedia biographies about women and minority scientists who never got their due either when they’re alive, or even if they’re still alive, just getting dismissed, either from their employers, other scientists or for the public. You know, Wikipedia is a public commons. And so people can put, you know, whatever they want into it, you know, vetted through the community and all that stuff. But women, scientists, women, leaders, all sorts of women in general, tend to be underrepresented on Wikipedia. And we did a story on this on Marketplace Tech, a while back, even when people put Wikipedia bios for women on Wikipedia, they tend to get like flagged more and edited more, and like a bunch of trolls will go after them and try to mess with them. And so anyway, Jessica Wade, received the prestigious British Empire metal, which, you know, Empire, whatevs. But anyway, she was honored for, you know, doing all of this work to support women scientists, and then that made me smile. So love it.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s super cool. Super cool. Yeah, here is a science related story that actually kind of thrilled me because for a long time, the goal of aviation as do, has been to become more sustainable, right. They’re now working slow and sustainable aviation fuels, which are green based in theory, great business, New York Times on Friday, about electric airplanes. And this company called the Beta Technologies out of Vermont, which has a prototype which is flying up to 386 miles on a charge. Think about that on a charge for airplanes. Mostly, it’s just cargo now. But it’s like the future of aviation. This company has gotten $800 million in venture capital funding, also funding by the way from some of the big airlines, and Amazon’s climate pledge fund and a bunch of other things. But it’s really cool. It’s got a 50-foot wingspan really cool looking windows, a rear propeller, push propeller for those in the field, which is a different beast. Here’s the really cool, or one of the really cool parts. It’s super quiet. It’s so quiet that they could if they wanted to take off their helmets, because these guys are test pilots and test aircraft. They could take off their helmets and have a conversation. I mean, think about how loud like a 737s or something like that, right? And even a small private plane is loud.

Kimberly Adams 

I was about to say.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s super quiet, right. This thing is super quiet. It’s just a cool little story. It’s it’s the future coming to us on a plate and it’s really cool. And I just think it’s getting there. It’s getting there.

Kimberly Adams 

We’re getting there but you know this is going to have military applications before anything because it’s that quiet.

Kai Ryssdal 

Of course. Of course. You bet. Military spending money. You better believe it? Absolutely.

Kimberly Adams 

Alright, I didn’t mean to diminish your smile. I’m smiling anyway. Yay. Well, that is it for today. Short and sweet. Got it done. Tomorrow we are going to do a deep dive our weekly deep dive, we’re gonna continue our series on climate solutions like the plane that can do cargo short distances. Yes, climate solutions. We’re working on it or people you know, having fewer kids for what it’s worth. Sorry, can’t let it go. Anyway. The next step in our climate solutions series is carbon capture. The technology has been in the works for decades with not a whole lot to show for it. But nowadays governments and companies are sort of banking on it to meet their net zero emissions goals. So we’re gonna get into how carbon capture works and what needs to happen before it can work on a large scale.

Kai Ryssdal 

Till then, you know what to 508-U-B-SMART. Makemesmart@marketplace.org. That’s how you get us.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Jayk Cherry. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kai Ryssdal 

Marissa Cabrera is the senior producer of this podcast. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts here at Marketplace world headquarters, Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and on demand as well.

Kimberly Adams 

For what it’s worth, I do love children. They’re adorable when they’re someone else’s.