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Starship's Tenth Flight Test

(www.spacex.com)
364 points metalman | 3 comments | 26 Aug 25 23:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.835s | source
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Pigalowda ◴[26 Aug 25 23:59 UTC] No.45033827[source]▶
So the starlink simulators its deploying right now are empty platters that will burn up in the atmosphere from what I understand. Next missions they’ll be real statlink sats. Are these different than regular sats? It sounds like they’re able to handle more bandwidth but I don’t know.
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1. kersplody ◴[27 Aug 25 00:55 UTC] No.45034212[source]▶
Next flight should be a mass simulator of at least 100 tons to orbit. This flight was around ~10 tons to almost orbit.

The economics of Starlink basically require high cadence Starship launches with 50+ Starlink v3 satellites on each flight.

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2. Teever ◴[27 Aug 25 01:19 UTC] No.45034361[source]▶
Isn't starlink a revenue generating endeavor already?
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3. daemonologist ◴[27 Aug 25 01:35 UTC] No.45034468[source]▶
Yes; I think it would be more accurate to say that the economics of Starship basically require high cadence launches with lots of v3 Starlink satellites (because only the big internet constellations can financially justify launching so much payload to orbit right now).