Comment by rogerrogerr
4 hours ago
Starlink very likely leans toward “many cheaper satellites that may fail” instead of “fewer expensive satellites that are less likely to fail”
Their advantage in the satellite-internet industry is that they can launch stuff fast and cheap; very likely this drives different tradeoff decisions than the regime this article talks about.
Having thousands of satellites also allows finding more software bugs, so that in the reality they can be more reliable compared to NASA-style probes (when each one has its unique software).