[Starlink] Starship's 4th flight test was magnificent

[David Lang]

Dave Taht wrote:

> But that left questions for me. How much overweight are Starship and the
> booster now? How much payload can they actually push to an orbit suitable
> for deploying starlink? When will they attempt payloads?

According to Elon a couple months ago, the current flying versions could deliver 
~50t to orbit (in reusable mode), they have 3 more block 1 ships left, and the 
block 2 ships will be well over 100t (not counting any benefits from weight 
reduction as they fly them more and can examine them post-recovery)

note that if they flew them in expendable mode, they could at least double that 
payload.

Block 3 ships are a bit further out, they are expecting them to handle 200t in 
fully recoverable mode.

> The second set of questions are that the newer, larger Starlink satellites
> were designed, oh, 4 years ago? with about 4x the capacity of the existing
> ones, and I imagine (and hope) that they have been continually redesigned
> with an eye to latency now, as well as capacity.

the V2 were about 8-10x the capacity of the V1.5 (the ones they could launch 
50-60 per flight), the v2 mini they have been launching (~22/flight) are about 
midway between the two. No recent word on the V2s, but Tim Dodd did another 
starbase visit with Elon before the flight, so watch for that to show up soon.

David Lang