[ajklsdhfniuwehf]

> They had 1000 or so satellites when I first started testing, and there are now something like 1600 or so. Most of the time, I don't even notice when it switches satellites.

Enjoy the early adopter moment. Even if they keep increasing the numbers, they will probably move those new satellites in a much wider net to cover more subscribers the second they must show a profit.

[Robotbeat]

They are planning to increase the number of satellites by an order of magnitude. They’re launching extremely fast with Falcon 9, and prepping Starship for launch as well, which has 5-10 times the payload. May see Starlink launches on Starship join Falcon9 within a year or so.

So the opposite is true. They’re likely to massively increase the number of satellites.

If you want to argue the per user bandwidth might be different than for early users, that’s somewhat more plausible. But the number of satellites will increase. They can’t actually significantly change the inclination of the satellites once launched as it takes an insane amount of propellant, and even for solar electric thrusters, so your concern about them moving the satellites to other orbits is very unlikely.

[shaklee3]

No. They are increasing satellites by an order of magnitude, but users by about 20x. It's going to get worse

[Robotbeat]

If they have 1600 satellites in orbit but are adding 40,000 more satellites (with more capability), then it’ll get better with 20x users, not worse. But anyway, the question was about satellite visibility, not bandwidth per user. The person I was replying to was claiming there will be fewer visible satellites as they’d be moving to different inclinations, which just isn’t feasible let alone likely.

[zizee]

> Even if they keep increasing the numbers, they will probably move those new satellites in a much wider net

The only way to make a wider net whilst simultaneously adding satellites would be to raise the altitude of the satellites, which I am fairly certain is not possible for the existing satellites.