Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, eventually enabling multiple flights per day. But that’s still a long way off, and it’s unknown how many years it might take for Starship to surpass the Falcon 9’s proven launch tempo.
A Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster lift off from Starbase, Texas.
Credit:
SpaceX
In any case, with Starship’s heavy-lifting capacity and upgraded next-gen satellites, SpaceX could match an entire year’s worth of new Starlink capacity with just two fully loaded Starship flights. Starship will be able to deliver 60 times more Starlink capacity to orbit than a cluster of satellites riding on a Falcon 9.
There’s no reason to believe SpaceX will be satisfied with simply keeping pace with today’s Starlink growth rate. There are emerging market opportunities in connecting satellites with smartphones, space-based computer processing and data storage, and military applications.
Other companies have medium-to-heavy rockets that are either new to the market or soon to debut. These include Blue Origin’s New Glenn, now set to make its second test flight in the coming days, with a reusable booster designed to facilitate a rapid-fire launch cadence.
Despite all of the newcomers, most satellite operators see a shortage of launch capacity on the commercial market. “The industry is likely to remain supply-constrained through the balance of the decade,” wrote Caleb Henry, director of research at the industry analysis firm Quilty Space. “That could pose a problem for some of the many large constellations on the horizon.”
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Stoke Space’s Nova, Relativity Space’s Terran R, and Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman’s Eclipse are among the other rockets vying for a bite at the launch apple.
“Whether or not the market can support six medium to heavy lift launch providers from the US alone—plus Starship—is an open question, but for the remainder of the decade launch demand is likely to remain high, presenting an opportunity for one or more new players to establish themselves in the pecking order,” Henry wrote in a post on Quilty’s website.
China’s space program will need more rockets, too. That nation’s two megaconstellations, known as Guowang and Qianfan, will have thousands of satellites requiring a significant uptick on Chinese launches.
Taking all of this into account, the demand curve for access to space is sure to continue its upward trajectory. How companies meet this demand, and with how many discrete departures from Earth, isn’t quite as clear.
