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A lot of this is poorly informed. The reason many places can't get service isn't the number of satellites, it's the number of ground stations. The satellites do

A lot of this is poorly informed. The reason many places can't get service isn't the number of satellites, it's the number of ground stations. The satellites don't communicate with each other, only ground stations, so there have to be some near you that the satellites can see for the entire time they're over you (either one very close to you or several farther away but surrounding you), or your signals don't have anywhere to go. The next generation of satellites will be able to communicate with each other, but they haven't really started launching in earnest yet. It may have to wait for Starship. The proprietary connector is annoying but the antenna needs 100+ watts. Power over Ethernet doesn't support that, so the antenna connector can't use standard Ethernet. If the router additionally had a standard Ethernet port then it wouldn't be weatherproof, which was clearly a design goal. They should really have done some kind of weatherproof housing for an Ethernet connector. I expect they will on the next version. Kessler syndrome is not going to happen because unlike their competitors SpaceX intentionally put all their satellites in very low orbit where the atmosphere naturally cleans up any debris within a couple of years. That's something uniquely enabled by SpaceX's low launch costs because it limits the useful life of the satellites, requiring frequent replacement. But it's worth it.

rpdillon 5y ago
> Kessler syndrome is not going to happen because unlike their competitors SpaceX intentionally put all their satellites in very low orbit where the atmosphere naturally cleans up any debris within a couple of years. That's something uniquely enabled by SpaceX's low launch costs because it limits the useful life of the satellites, requiring frequent replacement. I haven't researched Starlink much before, but if the target satellite count is 10k (some say 30k?) and replacements are needed every 24 months, this suggests that to keep Starlink running they need to deploy an average of ~415 satellites every month, forever. Some quick searching suggests a cost of $250k/satellite[0], for a total monthly bill of over $100M. I must be misunderstanding, because that seems pretty pricey, and it excludes launch costs, which they say are ~$30M. Maybe everything will be cheaper by the time the constellation reaches 10k satellites. [0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-second-announcement/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-s...
- modeless 5y ago
  The planned lifetime of Starlink satellites is more like 5 years. The 30k constellation will be launched by Starship. Starship's cost per launch is planned to be significantly less than Falcon 9 (due to complete and rapid reusability) with 10x the payload. With so much extra mass the satellites can likely be cheaper. That $250k number is totally made up, and I'm sure the actual cost has dropped or will drop dramatically as they really ramp up high volume mass production of the next generation, which has never been done on anything approaching this scale for satellites before.

rpdillon 5y ago

> Kessler syndrome is not going to happen because unlike their competitors SpaceX intentionally put all their satellites in very low orbit where the atmosphere naturally cleans up any debris within a couple of years. That's something uniquely enabled by SpaceX's low launch costs because it limits the useful life of the satellites, requiring frequent replacement. I haven't researched Starlink much before, but if the target satellite count is 10k (some say 30k?) and replacements are needed every 24 months, this suggests that to keep Starlink running they need to deploy an average of ~415 satellites every month, forever. Some quick searching suggests a cost of $250k/satellite[0], for a total monthly bill of over $100M. I must be misunderstanding, because that seems pretty pricey, and it excludes launch costs, which they say are ~$30M. Maybe everything will be cheaper by the time the constellation reaches 10k satellites. [0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-second-announcement/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-launch-s...

modeless 5y ago
The planned lifetime of Starlink satellites is more like 5 years. The 30k constellation will be launched by Starship. Starship's cost per launch is planned to be significantly less than Falcon 9 (due to complete and rapid reusability) with 10x the payload. With so much extra mass the satellites can likely be cheaper. That $250k number is totally made up, and I'm sure the actual cost has dropped or will drop dramatically as they really ramp up high volume mass production of the next generation, which has never been done on anything approaching this scale for satellites before.