They send replacements. Starlink satellites are in an orbit so low that trace atmosphere drag quickly plucks them out of the sky once they are out of fuel.
I wonder if it might be cheaper to send up a manoeuvrable "refuelling drone" to rendezvous with each one and top-up the fuel supplies. (The satellites would need to be designed to allow this, of course)
My KSP knowledge suggests that moving between orbits that aren't aligned costs a lot of fuel. The extra fuel you'd need to go from orbit to orbit might end up requiring more rocket capacity than sending up more duplicate dry mass of complete replacements. And that's before even considering updated satellites that are improvements in capability over the predecessors they replace.
When at one point I the future they stop expecting any further hardware improvements, they might of course change the satellites to a different balance between fuel and dry mass, sending less satellites per launch that last longer.
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I guess the question is, what happens after the Starlink constellation is complete?
They send replacements. Starlink satellites are in an orbit so low that trace atmosphere drag quickly plucks them out of the sky once they are out of fuel.
I wonder if it might be cheaper to send up a manoeuvrable "refuelling drone" to rendezvous with each one and top-up the fuel supplies. (The satellites would need to be designed to allow this, of course)
My KSP knowledge suggests that moving between orbits that aren't aligned costs a lot of fuel. The extra fuel you'd need to go from orbit to orbit might end up requiring more rocket capacity than sending up more duplicate dry mass of complete replacements. And that's before even considering updated satellites that are improvements in capability over the predecessors they replace.
When at one point I the future they stop expecting any further hardware improvements, they might of course change the satellites to a different balance between fuel and dry mass, sending less satellites per launch that last longer.
they have lifetime of 4-5 years - decaying orbit. It will never be 'complete'