I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.
Cheaper and easier to upgrade the constellation to newer and faster tech. If you have backwards compatibility, you just start launching v2 and v1 will eventually just burn up, and hopefully finish just in time for v3 to start launching so you only have to be compatible with n-1 versions.
I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.
Especially with the number of them it’s probably cheaper to just put up new satellites. LEO sats are designed to be temporary.
Cheaper and easier to upgrade the constellation to newer and faster tech. If you have backwards compatibility, you just start launching v2 and v1 will eventually just burn up, and hopefully finish just in time for v3 to start launching so you only have to be compatible with n-1 versions.