What is the number of satellites per plane for full deployment? I'm thinking they may want to use full planes for initial testing. That way they can test full earth relay if they have enough ground stations.
Quote from: rsdavis9 on 05/11/2019 11:58 amWhat is the number of satellites per plane for full deployment? I'm thinking they may want to use full planes for initial testing. That way they can test full earth relay if they have enough ground stations.66 satellites per plane. 6 ground stations. No inter-satellites links. They can do store and forward testing.
Quote from: ThomasGadd on 05/11/2019 02:16 pmQuote from: rsdavis9 on 05/11/2019 11:58 amWhat is the number of satellites per plane for full deployment? I'm thinking they may want to use full planes for initial testing. That way they can test full earth relay if they have enough ground stations.66 satellites per plane. 6 ground stations. No inter-satellites links. They can do store and forward testing. Store and forward meaning: store packets and wait for ground station to come into view? But with enough ground stations they could do straight relay? Probably 66 ground stations.
Would the weight of that additional structure then reduce the satellite's on orbit useful life by needing more fuel to maintain orbit? If so, might not be worth it.
If F9 is volume limited, one way to squeeze more sats in the fairing is to have the sats be the dispenser. Imagine daisy chaining them all together and having them release each other in turn. This would mean more structure to the individual units, but maybe less weight overall per sat. Might make the sats less demisable upon reentry. This is the sort of out-of-the-box thinking SpaceX is known for, but maybe not worth tackling if a much more capable system is on its way?
An educated guess would be to provide coverage for a limited area where they have ground stations and satellite coverage 24x7. It is testing after all. Perhaps Western USA only.
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/starlink-1.htmIf each Starlink sat is 387 kilograms, and there's 60 all together, that's an estimated total payload mass of 23,220 kilograms (not including the dispenser).
Looks to be no dispenser.They are stacked on top of each other.Also looks to be 2 stacks of 30 rectangular flat ~ .3 m thick.