SpaceX's CFO reportedly said the company makes 5,000 Starlink dishes a week, lagging behind preorders

• SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the company makes 5,000 Starlink user dishes weekly, per Space News.
• This lags behind orders: Starlink, the satellite internet service, had 500,000 pre-orders as of May.
• SpaceX wants to increase production in the next few months, Johnsen said.

SpaceX's chief financial officer says the aerospace company makes 5,000 Starlink user dishes every week, but plans to speed up manufacturing to meet growing customer demand, Space News first reported.

The company has at least 400,000 preorders to fulfill, and has previously warned that the global chip shortage was slowing production of the terminals, which are the dishes that connect to the Starlink internet satellites in orbit.

Bret Johnsen said in a panel discussion during the Satellite 2021 conference on Tuesday that SpaceX would increase the current production of 5,000 Starlink dishes per week to "multiples of that" in the coming months, Space News reporter Jeff Foust tweeted. Other people watching the conference tweeted the same figure.

Global supply chain problems had hit SpaceX's production line, Johnsen said, per Space News.

Starlink's satellite internet service had 500,000 pre-orders between October 2020 and May 2021, Siva Bharadvaj, a SpaceX space operations engineer, said during a broadcast of SpaceX's launch of Starlink satellites in May. The company has not released updated figures since.

SpaceX has shipped about 100,000 terminals, CEO Elon Musk said last month. This leaves at least 400,000 orders unfulfilled.

At a rate of 5,000 terminals a week, it would take SpaceX around a year and a half to make 400,000 user terminals.

SpaceX didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

People who have paid $100 deposits for Starlink told Insider that they were frustrated because they'd waited up to seven months to receive the service, and couldn't reach Starlink for updates on their arrival dates.