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They’re rapidly launching more and more capacity. The new v2 mini satellites are more than twice as big as the v1.5 satellites, which themselves are not yet tot
by Robotbeat 3y ago
They’re rapidly launching more and more capacity. The new v2 mini satellites are more than twice as big as the v1.5 satellites, which themselves are not yet totally in service.
And as they improve the cost of terminals, there’s no fundamental limit in the amount of capacity for a given frequency allocation. Geometric multiplexing is only limited by the number and cost of the phased array elements.
So rapid expansion everywhere.
And then launching the full sized v2 Starlink satellites on Starship will account for another ~2-2.5x increase in size compared to the v2 minis. Then comes FCC approval for the full sized constellation which is about 5 times as numerous as their current constellation, which itself only is about half filled.
So they have about a factor of 100 capacity expansion in the pipeline, and they can increase the satellite size even further due to Starship’s low costs. They can expand a lot, even in existing countries. Lots of people are on waiting lists due to capacity being filled up in many regions.
- SEJeff 3y ago> Then comes FCC approval for the full sized constellation which is about 5 times as numerous as their current constellation, which itself only is about half filled. SpaceX has launched just under 5,100 Starlink satellites to orbit, of which a single digit percentage have either been deorbited for testing, failure, solar storm knocking them out, etc. Their current constellation total size is approved to be around 12,000 satellites. They've been working to get additional approvals up to 42,000 satellites.
- wbl 3y agoPhased arrays aren't magic. The sharpness of the aperture depends on the physical extent of the antenna and very sharp mainlobes come with additional sidelobes.
- Robotbeat 3y agoOf course.