It seems that Elon Musk has decided to change everything. The next batch of Starlink satellites should be delivered by a new launch vehicle. This is the Starship, which he so effectively blew up during tests. And the satellites themselves will be new. They will have capabilities that Musk has not even written about on Twitter before. Of course, a new terminal is being prepared for users.
Second-generation missile carrier
One Starlink satellite of the current v 1.0 model weighs 260 kg. A complete package of 60 spacecraft weighs 15,600 kg. These parameters were not chosen by chance. They exactly b2b email list correspond to the full payload of the Falcon 9 v1.2 Full Thrust rocket in a configuration designed for landing the first stage on a barge. The cost of one launch is about $50 million. That is, putting one Starlink satellite into orbit costs (according to an overestimate) $833,333.
This is what the satellites might look like when they leave Starship
The payload of the Starship heavy rocket is 100-150 tons in a reusable configuration. It turns out that in one launch it will be possible to put from 384 to 576 Starlink satellites into orbit.
These calculations were confirmed by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell when she announced that the company would be able to launch 400 satellites into orbit in a single launch.
“SpaceX can use its powerful Starship launch vehicle, a next-generation heavy rocket that can deliver more satellites into orbit at once and deploy them in a way that facilitates faster activation,” she said.
The new rocket will solve several complex problems at once, each of which skeptics considered insurmountable when they predicted the failure of the Starlink program.