8 thoughts on “SpaceX Starlink”

  1. $10 billion for global Internet sounds very cheap, I wonder how many connections each satellite can handle.

  2. Iridium built 98 satellites and launched 95 of them with 22 launches for about $5 billion 1997-2002. That’s about $7 billion in inflation adjusted dollars today. The satellites were mass produced for only about $5 million each, so R&D, ground infrastructure, launch costs, and general business overhead must have totalled $4.5 billion. I suspect launch costs were at least $1 billion of that.

    Starlink is currently planning a network of nearly 12000 satellites. SpaceX is going to have to keep the sat manufacuting costs way down.

    1. Musk has a lot of experience keeping manufacturing processes efficient, just look at Tesla…

      Different businesses with different set of hurdles but I hope no one from Tesla gets hired there.

    1. Iridium operates in the L-band and was designed primarily for voice communications along with narrow band data. The new generation Iridium satellites offer more bandwidth than the original series but they’re still narrow band compared to what the other LEO satcom constellations (Ku or Ka band) are promising. This allows Iridium users to have small handheld satellite phones compared to larger devices (reportedly the size of a laptop) needed to access the newer constellations.

  4. So, you think they have any plans to deploy a smaller constellation on the first (unmanned) trip to Mars?

    Add in atomic clocks, and they should be able to provide GPS to the first manned crew as well.

    2. NASA is thinking about doing something like this through their LOP-G program. Maybe Musk could beat them to it or take part in the competition through partnering with one of the other contestants.

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