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But they also want to increase the number of satellites three times, maybe 10 times, that will lower the budget per satellite proportionally. And how many more

But they also want to increase the number of satellites three times, maybe 10 times, that will lower the budget per satellite proportionally. And how many more subscribers can they realistically get? They are not only competing with other satellite services, they are also competing with copper, fiber and cellular networks in many cases.

panick21_ 3y ago
I think there are way more subscribers they can get. In terms of the largest industries, shipping and planes they are only at the very beginning of their role out. There are also currently regions that are over capacity where they can sign up more people as soon as they have more sats. In terms of geography they still have a huge amount of capacity in lots of places. These are currently hard to connect because of the requirement for ground stations. Once they have deployed a whole layer all with the laser capable sats they will have a much easier time to expand into truly remote regions. There are also major use cases like using this for other government. Japan might very well use it for example. And other US allies might well adopt it too. That's a lot of money. It might even get NATO adoption. So in my mind there is a huge amount of additional potential revenue for this system. Scaling up production of sats, terminals, ground stations and rocket all at the same time is a pretty monumental task. The first version, Starlink 1, Ground Station and Falcon 9 was more of a proving ground that can break even in cash flow terms. Starlink 2+, Lasers, Starship is really where they will really start to make serious money. SpaceX is basically creating global infrastructure and they are doing it mostly vertically integrated. It shouldn't really even be possible for one company to build something like this.
asadotzler 3y ago
They can and likely will get many millions, perhaps tens of millions of subscribers. This is a build out. Once the build out is complete, it'll be maintenance at lower costs. Starship launching v2 and v3 sats with increased capacity and ever increasing value as a second internet backbone will assure they have more than enough business to keep this all going -- probably better and longer than Comcast can keep it's tens of millions of cable internet users.
- danbruc 3y ago
  Once the build out is complete, it'll be maintenance at lower costs. The satellites have a lifetime of about 5 years, so with 12,000 satellites they will need to replace 200, if they go all the way to 42,000 even 700 of them each month, indefinitely. While in some sense this is maintenance it also means building and launching one complete constellation every 5 years. Or they have to increase the lifetime which is at least currently probably mainly limited by the available fuel for station keeping.

panick21_ 3y ago

I think there are way more subscribers they can get. In terms of the largest industries, shipping and planes they are only at the very beginning of their role out. There are also currently regions that are over capacity where they can sign up more people as soon as they have more sats. In terms of geography they still have a huge amount of capacity in lots of places. These are currently hard to connect because of the requirement for ground stations. Once they have deployed a whole layer all with the laser capable sats they will have a much easier time to expand into truly remote regions. There are also major use cases like using this for other government. Japan might very well use it for example. And other US allies might well adopt it too. That's a lot of money. It might even get NATO adoption. So in my mind there is a huge amount of additional potential revenue for this system. Scaling up production of sats, terminals, ground stations and rocket all at the same time is a pretty monumental task. The first version, Starlink 1, Ground Station and Falcon 9 was more of a proving ground that can break even in cash flow terms. Starlink 2+, Lasers, Starship is really where they will really start to make serious money. SpaceX is basically creating global infrastructure and they are doing it mostly vertically integrated. It shouldn't really even be possible for one company to build something like this.

asadotzler 3y ago

They can and likely will get many millions, perhaps tens of millions of subscribers. This is a build out. Once the build out is complete, it'll be maintenance at lower costs. Starship launching v2 and v3 sats with increased capacity and ever increasing value as a second internet backbone will assure they have more than enough business to keep this all going -- probably better and longer than Comcast can keep it's tens of millions of cable internet users.

danbruc 3y ago
Once the build out is complete, it'll be maintenance at lower costs. The satellites have a lifetime of about 5 years, so with 12,000 satellites they will need to replace 200, if they go all the way to 42,000 even 700 of them each month, indefinitely. While in some sense this is maintenance it also means building and launching one complete constellation every 5 years. Or they have to increase the lifetime which is at least currently probably mainly limited by the available fuel for station keeping.