"A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off, its orange plume glowing bright, about 12 miles due north up the Banana River. The "Iron Man" riff starts to blast. It's fun for the couple dozen of us there. When we hear the thud of the sonic boom, most everyone lets out some kind of hoot. But for Elon Musk, it's just another Tuesday. This is SpaceX's 95th launch of the year, one nearly every other day."
"On this particular night, this Falcon 9 took 28 Starlink internet satellites to orbit. Starlink, of course, is another Musk space venture that dominates its competitors. His constellation has more than 8,000 satellites; its closest competitor, Eutelsat's OneWeb, has about 630 satellites, each supplying less than 1/10th the bandwidth of a Starlink. Amazon is going all in on its own service, called Project Kuiper and led by SpaceX's former satellite chief."
SpaceX achieved its 95th launch of the year from Cape Canaveral, averaging nearly one liftoff every other day. A Falcon 9 on that flight delivered 28 Starlink satellites to orbit. The Starlink constellation exceeds 8,000 satellites, far outpacing competitors such as Eutelsat's OneWeb (about 630 satellites) and Amazon's Project Kuiper (102 deployed so far, with a 1,600-satellite license target). Starlink satellites deliver substantially greater bandwidth per satellite than OneWeb. The rapid launch cadence combined with a large satellite fleet yields significant operational reach and can cause global communications disruptions when outages occur.
Read at WIRED
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