SpaceX Introduces New Crazy Fast Starlink Ludicrous & “Plaid” Service Tiers

Following in the footsteps of Tesla, SpaceX today has announced two new premium tiers of Starlink service.

The speed tiers are (of course): Ludicrous, and Plaid.

These tiers bring some significant new capabilities to Starlink - and really push the limits of performance to new heights.

But unless you have a particularly extreme use case in mind, the existing Starlink Standard or Starlink Mobile plans likely make sense for all but the most demanding technomads.

But the special affordable tier of Starlink Plaid might actually prove to be interesting for those who aspire to experience the extreme cutting edge of technology.

Read on for the details...

Plaid? This Sounds Ridiculous?

Actually, it makes perfect sense - assuming you are as much of a Spaceballs fan as Elon Musk clearly is.

In the 1987 Mel Brooks comedy Spaceballs, villain Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) orders his ship to pursue the escaping heroes by jumping beyond "Light Speed" and "Ridiculous Speed" directly to "Ludicrous Speed" - but the ship dangerously overshoots to "Plaid" speed.

The scene is a classic:

And as everyone knows, nothing is faster than Plaid.

Inspired by this movie - Tesla has long offered a special Ludicrous mode option on top end Tesla models, and the flagship Tesla Model S Plaid is one of the fastest production cars in the world, with an official 0-60 mph time of just 1.99 seconds.

It only makes sense to bring these same performance tiers to SpaceX's Starlink.

Starlink Gets Ludicrous

The new Starlink Ludicrous plan promises increased speeds more than 10x beyond the capabilities of the traditional Starlink Priority plan.

But to get it - you need to get a little bit crazy.

To enable 10x performance mode - you need 12x the hardware, with ten Starlink signals combined together, along with an additional two for redundancy and error correction.

The end result is absolutely insane Starlink service capable of sustained speeds of 10 Gbps download, and 10 Gbps uploads.

The pricing?

Beyond the substantial up front hardware investment - ongoing service is "starting at $75,000/mo" depending on how much data and speed you actually need. 

Ludicrous is available to order now, and is aimed at the highest ends of the market - such as cruise ships and the largest mega-Yachts.. 

But things get really interesting, and surprisingly cheaper, once you go to Plaid.

Starlink Plaid

Starlink Plaid is completely next-level technology - and it is only available to invited beta testers at the moment.

Instead of requiring banks of multiple traditional Starlink receivers, Starlink Plaid uses the laser interconnects normally used in between Starlink satellite to beam an optical signal directly to the Plaid customer.

All that is required is a tiny backpack-sized receiver - what had previously been leaked as the "Starlink Mini" - physically smaller than all prior Starlink hardware.

This Plaid receiver is even 12V DC powered, and makes Plaid service incredibly portable.

How fast is Plaid? 100x faster than Ludicrous!

This means download speeds of 1 Tbps!

Upload speeds however are limited to just 2.5 Gbps, at least using the first generation of laser links and the initial Starlink Mini Plaid receiver.

Because it is laser based - Plaid works no matter where the end user happens to be located, as long as they can maintain line of site to a Starlink Plaid-enabled satellite.

Plaid service is truly unlimited with no data caps - and it works while in motion no matter how fast you are moving.

SpaceX reports they have already tested Starlink Plaid at orbital reentry speeds of 27,000 km/h. 

Even more exciting for truly ambitious overlanders, SpaceX is promising that Starlink Plaid service will work on Earth, Mars, and the Moon - though the official Starlink coverage map has not been updated to reflect this yet.

The really crazy thing is the Plaid service tier pricing.

While commercial / enterprise pricing has not been announced yet, it will certainly be extremely expensive.

But SpaceX is planning to make Plaid available to everyday consumers via subscription, for only $250/mo!

But this pricing option comes with a catch.

It is only for Starlink customers who have a Neuralink brain-computer interface installed into their skull, and who agree to allow "their extra unused mental processing cycles" to be used for "whatever we think sounds cool".

For internet that fast (and affordable!), the waiting list for Plaid is expected to be extensive.

Once Everyone Is Wearing Plaid...

SpaceX hasn't revealed too much about what comes next once a significant percentage of the population has Plaid service installed directly into their brain.

All we could find was this image of a planned orbital AI data center that is currently just beginning construction.

The full deployment of the Neuralink / Plaid / Orbital AI triumvirate is apparently awaiting the launch capabilities of SpaceX's Starship rocket, which is due for its fourth test flight potentially as soon as May.

Assuming all goes according to plan - SpaceX has said that humanity is on schedule to be subjugated to the machines within the next five years, well before 6G comes online as a viable competitive technology.

It remains unclear whether Amazon's Project Kuiper will ever be able to catch up - but Amazon is certainly contemplating the shopping potential of Alexa and Prime beaming directly from space into human minds.

Amazon's early success was largely due to Amazon's patent on One Click ordering - and Amazon has just been issued a new patent "You Think It, You Bought It" - so this technology is almost certainly in the works.

Reality Check

The crazy thing is - only some of this news story is made up (celebrating April 1st, and my 18th Nomadiversary!).

Science fiction and reality are blurring at an ever increasing rate - and it is dizzying at times to try and keep up with just what is possible.

Though the new Ludicrous and Plaid tiers of service are not real (yet?), they are actually based on reality.

What is described as Ludicrous above is actually SpaceX's "Starlink Community Gateways" service now being made available to rural communities and Internet service providers.

And SpaceX has indeed now demonstrated regular Starlink working in space at orbital velocities, using Starlink to bring back absolutely stunning HD video from Starship's third test flight.

And Tesla of course offers a premium Plaid package for those who are willing to pay more to experience whiplash on demand and faster top speeds.

And another Elon Musk startup, Neuralink, has begun human trials with brain/computer interfaces, and has actually recently demonstrated enabling a quadriplegic to play chess using just his mind.

Combine all these technologies and business trends, and who knows what the future holds...

Interesting times ahead!

Happy April Fool's Day!

Member Exclusive - Analysis of Plaid

MIA members - be sure you read this logged in for an exclusive deeper dive (and bizarrely humous) AI-generated analysis of Starlink Plaid.

It is a bit bananas. 

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