perpetually burning up satellites in the atmosphere is a pretty shitty business though.
Exactly. The business isn’t remotely sustainable. All that money being invested into new satellites will, by next year, need to be invested constantly to keep the network at the same size.
Starlink needs run as fast as it can, just to stay in the same place, and the investment money is finite when people see it’s not going to grow.
What was the life expectancy of each satellite? I think I read something like 5 to 7 years. If we were talking about dozens of satellites I would say no problem, but thousands?
On https://satellitemap.space/ you can see the numbers pretty accurately under “status over time”. The current launch cadence is steady since mid 2022, and the burn rate is climbing to match. It seems to have a 5 year delay, but it’s possible the new satellites will last a little longer.
Which means that by mid 2027 earliest and mid 2029, the current “investment” in “growth” will have become the regular maintenance spending. And up to that point, maintenance costs will continue to climb to consume the entire investment budget.
Exactly. The business isn’t remotely sustainable. All that money being invested into new satellites will, by next year, need to be invested constantly to keep the network at the same size.
Starlink needs run as fast as it can, just to stay in the same place, and the investment money is finite when people see it’s not going to grow.
What was the life expectancy of each satellite? I think I read something like 5 to 7 years. If we were talking about dozens of satellites I would say no problem, but thousands?
On https://satellitemap.space/ you can see the numbers pretty accurately under “status over time”. The current launch cadence is steady since mid 2022, and the burn rate is climbing to match. It seems to have a 5 year delay, but it’s possible the new satellites will last a little longer.
Which means that by mid 2027 earliest and mid 2029, the current “investment” in “growth” will have become the regular maintenance spending. And up to that point, maintenance costs will continue to climb to consume the entire investment budget.