this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Ehhhhhh.
Starlink has a major problem in durability as a result of the low orbit (required for low latency), meaning it's extremely expensive in upkeep.
The satellites inability to talk to eachother, combined with the narrow transmission angle means the system scales very poorly and has numerous bottlenecks (both the satellite and the uplink station). Yes, Starlink is "working on it", but the laser-link solution is very complex in terms of engineering.
Starlink has some amazing usecases, but those usecases can't possible cover the cost. It runs almost entirely on subsidies and venture capital.
Sheeet, I never realised they can't talk to one another.
Same, I thought that that's what they do. I guess it was another of those melon idea talks about the future.
I think they were supposed to, kind of weird that they don't already do so given that to fix the issue all the satellites need to be relaunched.