I don’t think it is OT now. I wonder if they have a rocket engine on them to
deorbit?
From: Bill Prince
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2020 2:16 PM
To: AFMUG
Subject: [AFMUG] OT: Now there are ~~ 538 (approx)
In case anyone was watching SpaceX put up another 58 Starlink sats on Saturday.
That puts them at almost double the number they claimed to need to enable their
"private beta". I'm sure it's underway, plus they're running some kind of test
with the US military.
All the sats except for the first batch of 60 are of the 1.0 design. Depending
on which news blurb you read, these sats all have to relay directly through
ground stations, or they have some limited ability to go sat-to-sat via an RF
link. We may find out before the end of the year.
They also stated that they c/would start the public beta when they had ~~ 800
sats in orbit. By my seat-of the pants estimation, that will be another 4-1/2
launches from now; maybe another 3 months. Call it September, but who knows.
I think the biggest obstacle at this point is their pizza box/flying saucer on
a stick user terminal. I heard one estimate that the build cost for it are in
the neighborhood of $1200.
I would say by the beginning of 2021, this topic will not longer be "OT".
If you want to get notification when they can service your area, go here.
--
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
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