SpaceX has revealed some key details about its growing Starlink satellite internet constellation in a recent regulatory presentation, touches on total investment, user terminal development, and its capabilities for spaceflight production.
Though the single largest satellite constellation in the world by a factor of three or more, Starlink is more than 500 operational satellites strong after just nine months of launches, and the company has planned at least 5-8 more missions between now and the end of 2020. To further expand the world’s largest satellite constellation, however, SpaceX also needs to be the world’s most productive satellite manufacturer by at least a full size
Since the first dedicated Starlink launch of SpaceX in May 2019, the company has remained extremely secretive about the unusually productive satellite production infrastructure it had to develop. Besides a few remarks by CEO Elon Musk and the incidental leaks from regulatory documents like space flight conferences, very little is known and not a single photo has been released. In FCC ex parte presentation with a few specific details came as a surprise, and revealed that SpaceX builds at least 120 Starlink satellites per month at its factory in Redmond, Washington.
Based on past analysis of SpaceX’s Redmond facilities, the company has about 150,000 square feet (14,000 m ^ 2) to work with, a third or half of which is likely dedicated to a satellite line. Despite the relatively small facilities, SpaceX says it is actively building 120 satellites per month – equivalent to at least 1440 spacecraft annually. By mass, it means that SpaceX comes out more than 30 metric tons (~ 69,000 lb) of satellites every single month, a figure that is almost certainly unusual in the history of satellite manufacturing.
Sustained over 12 months would equate to ~ 360 metric tons (10% heavier than a fully powered Falcon 9 V1.0 rocket) of all satellites built. In short, with an extremely small (and thus efficient) base of operations, SpaceX regularly produces a large number of satellites – enough to sustain indefinitely two full Starlink launches per month. With that rate, SpaceX was able to complete Starlink’s first ~ 4400 satellite phase in just three years.
Production capacity or efficiency would need to be extensively expanded for SpaceX to complete the second (~ 12,000 satellites) and third (~ 40,000 satellites) phases of the Starlink constellation. However, the first phase would likely generate substantial revenue, optimistically enabling SpaceX to finance even future growth or at least dramatically reduce the need for fundraising.
Along those lines, the same FCC ex parte presentation included a remark that “SpaceX has so far invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Starlink,” including “more than $ 70 million developing and producing thousands of user terminals per month.” In other words, SpaceX has apparently spent less – and possibly much less – $ 1 billion designing, building and launching nearly 600 satellites. By comparison, competitor OneWeb apparently spent more than $ 3.4 billion and filed for bankruptcy before it even launched 100 satellites.
That exceptional efficiency will, as CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly pointed out, hopefully make Starlink the first low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet constellation in history net go bankrupt. The company hopes to begin rolling out a much broader Starlink beta test after the 14th v1.0 satellite launch – four launches are currently underway. If all goes well during that beta test, Starlink could become the first LEO Internet constellation in history to start generating significant revenue not long after.
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