Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
    > In the case of Starlink, there is also the minor issue that their initial
    > constellation that they started commercial ops with isn't ISL-capable, so
    > there may be an incentive here to retire some satellites early, perhaps, and
    > fill their orbital slots with more capable birds.

I think that it falls into the fail-early dot-com mantra :-)
Shorter lifetimes means shorter times to upgrade the network.
Not just the ISL, but also the rest of the forwarding hardware.

Given that spaceX is putting these satellites up at marginal launch costs,
and I think getting a very very significant R&D and publicity boost from the
very rapid pace of launches and booster reuses, it seems like it's just a win-win-win.