SpaceX is going all-in on building in-house its own satellite constellation. They are even building their own ground terminals and gateways. SpaceX is hiring ground station and user terminal engineers. SpaceX has a goal of medium to high volume in-house production of the critical network and customer-facing hardware.
SpaceX wants to revolutionize the satellites, just as they have done with rockets.
SpaceX’s Starlink development is staffed with up to 4500 employees dedicated to the nascent program. This is about the staffing level of OneWeb which is the only major satellite internet competitor at this time.
SpaceX is trying to lower the cost and improve performance of lightweight communications satellites by an order of magnitude.
