>>13352385You don't need 12,000 satellites. You need about 1200 satellites. Do remember that for the first 10 years on Mars, the total population is unlikely to exceed 5,000 people. The current constellation around Earth, roughly 1700 satellites, can support approximately 70,000 people. Additionally, during the MCW Barcelona talk, Elon confirmed that the total bandwidth in LEO for up/down traffic was 30Tbps.
1Gbps = 120MB/s
10Gbps = 1.2GB/s
100Gbps = 12GB/s
1000Gbps = 120GB/s
30Tbps = 360GB/s throughput. 360GB/s means you can put a 4K camera and a wireless controller on a drone anywhere on the planet, link it up with an overhead satellite and then beamform the traffic back down to the main base where a scientist can put on something like the HTC Vive 2, and VR explore Mars in realtime without frame drops at 120fps. In fact, that's SO MUCH bandwidth, all 5,000 people could do it on the colony in realtime and you wouldn't come CLOSE to using up more than 5% of the total available bandwidth in the network. You'll need 12,000 satellites in 2100 when the total population hits 1 million.
Also, as time goes on and compute shrinks and gets faster, cooler, better; with more material science achievements unlocked with meta-material discoveries and large scale (cost effective production), that too will improve the capabilities of each Starlink (MarsLink) satellite such that the total amount in orbit can be reduced, but wouldn't be in favor of redundancy and extra throughput for operations around the red planet. You'd essentially need to dedicate 4 Cargoship flights to Mars filled to the brim with satellites which are then deployed into X, Y, and Z axis bands around the planet. Short of CMEs frying the satellites, with lower gravity of Mars & thinner atmosphere overall, the 5 year life of an Earth based Starlink satellite can easily be extended to 2, maybe even 3x its 5 year shelf life. & @ Mars, fuel from sats can be used to graveyard the sats and have SS handle cleanup.
