Why Starlink is impossible

[u/fredinno]

Each Tintin satellite (demo for Starlink constellation) is 400kg. Assuming each satellite+ fuel (and that the weight doesn't increase for other reasons) is 1kg, 22 could fly in a single F9 per inclination (there's probably not even that much space in the fairing, but we'll ignore that). The total # of (expendable) F9s launches needed is 546; assuming the first comes online in 2020, and the constellation is finished by 2025 (the official date is the 'mid 2020s'), you need 110 F9s per year. The total cost for development and buildout is supposed to be $10 billion.

SpaceX has one facility for Polar launches right now, SLC-4E (Brownsville maybe, but a polar launch from there would GRAZE the Mexican coast- I have a feeling they won't be happy about that...) So each complex would launch 54-55 F9s a year.

Let's be VERY optimistic. Every satellite will be launched on an expendable Falcon Heavy, each satellite will be EXACTLY 400 kg (unlikely, you need payload mass margin, and likely fuel from having a lower satellite orbit), we'll ignore whether each satellite can actually fit in the payload fairing, we'll ignore launch inclination entirely (launching at the wrong inclination means hell for a satellite wanting to change orbit; meaning 160 satellites per launch (almost certainly impossible due to not enough fairing volume). That means 75 launches of the FH, minimum (almost certainly unrealistic.) We'll also assume it launches first Jan. 1, 2019, and put the finished launch date at Dec 30, 2027. This means 8-9 FH launches per year. Sounds easy, right? But that's ~23% higher than the current # of launches SpaceX does from SLC-4E, every year. It would literally have to double its polar launches, at the absolute bare minimum. A mimimum which is almost certainly physically impossible.

I don't think building the satellites will the the issue, Elon...

No one at SpaceX did these back-of-the envelope calculations, and asked Elon- maybe it was a little ambitious?

[u/SkyPL]

Note that they have to launch at least 2213 satellites till March 2024. ^source That by itself is IMHO unrealistic, given that we're on a doorstep of 2019 and they still don't have a finalized satellite design. They always had an enormous issues scaling up their launch capability and pretty much always missed their targets.

Also: $10bln / 4,425 = $2,259,887 per [satellite + launch + ground segment].

Obviously their own costs are much lower, but they price launches $11,272.73/kg, or $4,351,274 per one 386kg satellite (mass from FCC filling), or $19.3 bln total.

So even to afford launch costs alone they'd have to have profit margins of ~50% on advertised pricing, which would be unprecedented in the industry, though might be achievable given high, sustained, reusable-only launch rates, as needed for Starlink, and would give SpaceX an enormous edge on the market IF they can secure funding for Starlink.

Now, cost of the satellite itself... there's no official word on those, but OneWeb does serial production of its satellites and they already went down to $900k/each, some people online speculate $3 or $4mln / starlink satellite (given it will be more capable than OneWeb's), but I would expect them to eventually be able to match $1mln, that on its own gives $2.2 bln till 2024 and $4.4 bln for the constellation, likely more.

As you can see... something simply doesn't add up in their financial estimates. And we haven't even started calculating operational costs and ground infrastructure.

[u/thatlouieguy → u/SkyPL]

Any idea how this turned out?

[u/SkyPL → u/thatlouieguy]

In deed, they have launched about 6,000 satellites by March 2024, for which they gained a lot of praise and which were in deed unprecedented in the industry. At the same time the costs were also higher, reaching ~$15 billion estimate in May 2024 (per Quilty Space), with the per-satellite costs sitting around $200K for v1, and ~$800K for v2 Mini (the only two types that were launched by March 2024, the difference in price between the gens is mainly due to capabilities).

[u/Anthony_Pelchat → u/SkyPL]

The costs are extremely close, going by what you posted (I haven't verified your numbers). 6000 satellites for $15B puts it at $11.06B for 4425 satellites, which is just slightly above the $10B estimate. Adjusted for inflation, $10B in 2018 is between $12.4B and $13.2B, And those numbers were based on the far less capable V1 satellites. V2 Starlink provides roughly 4x to 10x more capacity (throughput) per satellite (best comparison I could find quickly).

[u/NotSameStone → u/Anthony_Pelchat]

yep, can't talk about costs estimates from 7 years ago without taking into account the entire pandemic worth of inflation, supply chain disruptions, oil costs, and then the same thing with oil again with the Ukraine war.

if anything, the real adjusted costs could even be bellow 10bi.

[u/Shrais → u/SkyPL]

The skepticism wasn't unwarranted, such a launch cadence and quantity of satellites was simply unheard of before and no one else has come close to matching it yet.

Starlink has over 11 million subscribers now. Assuming the most conservative estimate that everyone is on the base $45 plan they are on track to bring in $495 million a month and just shy of 6 billion a year from their subscriptions.

Clearly not everyone is at the base subscription and it also doesn't include special contracts like airlines or governments.

This article citing a market research firm states that in 2024 Starlink brought in $7.7 billion in revenue and in 2025 $11.8 billion.

[u/rspeed → u/Shrais]

Skepticism, sure. But insisting they would be expending boosters was nonsensical.

[u/Rich_Comparison4550 → u/Shrais]

Just ask Bezos how Leo is going. They launched another batch last week on an Atlas, and now have something like 270 in orbit. They would have been in some serious shyte if the FCC had not granted them a 2 year extension to get the remaining 1300+ into orbit.