SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

That said, there very well might be a couple small and maybe one medium class missions picked. Don't think it would be a blimp, more likely an Orbiter.

Priority might end up being an lander for Europe style moon as a flagship. And further Moon and Mars exploration.

My hope honestly is that we do a serious rethink and go back to the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter but for Neptune or Uranus. A flagship mission, multiple launches, large nuclear reactor, massive amount of propellant, launched on specialised Starship to get there faster. With some real large radar on it, and maybe multiple smaller landers. Should be able to operate for 20-30 years in those systems.

This is how we need to think now for flagship missions.

I also hope for further study of a Dark side of the moon radio telescope built from moon resources.

Two balloons, about 46 hours of endurance, limiting factor apparently being running out of battery power.

If SpaceX has room on a launch vehicle or an empty launch vehicle, they stuff it with Starlink satellites. Since Starlink will require constant refreshes, SpaceX has a constant client, it becomes far easier for them to offer smaller payloads at good rates. This is SpaceX's way of commoditizing launches and keeping their launch service running regularly.

It's extremely clever use of complimentary resources.

I think if Elon had gone to, say, the UN and tried to start a discussion about this stuff more generally to establish some ground rules for SpaceX and others, it would have been much better received. It would've given a forum to those affected - communities around the world and astronomers and other satellite operators - where none exists. Some discussions around things like target albedos, orbital parameters, and constellation sizes could've been had before a single bird went up. This would've also made life easier for other operators now working out how to dodge the Starlink constellation on the regular.

But Elon is not that sort of person, which is the great tragedy in all this. Maybe you have to be a screw-the-rest, I'm-going-to-do-it kind of person to succeed as he has (or just inherit a huge pile of cash, or maybe both). But it strikes me that as a strategy he's opted to go it alone until regulators start to step in, which is unlikely in this industry for a while given the global nature.

I think it will take something akin to the blocking of satellite uplinks (that brought the UN into international satellite operations somewhat, and effectively designated such jamming as an offensive act of war) to actually bring regulatory scrutiny to bear. The loss of ground-based astronomy isn't a big enough issue - yet - to justify the engagement. But if these constellations get bigger and bigger and the impact gets larger and larger, then that impact will add up. All we've had so far is the "early warnings" from those paying attention to the early deployments.

I think Starlink and its competitors are a very important short-term part of the global internet access discussion, but it's not a long-term fix; constant satellite launches, maintenance, and deorbiting will not be viable cost-wise over the 20-40 years most fibre installations expect to be around for at a minimum. Fibre will eventually reach everywhere - wireline operators across the globe are seeing Starlink as a short-term thing which may paradoxically make it much harder to justify rolling out a proper fix to the hardest to reach, and which may cause governments to deploy subsidy to offset the risk. In the USA it's a bit mad and distorted because of the insane market that regulators have allowed, but in the EU/UK and most of Asia, govts are making sure full fibre gets to everyone (slowly, in many cases, but it is speeding up rapidly these days).

Just like nuclear, this is a perfectly good stop-gap. But the right answer is renewables - everyone knows it - it's just a matter of timing.