[ctdonath]

Additional napkin math:

If we’re going to take the “precious resource” argument seriously, let’s. One Starlink satellite can earn ~$25M/year, setting the value of that slot. This seems a reasonable value for LEO “homesteading”; if someone wants it, that’s a fair price to pay. And I do mean fair, seeing as it’s SpaceX inventing the technology, building the satellites, staking claims, and otherwise being first-mover and pioneer of LEO on a colonizing scale (so to speak). That includes the value of serving 25,000 people per satellite at $100/month. Want that orbital property? pay the trailblazer that made that parcel valuable. (As for “Earth’s population has a fair share” - no, they didn’t do squat for it beyond what one was already paid for to get SX there. Anyone is free to go there now and lay claim. Government involvement should be nothing more than collecting cost of tracking claims and resolving disputes.)

[giantrobot]

The whole "orbital slot" thing is absurd. Space is really big. Like, really big. And orbital mechanics being what it is, you could launch a satellite in the exact same orbit as a Starlink satellite but trailing a few miles behind and they'll never impact one another. If they are using totally different uplink and downlink frequencies they'll be effectively invisible to ground stations of competing services.

That being said, your napkin math is a bit off. A single Starlink satellite isn't all that valuable. It can only talk to ground stations in some region on Earth for a short period of time. It's the dozens of satellites per plane that make the service useful (24/7 coverage). While you can divide total revenue by the number of satellites, the service only works with a complete orbital plane.

[ctdonath]

Agreed. It was an attempt to take the issue as raised and see what the consequential ballpark numbers are.

[giantrobot]

Yeah sorry I wasn't trying to call you out just point out an additional complexity to the numbers. If Starlink was going to sell an "slot" to a competitor (not that they would need to), they'd be selling an orbital plane rather than a single satellite's position. The cost of that plane wouldn't be some fixed value but the gross revenue from all the subscribes covered by that plane.

The planes that cover mostly empty ocean would be far less valuable than ones that covered subscriber-dense populations. But of course that's in a world where somehow a competitor needs to buy a "slot" from Starlink and not just orbit a few miles higher in the same plane.