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> with a much smaller cost per unit for build, launch and maintenance Somebody further down in the comments estimates $250k in launch costs for each Starlink s

> with a much smaller cost per unit for build, launch and maintenance Somebody further down in the comments estimates $250k in launch costs for each Starlink satellite^[1]. Elsewhere, I found a claim that SpaceX execs said in 2019 that the per-satellite cost was "well below" $500k^[2]. So let's say $400k per satellite including manufacturing and launch, just to pick a number. Once it's in orbit, you need to pay for operations, but not maintenance (except on your ground-based infrastructure). And multiple factors (e.g. cheaper launch) stand to bring that price down. Realistically, how much do we expect one Starlink satellite's worth of telecom UAS to cost on an ongoing basis, including the maintenance and operations costs that don't apply to Starlink? Where is the analysis? OP's article makes the "cheaper" claim with (AFAICT) absolutely nothing to back it up, and the fact is that full size aircraft are not cheap. The service density flexibility and possibility for additional radio bands Starlink can't provide might be a good argument for this system to exist, but all this talk of it being cheaper seems very vague and presumptuous. What am I missing? ^[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28832257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28832257 ^[2] https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-second-announcement/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-s...

tomxor 5y ago
> OP's article makes the "cheaper" claim with (AFAICT) absolutely nothing to back it up, and the fact is that full size aircraft are not cheap. It's not a full sized aircraft. 1 small autonomous plane is cheaper than 1 small satellite in general - in almost all respects. The article didn't claim anything beyond this: > The unmanned glider [...] is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than a satellite. This is fairly obvious and uninteresting, what is interesting is cost per GB/user/km2, in other words the end result, which is hard for anyone to say with much certainty at this point even with a thorough analysis because nether business has reached scale yet.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > It's not a full sized aircraft. 1 small autonomous plane is cheaper than 1 small satellite in general - in almost all respects. The article didn't claim anything beyond this: From the picture in the article I'm not sure what else to call it other than "full size". Wiki claims it has a ~90 foot wingspan^[1]. Wiki also claims it has an 11 lb payload capacity, so one imagines a practical version of this concept would need to be be substantially larger in order to carry a useful telecom payload. (A Starlink satellite is a couch-sized slab weighing over 500 lbs, and one can only assume how much of that is telecom equipment, but it's probably a lot more than 11 lbs. So it seems plausible that you'd need on the order of 10 aircraft of this size, or a single much larger and much more expensive aircraft, to equal the throughput of a single Starlink satellite. None of that sounds cheap.) Being a UAS doesn't necessarily make it cheaper, either. The MQ-1 Predator, a borderline obsolete ~1500 lb airframe pushed by a ~100 hp air-cooled Rotax, seems to cost governments on the order of 10 million dollars to procure. I'm sure there's a lot of pork in there, but it seems far from obvious that relatively exotic UASs like this one can be procured and pressed into production use for, say, two orders of magnitude less than that. > This is fairly obvious and uninteresting, what is interesting is cost per GB/user/km2, in other words the end result, which is hard for anyone to say with much certainty at this point even with a thorough analysis because nether business has reached scale yet. Starlink is already a service you can buy and use, subject to whatever "beta" rollout scheme they're using. They still have a long way to go to realize their scale ambitions, but I think their economics are far more settled than other schemes (like this one). I do agree that cost per user is the interesting number here, but--as above--it seems far from obvious that this UAS scheme can even be competitive with Starlink, let alone cheaper in any reasonable sense. ^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Zephyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Zephyr

tomxor 5y ago

> OP's article makes the "cheaper" claim with (AFAICT) absolutely nothing to back it up, and the fact is that full size aircraft are not cheap. It's not a full sized aircraft. 1 small autonomous plane is cheaper than 1 small satellite in general - in almost all respects. The article didn't claim anything beyond this: > The unmanned glider [...] is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than a satellite. This is fairly obvious and uninteresting, what is interesting is cost per GB/user/km2, in other words the end result, which is hard for anyone to say with much certainty at this point even with a thorough analysis because nether business has reached scale yet.

caconym_ 5y ago
> It's not a full sized aircraft. 1 small autonomous plane is cheaper than 1 small satellite in general - in almost all respects. The article didn't claim anything beyond this: From the picture in the article I'm not sure what else to call it other than "full size". Wiki claims it has a ~90 foot wingspan^[1]. Wiki also claims it has an 11 lb payload capacity, so one imagines a practical version of this concept would need to be be substantially larger in order to carry a useful telecom payload. (A Starlink satellite is a couch-sized slab weighing over 500 lbs, and one can only assume how much of that is telecom equipment, but it's probably a lot more than 11 lbs. So it seems plausible that you'd need on the order of 10 aircraft of this size, or a single much larger and much more expensive aircraft, to equal the throughput of a single Starlink satellite. None of that sounds cheap.) Being a UAS doesn't necessarily make it cheaper, either. The MQ-1 Predator, a borderline obsolete ~1500 lb airframe pushed by a ~100 hp air-cooled Rotax, seems to cost governments on the order of 10 million dollars to procure. I'm sure there's a lot of pork in there, but it seems far from obvious that relatively exotic UASs like this one can be procured and pressed into production use for, say, two orders of magnitude less than that. > This is fairly obvious and uninteresting, what is interesting is cost per GB/user/km2, in other words the end result, which is hard for anyone to say with much certainty at this point even with a thorough analysis because nether business has reached scale yet. Starlink is already a service you can buy and use, subject to whatever "beta" rollout scheme they're using. They still have a long way to go to realize their scale ambitions, but I think their economics are far more settled than other schemes (like this one). I do agree that cost per user is the interesting number here, but--as above--it seems far from obvious that this UAS scheme can even be competitive with Starlink, let alone cheaper in any reasonable sense. ^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Zephyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Zephyr