“Next-gen” Starlink looks a lot like current-gen

This is significant because there are two key properties of gen2 Starlink satellites: Inter-satellite direct connection by laser link, and a lot more capacity.

Starlink is hitting scaling problems at 1M subscribers. It needs abou 100X more capacity to be a viable competitor to terrestrial networks. That requires the real gen2 satellites, which are about 5X heavier, and it requires 5-10X as many of them. That requires Starship, not just for capacity, but to meet the projected economy of lunch costs, too.

Getting operational experience with a "space backbone" is hugely valuable. But it is not really a viable business without meeting nearly all the gen2 projections for costs, number of satellites, network architecture, operations reliability, and capacity.