This is an interesting picture of 143 different devices that SpaceX launched this morning as part of its SmallSat Rideshare Program. You can see the Starcraft satellites efficiently stacked at the bottom and then on top a range of other devices with various shapes and sizes. 
The SpaceX Falcon 9 ride-share "included 48 Earth imaging satellites dubbed SuperDoves from Planet, 17 tiny communications satellites for Toronto-based Kepler, and 30 small satellites for the US and Europe packaged by Berlin, Germany-based Exolaunch." news.google.com/articles/CAIiE…
These Starlinks are the first launched into a polar orbit enabling coverage further north, including in polar regions. Delivered to Sun-synchronous orbit of 550 km inclined 97.59 degrees to the equator. Polar orbit missions typically go from Vandenberg, but this one was Florida.
4/ The maneuver that the Falcon 9 pulls off to land is still cray. Note that the need for fuel to land means there's less payload going up but with 3 or more launches of the same reusable parts, the economics are better says Musk. Small payloads cost more per kilogram (eg $15k).
5/ A satellite must be able to talk to a gateway in Earth to enable real time communication. Over the polar regions gateways are hard to build so inter-satellite links enable a daisy chain to a gateway. These aren't laser links to ground terminals, but instead between satellites.
6/ The Starlink gateway in Alaska was confirmation some satellites would be in polar orbit. The shortest path to ground based fiber is usually to get polar traffic to that gateway via inter satellite links. Each link creates incremental latency due to on board processing.
7/ Why not put optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) on the non polar orbit constellation? Its cheaper to leave them off, creates less failure risk and conserves power to use a ground gateway. Will ocean coverage make OISls valuable at some point? Sure. spaceintelreport.com/spacex-starlin…
8/ If a particular inter-satellite link fails there is the option of the Alaska gateway or to build more polar gateways.
By putting those 10 satellites in that new polar obit at that altitude SpaceX/Starlink has "licked the cookie." They now "have dibs" on the altitude/orbit.
By putting those 10 satellites in that new polar obit at that altitude SpaceX/Starlink has "licked the cookie." They now "have dibs" on the altitude/orbit.
9/ Here's confirmation of my thesis. I win a participation trophy.
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