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The US gov't is working with contractors to make use of cubesats built from commercial off the shelf products to be able to produce cheap constellations of satellites for a fraction of the cost (hundreds of thousands per satellite instead of hundreds of millions) of what they've been paying. These satellites also will have significantly shorter lifespans (1-2 years) so they'll need more frequent launches to replenish the fleets, but the advantage is they can keep upgrading with the latest technology without being locked into a 10 or 20 year old machine. SpaceX dropping the cost of launches fits right into this.



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