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A comment on SpaceX projected 20M Starlink users by 2022–it ended up with 1M. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX projected 20M Starlink users by 2022–it ended up w... by cwillu on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @06:23PM (#37577785)
This has nothing to do with kessler syndrome; these satellites will all necessarily deorbit a relatively short period after their fuel supplies are exhausted and they're no longer able to correct for the orbital degradation caused by the atmosphere.
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Re:SpaceX projected 20M Starlink users by 2022–it ended up w... by falcolas on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @06:51PM (#37578148)
Somewhat tangential: Can you imaging having to come up with a price point involving the planned destruction of millions, if not billions of dollars of assets every few years?
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Re:SpaceX projected 20M Starlink users by 2022–it ended up w... by derekp7 on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @07:38PM (#37578580)
They cost about 250,000 each from what I read. If the constellation is 10K satellites that is 2.5 billion every 5 years. If revenue is $80 per month per subscriber, you need about half million subscribers to break even.

This doesn't include launch costs, but starship is supposed to minimize that further. Add in other overhead, then 1 million subscribers is well within spitting distance of break even.

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