The distance between ground radios and the satellites is ~500km, which isn't exactly close. So the ground radios need in excess of 100w to transmit to the satellite. Likewise the satelite must be using 100w per user or perhaps substantially more because the downlink is faster. The satellites orbit the earth 10 or 15 times per day or something like that. So half the time they don't see the sun. My half educated guess is that power consuption is one of the factors that limits the number of users per satellite. There probably are other factors. At any rate, the fact that the starlink mafia wants to use an insane number of satellites kinda suggests that they need them for the system to 'work as advertised' Another funny fact is that the satellites last a few years and then they are BURNT. They are very expensive pieces of equipment that are literally burnt at a stupidly fast rate. But hey, the musk non human turd and accomplices are such green envirofascists! Yet another giveaway of the scam is that technofascist US GOVT agents like jim bell and 'grarpamp' are promoting starlink as a weapon to be used by the US criminals against cuba, china, iran and other places that resist being directly ruled by US turds.