They have launched exactly zero of those "more powerful" satellites. And they are not launching at near the replacement rate for the final constellation.
Higher-bandwidth birds just moves the bottleneck.
Higher-bandwidth birds just moves the bottleneck.
The constellation is still growing quickly, they just passed 3000 launched Starlink satellites. By the time they go past the 9.000 satellites or so they should have Starship ready and kick their launch volume into overdrive. Have the 30,000 extra satellites (on top of the 12,000 already approved ones) even been approved yet?
> Higher-bandwidth birds just moves the bottleneck.
What does that even mean? There is no reason to believe they can't launch enough powerful satellites to reach faster speeds in those rural areas.
What makes you doubt the company that made reusable rockets that land on boats and reflux 13+ times won’t do this? The ENTIRE industry said it was impossible but it was fully within the realm of physics. They pulled it off because it was possible.
People doubted they could make it pay, but the US kept handing over money until it did.
That said. I’m sure the US Department of Defense will effectively write SpaceX a blank check after seeing how quickly they switched to spread spectrum frequency hopping to prevent Russian jamming of comms in Ukraine.
You can't deny that they're going to launch the more powerful satellites while simultaneously relying on those more powerful satellites for your calculations of the size of the final constellation...
They're launching at much faster than the rate needed for replacement for the existing planned constellation for the version 1/1.5 satellites.