Re:Science upside for Starship
by baq on Monday November 22, 2021 @05:50PM
(#29312555)
Starlink is much bigger than that. It isn’t life support. It’s the ultimate cash cow, profits from which are in at least some part expected to fund some part of a Mars mission. This is why SpaceX isn’t public - your wall street shareholders would suffocate Musk with lawsuits before he would be able to finish saying ‘Martian mission’.
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Agreed that Starlink will be a huge cash cow, anyway until competition surfaces. $60B ARR?
At issue is whether and when their planned launch capacity ever finds other customers. Once all 30k birds are up, will there be other uses for the launchers, besides going to Mars? Do they need more than a dozen or two, for the job?
Starlink's orbit is so low, especially the large constellation, that it requires almost constant replenishment of birds due to extremely fast decay (order of 1-2 years of useful service life?)
So yeah, if they ever launch the whole 30k, they'll be flying quite often; the first replenishment will likely happen before the constellation is complete if the start slow.