If only - it doesn’t appear so. Connectivity in the Antarctic is laughable - McMurdo has 17Mbps iirc, and it flakes out not infrequently, Amundsen-Scott is “when a satellite is visible”, and being on a ship in the polar regions is typically even worse, as more often than not you’re dealing with crappy weather and a rolling vessel, and a poor and intermittent iridium signal.
It also all costs an absolute fortune - iridium is about $1000/mo for 100Mb, and $10 for each additional Mb - and there are surcharges for use in polar regions.
Musk could probably bankroll all of starlink just by serving the scientific communities in Antarctica.
Looking at the orbits for Starlink, they are currently not flying over the north / south pole directly. I don't know if there's plans to do so later, probably if the investments start to pay off and they can afford more launches and sattelites. But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will.
> But for now it's a big money sink and I'm sure the service isn't yet paying for itself - if it ever will.
Given that the estimated cost of building and launching the satellites is estimated at only 600 million dollars [1], it is estimated to take something around two or three years until it's been paid off, followed by two years of generating profit and the next five-year cycle starts (assuming that their estimate of five years life time per satellite holds [2]).
Personally, I think Starlink was the best bet SpaceX ever made. That thing will be a permanent cash cow.
