alt Hacker NewsStarlink 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.
Replies
phanarch • today at 10:04 AM
The Starlink tangent misses something important about why software reliability in satellite systems is categorically different from hardware reliability.
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).