If you need to downlink data every minute, stations must be spaced around the earth such that every satellite passes over a groundstation every minute. LEO orbi

If you need to downlink data every minute, stations must be spaced around the earth such that every satellite passes over a groundstation every minute. LEO orbital period is about 100 minutes, so with a circumference of 25000 miles, ground stations would have to be spaced about every 250 miles over the surface of the earth. The earth has a surface area of about 200 million square miles, so divided into 250x250 mile chunks, one would only need about 3200 groundstation sites, but each would have to be able to communicate with ~20-30 satellites at any given moment. Because the satellites are small and relatively low power, the ground stations used to communicate with a high speed link probably use a 3-5 meter dish. So each groundstation site needs either a large array of rapid-slew tracking antennas or a big ol' phased array with some seriously hardcore software on board. A bank of ~20-30 3-5 meter antennae capable of slew and pitch to track a LEO target is a pretty serious investment. Each tracking antenna probably costs more than 100k... they'll have to have chilled antennae for low noise, and some heavy duty mechanisms to move them around. so 3200 sites * 30 dishes per site * 100k per dish is about 10 billion dollars - not including the cost of land or humans. A phased array capable of directing a tight beam to 30 individual targets simultaneously all with different movement parameters is a many 10's of million dollar piece of equipment, and will only inflate the above number. If one builds 50,000 satellites similar to what Planet has already built, the cost comes down into the single digit thousands of dollars per unit. Call it 10k. At that point, launch costs dominate the economics. Each sat has a mass of (say) 5 KG. The falcon heavy can launch 50,000 kg, but for cubesats some significant fraction of the mass will be in the deployment mechanism, so call it 7500 satellites per launch. That's 7 launches, at ~100 million each, so call it a round billion dollars to build and launch the satellites.