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A comment on Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm. Parent comment

Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by hajile on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @09:19AM (#30272879)
2% of a big number is still a big number.

62M to launch. 250-500k per satellite.

That's $72M to $82M down the toilet. Given median per-person income is around $36k, that represents over 2,000 man-years of loss.

There are less than 30,000 people out of 7,900,000,000 in the entire world worth more than 100M.

You could buy around 20 windmills and power 15,000 entire homes per year with that money (or around 40,000 homes with natural gas).

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by ineedasername on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @10:11AM (#30273498)
It might not be the full $62M though. SpaceX often launches other payloads at the same time. I recall one that sent off a couple of BlackSky says at the same time. I don't know what % of the payload that constitutes though, and as I write this out I realize that I'm probably splitting hairs...
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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by hajile on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @10:38AM (#30273879)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/01/06/spacex-deploys-49-more...

This had 48 satellites, so definitely a dedicated launch.

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by ineedasername on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @01:24PM (#30276198)
The launch I referenced with BlackSky also had 48 satelites: https://www.satellitetoday.com/launch/2021/12/02/spacex-laun...

I didn't find a quick # of lift capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO in reusable mode, but SpaceX has stated >= 60% capacity in reusable mode. LEO in non-reusable mode has about 23,000kg, so there could be a fair bit of headroom for extra mass in LEO reusable mode even with 48 starlink sats. Admittedly, probably not enough to really change the magnitude of the GGP's calculations.

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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by archon810 on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @04:39PM (#30278911)
The bigger question I would be asking right now is if it happened this time with 40, who is to say it won't happen with 100 next time and what is being done to prevent it in the future?
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Re:Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm by JaimeThompson on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @10:00AM (#30273368)
What Bezos is paying for his boat could pay for all of that 6 times over.
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