Starlink is promising well under a million per satellite, and OneWeb is reportedly already at a million. Satellite costs might end up lower than launch costs, and even if they're higher that doesn't seem like they'll dominate.

Simple: to provide maximum speed to the end users, you want a large amount of small cells so you can better use the allocated frequency spectrum. However, launches used to be really expensive, so operators had to go for high orbits covering large areas - Iridium, for example, cost 5 billion dollars to build for 77 satellites, meaning a cost per satellite of ~64 million dollars (hardware+launch).

In contrast, SpaceX is at ~250k-500k dollars for the satellite and anything from 30-60 million dollars per launch of 60 satellites, so total cost of ~750k-1.5 million dollars per satellite [2]. That's a whole order of magnitude less cost than Iridium.

And on top of that, SpaceX's lower orbit also means better service quality due to lower latency and better signal quality. Established satcom providers physically cannot compete with that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

[2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satell...

Indeed, however there's a limited capacity for satellites.

Iridium did all of the things Starlink does - it just did them with 2G bandwidths, instead of 5G bandwidths.

Furthermore the opex of keeping a constellation that large in orbit, has not been proven to be cheaper than operating a ground based wireless network. Starlink operates with an assumption, that has not yet been proven to be true - that the cost per kg to launch something into LEO will go down as time goes on. If this prediction does not prove to be true, then it has no hope of making money, much less being self-sustaining.

Beyond this, the shorter lifetime of their sat fleet compared to a geosynchronous sat, means they must be replaced sooner, but its not obvious that the sats are significantly cheaper.

The appearance of novelness is what allowed SpaceX to get the spectrum to operate what is effectively another cellular network - well a hybrid between fixed wireless and cellular.

In a world in which satellites stayed very expensive I could imagine it being a bit more successful.

What's the driver of satellite size? Is it the size of current rockets? Cube says etc would tend to point the other way.

What the total cost of a satellite? Fine sending a 1 tonne satellite to space costs $300k but if it still costs $x million to build the thing you're still looking at a select group who can afford it.

Taking those 2 things together how many organisations will opt for the absolute cheapest option giving up the ability to get a dedicated launch to a given orbit?

What are these new markets? Is asteroid mining going to become economically viable? Is lunar exploration going to be profitable? It's cheap to get to the middle of the Atlantic, it isn't exactly a hive of economic activity though. Yes there's starlink, but that has downsides relative to wired alternatives so the market is always going to be limited. Yes starlink is a massive expansion of the space economy, but that just highlights how small the space economy was and is, which just raises the question of whether such a massive rocket like starship will be able to be supported.

'build it and they will come' sounds nice, but it isn't a given.

For starlink, its not. Maybe for the first time in history.

While this isn't entirely unreasonable, consider a few things. First, this is one case where even natural incentives line up pretty well. For the foreseeable future, no one is going to have more economic incentive to prevent the loss of usable LEO than companies that build themselves around usage of LEO. There are also virtuous spirals in the very technology that makes low cost possible, ie., the only way to reach SpaceX's targeted launch costs with Starship are to have a full reusability, and that itself cuts a ton of orbital debris (spent stages).

Second, much cheaper mass and higher cadence changes everything in space engineering, and that includes giving regulators significantly more leeway in what they can reasonably require. Things like more redundant controlled deorbit systems, requirements for lower orbits by default with higher orbits reserved, requirements for materials, and so on all ultimately boil down to how much it costs to get a kg to orbit and how regularly it can be done. More leeway there makes a lot of things easier without destroying utility, which in turn raises the chances we can make solid systematic changes.

Not saying there isn't plenty of room for error overall, or that regulators shouldn't be thinking about it too. But I do think the "mega constellation commercial" focus is mostly misguided. If anything the biggest risks seem to be from government actors, in terms of things like a-sat weapons and Old Space big companies not feeling the need to care.

Maybe 60-70 satellites is too small to qualify?

I'm just not sure how much help they got from the US or how many Nazi they could grab at the end of the war.

Now in the 21st century, the fact that Arianespace and the entire EU can't really figure out in two decades how to half the cost of it's launcher is worrisome. Clearly those organisations, ability to coordinate or culture have dangerously deteriorated.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ast%C3%A9rix_(satellite)

The article only mentioned communications satelites and I don't think anyone is going able to beat Starlink in that area in the next 5-10 years.

Very many lower cost lower orbit satellites.

The plan is to double the amount of active satellites in orbit (4425 new satellites) in the next few years, resulting in half of all satellites being SpaceX internet satellites that cost an order of magnitude less than current satellites.

Do you feel threatened by them, or just resent the fact that they will alter the look of the night sky, especially around sunset and sunrise?

I can understand the latter, but communication satellites in orbit aren't a safety problem for people on the surface, unlike, say, every drone that someone flies in your proximity.

"4G works awesomely."

This is very local, I can't even get 4G coverage at some places literally on the border of Prague, a major European capital. Not a wilderness by any means.

"You are completely delusional."

Stop that shit. And do not attack my math, I actually graduated in algebra and number theory.

Seriously, to calculate returns on Starlink in the future, you need to assess several variables such as launch cost, manufacture cost, personnel cost and total # of customers. These are not yet known with necessary precision into the future, so we can only guesstimate. If we take Musk's admission that Starlink needs 30 billion USD to survive, 10 million paying end customers worldwide should be more than enough. That is not that much, compared to the world population.

And we do not know how much extra money are getting from customers such as the US Army which is really intrigued with Starlink.

"Those 20 years serving ARE still made today! Your comparison is invalid. "

So yes, they are. Do they provide a service on 2021 quality level? There are steam engines still in operation, but that does not mean that the technology isn't obsolete.