alt Hacker NewsCan you explain what makes Falcon9 / Starship special (or needed) to launch these satellites? China, India, EU, Japan etc. all have the capability to launch satellites. So why is a Falcon9 / Starship a particular requirement?
Replies
samrus • today at 6:03 PM
Has to be the cost. A reusable launch vehicle is such a ridiculously better value proposition that it creates a discrete evolution. Some things just arent feasible to do without them
tartuffe78 • today at 6:03 PM
Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it would be very expensive to emulate that without super efficient launching capabilities.
➕ show 1 reply
tekla • today at 6:08 PM
None of those countries (well probably except China) have any significant launch capacity to deploy constellations
➕ show 2 replies
Cost, maybe? It is one thing to ship up a valuable satellite (which they all can do). But to ship up 1000s of satellites (and keep doing it in perpetuity, because IIRC they don't have a long lifetime[0]) gets expensive.
0: Looks like 5 years. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html