The payload of the Starship heavy rocket is 100-150 tons in a reusable configuration. It turns out that in one launch it will be possible to put from 384 to 576 Starlink satellites into orbit.
These calculations were confirmed by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell when she announced that the company would be able to launch 400 satellites into orbit in a single launch.
“SpaceX can use its powerful Starship launch vehicle, a next-generation heavy rocket that can deliver more satellites into orbit at once and deploy them in a way that facilitates faster activation,” she said.
The new rocket will solve several complex problems at once, each of belize number data which skeptics considered insurmountable when they predicted the failure of the Starlink program.
Orbital mathematics
The closer a spaceport is to the equator, the less fuel a rocket needs to launch from it. That's why Russia uses Baikonur, France uses Kourou (in French Guiana), and SpaceX uses the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The only problem is the weather. It's not particularly stable in the equatorial zone.
And SpaceX has to take into account the state of the atmosphere in two places at once – the launch and the landing of the first stage. If the forecast is bad in at least one of them, the launch is postponed. The minimum postponement period is 5 days.
To create the declared constellation of 12,000 spacecraft, SpaceX needed to launch Falcon 9 every 5-6 days for three years. That is, to use almost all possible launch windows. And any postponement would push back the finish line by at least 1 week. And this marathon would have no end. After all, when the last satellites would join the constellation, the first ones would already be at the end of their planned operation period. Therefore, Elon Musk's statements about 12,000 and, even more so, about 40,000 spacecraft previously seemed too risky.
But if SpaceX has a launch vehicle capable of delivering 400 satellites into orbit at once, that would change things dramatically. In this case, to complete the second phase (12,000 satellites), it would take “only” 28 launches. That sounds quite realistic.