Article is mistaken on a few points , in my view . To clarify 1 . 8 bands doesnt mean there are only 8 hexagonal beams per satellite as claimed in the article 2 . If each hexagonal beam covers a 45 km diameter and the satellite coverage diameter is 2120 km , that implies around 2219 hexagonal beams per satelite 10602 22 . 52 22193 . pi 10602 is coverage area of 3 . 5 million square km per satelite 4 . the surface area of the earth is 510 million square km 5 . So 145 satellites could technically cover the earth 6 . Interesting SpaceX payload volume is around 109 . 68 cubic meters , so if a mini cooper quoted volume analog of each sat is around 10 cubic meters in volume the fairing could fit ~ 8 satellites per launch comfortably the article quotes 140 launch not taking volume into account 7 . 8 satelites per launch would mean 100 launches for the first 800 satellites 8 . 20 Gbps per satelite means there will have to be lots of overlap for areas with lots of ground terminals see planned four shells at different altitudes 9 . Elon recently mentioned the ground terminal was the biggest technical challenge they are still working on seems like a very tough problemGotta imagine they would have to have significant customer traction on the first 800 before building and launching the rest . no point in the full system until the system is already serving a good % of its bandwidth at peak timesedit mini cooper is not 2 m cubed but 10 ! also thanks for the heads up that the terminal is only gonna be outdoors , that said at very high frequency how will it work in the rain ? serious question