In 4 years, 400 Starships were launched, and SpaceX abandoned its most popular rocket

Elon Musk’s dream of Martian fever is growing by leaps and bounds.

October marked perhaps the best performance yet for Musk’s still-in-development spacecraft, when the fifth flight test of SpaceX’s spacecraft successfully captured a returning super-heavy booster mid-air using mechanical “chopsticks” on the rocket’s launch and landing tower. . A month later, Flight Test 6 aborted the turret capture—a disappointment—but achieved perfect water landings of both the Super Heavy and the Starship rocket’s second stage, as well as a successful restart of at least one Starship engine in orbit. (which was another technical goal of the flight tests).

Impressed by SpaceX’s rapid progress, once the results were in, the US Federal Aviation Administration gave SpaceX permission to fivefold Starship’s launch rate has increased from five launches per year to 25. But even 25 launches per year is not enough for SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell.

She wants 100.

Image source: Getty Images.

25 launches in ’25

Now SpaceX will, of course, happily accept the 25 launches the FAA will grant it in 2025. And Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Texas-based Starbase spaceport, expects to max out this limit in 2025. But at a recent investment conference, Shotwell said he wants to go well beyond that in the future, predicting SpaceX will launch 400 Starships over the next four years.

And that’s not all. Summarizing all the public statements made by several SpaceX executives over the past few weeks, Payload Space recently produced a report that lays out some of SpaceX’s most shocking predictions for the next 10 years of spaceflight, and they have some clear implications for space investors. industry.

Farewell, Falcon-9. We hardly knew you.

Perhaps the most shocking consequence of Starship’s progress is that SpaceX’s popular Falcon 9 rocket may soon disappear from the market.

In 2023, Falcon 9 launched 91 times and has already broken this record in 2024. With a full month to go until the end of this year, the world’s most used rocket has already completed 116 space launches. Of course, most of these launches were carried out for SpaceX itself, which put batch after batch of Starlink satellites into orbit. But SpaceX has also launched 36 Falcon missions for paying customers, making it the most popular commercial rocket in the world.

Key to the rocket’s popularity is its favorable base price—less than $70 million per launch at advertised prices, which is cheaper than anything Arianespace or United Launch Alliance can offer. But as cheap as Falcon 9 is, Starship will be even cheaper. Payload recently estimated the Starship’s construction cost to be $90 million (i.e., 28.5% more expensive than Falcon 9, but with 400% more payload capacity). And Musk predicted that over time the cost of Starship would drop to $10 million per flight.

Once SpaceX achieves this goal, there will simply be no reason to continue flying the Falcon 9, which costs more but has less payload. Shotwell predicts that within six to eight years, SpaceX will retire the Falcon 9 and Starship will replace it entirely for both cargo and crew missions.

Beware of a price war in spaceflight

This may be a logical decision for SpaceX, but it carries some dramatic and possibly devastating consequences for companies that compete with SpaceX. First things first: Falcon 9 is already the cheapest way to put a pound of payload into orbit. Nothing Arianespace or ULA has currently can compete with it. If Starship turns out to be so cheap that Falcon 9 can’t compete with ThisIt is clear that no one else will be able to compete with Starship, which will lower all prices and dominate the global space launch industry.

And here’s the second takeaway: As noted above, Shotwell expects Starship to launch 400 times over the next four years—an average of 100 times per year. Since each Starship launch puts five times the payload into orbit than the Falcon 9, this means that Starship alone will have approximately 5 times SpaceX’s payload capacity (on top of any payload the Falcon 9 launches over the next six years). eight years old).

The question naturally arises: will there be enough companies willing to put enough satellites into orbit to harness all the power that SpaceX is bringing to market? Because if the global demand for space launches is not enough to equal all the supply that SpaceX is offering, then Economics 101 requires the price of a space launch to fall.

In a market where Starship’s launch price is already pushing prices down, it could be very difficult for any other space company to make a profit at the prices they would be forced to offer.

What does this mean for SpaceX?

All of the above sounds like lousy news for companies forced to compete with SpaceX. However, for SpaceX itself this news is only good.

Noting that SpaceX is currently selling shares to raise cash at a $255 billion valuation, Shotwell joked that despite all the iron SpaceX currently has on fire (Starlink and Starship among them), she believes that the company’s value “will likely add another zero.” ” Values ​​SpaceX shares at $2.5 trillion.

It may take a few years, but I agree that this is the general direction SpaceX is heading.

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