Niklas Holsti wrote on Sun, 26 May
2019 19:32:54 +0300:

On 19-05-26 15:16 , Jeff Findley wrote:
...
Once
Starship/Super Booster is flying to earth orbit, its primary mission
will be Starlink satellite deployment. Yes you can keep flying up to 60
Starlink satellites at a time on Falcon 9 (more polar orbits will either
have less satellites or require Falcon Heavy launches), but when the
goal is on the order of 12,000 satellites (by the mid 2020s), that's at
least 200 Falcon/Falcon Heavy launches in a few short years! If we
guess those launches cost on average $50 million each, that's $10
billion in launch costs just to get the initial constellation up and
running!

According to Wikipedia, $10 billion is indeed the Starlink cost estimate.


But that $10 billion is not just launch costs, but rather total system
cost from designing the thing to building all the satellites to
deploying them to required ground stations.

And keep in mind the lifetime of these satellites is relatively short
(from memory something like 3-5 years), so this isn't a "one time"
thing.

I think that lifetime refers to a failed, dead satellite, in the lower
orbits, yes? AIUI working satellites use ion engines that will extend
their lifetime.


No. 'Lifetime' generally refers to the operating lifespan of the
satellite, which for these is 5 years or less.

If Starlink is successful, SpaceX will be continuously launching
its own Starlink satellites for some time to come.

Yes, but if those launches are part of day-to-day Starlink operations,
reusing the same launchers, why should they prevent further development
aiming at Mars?


Because it's going to tie up resources like launch pads, launch
management, etc. Once Starlink is complete it takes a Falcon 9 launch
per week just to replace satellites that are falling out of orbit.


--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney