/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16180336
Yeah, starlink is going already making nearly $4 bn/year (with conservative estimates, i.e. assuming there are zero higher-revenue subscribers on the expensive plans like the $1000/month 1 TB boat plan). Graphing the subscribers gives a highly correlated 2nd order polynomial trend with an r^2 of .996. So growth is still happening. Cost will come down significantly once Starship replaces Falcon 9 for Starlink launches because:

1.) Methane is cheaper than kerosene.
2.) Methane is a less sooty fuel, which means the engines will stay cleaner and thus need less maintenance/refurbishment between flights.
3.) Methane is a single type of hydrocarbon (CH4) whereas kerosene is a mix of several compounds with10-16 carbons per molecule, so they all burn at different rates/temperatures, which makes modeling them very hard, which means optimal kerosene designs need a lot more fudge factor than simpler chemicals like CH4.
4.) Square cube law. The bigger the ship, the higher the volume to surface area ratio, which means a bigger ship gets proportionally lighter than a smaller ship.
5.) square cube law for re-entry. A larger ship will have a slower terminal velocity.
6.) Both Starship stages are planned to be reusable. On Falcon 9, the 2nd stage, (which is ~ 1/10th the cost of the whole rocket gets tossed).