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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

They launch more satellites than everyone else combined, but a big caveat here:

"Over 99% of SpaceX’s 1,986 spacecraft deployed in 2023 were Starlink satellites."

EDIT: oh, I see the confusion. The 99% figure means "of the satellites operated by SpaceX, 99% are Starlink". It's 99% of the ones they operate, not 99% of the ones they launch. (Not sure if I'm using the right nomenclature)

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All the Starlink launches make SpaceX the only company in the world that has a massive amount of spare launch capacity on a moment's notice. When a customer needs their payload to launch ASAP to start generating revenue in orbit, instead of sitting on Earth waiting for years for an available launcher, SpaceX are the only option. Payload integration would still take weeks to months, but it would be much faster than any competitor. Take, for example, OneWeb, who have been forced to seek another option after launching from Russia become impossible in 2022. They had to go to SpaceX, their formal competitor. Same for the EU space missions after their recent launcher troubles. Same for Amazon's Kuiper satellites, who bought every possible bit for spare launch capacity from every Western company for years to come, and yet ultimately had to turn to SpaceX, because no one else could offer the launch cadence they needed for their constellation deployment schedule.

On the other hand, launching anything at all at that cadence is something others aren't doing either.

I guess the question is, what happens after the Starlink constellation is complete?

They send replacements. Starlink satellites are in an orbit so low that trace atmosphere drag quickly plucks them out of the sky once they are out of fuel.

I wonder if it might be cheaper to send up a manoeuvrable "refuelling drone" to rendezvous with each one and top-up the fuel supplies. (The satellites would need to be designed to allow this, of course)

My KSP knowledge suggests that moving between orbits that aren't aligned costs a lot of fuel. The extra fuel you'd need to go from orbit to orbit might end up requiring more rocket capacity than sending up more duplicate dry mass of complete replacements. And that's before even considering updated satellites that are improvements in capability over the predecessors they replace.

When at one point I the future they stop expecting any further hardware improvements, they might of course change the satellites to a different balance between fuel and dry mass, sending less satellites per launch that last longer.

they have lifetime of 4-5 years - decaying orbit. It will never be 'complete'

Because they don't need to, not necessarily because they can't.

Note that some Starlink satellites may actually be Starshield satellites. SpaceX and the Department of Defense are being very secretive about Starshield.

I would not be surprised if there was no difference between the two. That is, at a moments notice, every single recent Starlink satellite has the capability to become a Starshield node with a single software deployment. It makes a lot of sense to just modify their existing design to be able to support both networks.

It's a good theory. I think Starshield has SAR, and SAR is a pretty big piece to leave unactivated in all Starlinks. But they could be doing that.

Good point! But I still wouldn't be surprised if they did it anyways. They may even get paid to do so.

How about free sats?

I believe there's SAR hardware on all v2mini sats period thanks to the thug shaker links

My suspicion is the Internet is a cover for SAR. Like the recently completed cable from Oman to Australia that's just a cover for getting Internet to Diego Garcia

So there were at most 19 spacecraft deployed that were NOT Starlink satellites, although 34 launches involved third parties. How? How can I distribute 19 spacecraft on 34 launches?

> How can I distribute 19 spacecraft on 34 launches?

19 customers deployed spacecraft across 33 launches. The 99% figure is wrong.

I had misread it, it's 99% of SpaceX satellites are Starlink. As in, 99% of satellites launched/operated by SpaceX (e.g. the Tesla roadster being another).

Swarm Technologies

SpaceX has had 10 "Transporter" smallsat missions over the last four years that have each launched at least 40 non Starlink satellites and as many as 143 to sun synchronous orbit.

34 out of 96 launches involved 3rd parties though.

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