I guess Mr. Musk did not get the memo that if you put your satellites into a certain orbit there is going to be a greater chance that they will get cooked. But, Musk is a determined individual, he sent up another 46 satellites on February 9th. There are 2,100 of these satellites in orbit, with 1,900 actually working, the other 200 well they croaked.
It's not a cheap service. In Canada your going to be charged 714 for the gear and the plan is 129 per month, this is the basic plan. What is interesting is the fact that the team at SpaceX wants to send more satellites up. The idea is to have more satellites so that the speed increases for users. The issue of course is the fact that the sun will produce storms and that will put all those satellites at risk. Along with the risk of failures that means a lot of cost going into making this idea work. It's not a bad idea but, it's not a great one either. I envision pricing increases as the losses mount from failed deployments and more satellites being cooked by the sun.
Musk can afford the odd failure after all he's got 2.3 Billion to back him. But the average subscriber to his service can't afford or won't be able to afford the cost to recoup the loses that are sure to continue to mount as the Starlink service continues. Think about this, 40 of 49 satellites at 20 Million in one shot gone. That is not something to go oh well about. Would I pay to take that risk, most likely no. Unless there was no alternate way to get online. Then again for many in remote rural locations satellites may be the only way to get online as well as do things like make calls and even watch a simple TV show. So it comes down to who is the safest bet.
There are not a lot of companies who do this work. But you can find them and pricing points vary from low to very high. It should be noted that with any satellite service besides a risk of the satellite going down there are also things like weather and cloud conditions to contend with. I remember using a satellite service when I lived in Brampton Ontario. Most of the time it was fine, but there were times when the service was down, mostly due to weather.
To me it appears that Starlink is to risky. Risk is normal in business and life in general but, one should never take stupid risks and it appears that is what SpaceX is doing by launching so many satellites at one time. It's just a matter of time when another payload goes up and poof it gets ruined by a solar event or half the lot fails to go online due to a malfunction. In the end the customer foots the bill for the fix via jacked up prices to recoup the loses making this a losing proposition for the consumer.
C. T.
Resources linked to this post:
CNET compares prices of satellite providers
Starlink is a service from SpaceX that offers internet services via satellite, it's supposed to be quite efficient but it is expensive, especially in Canada.
