Why is SpaceX really ending those flights?
I agree that Elon wants to see more competition in the industry, and it’s time for the other companies to step up. A prevailing theme of Smallsat this week was the seeming dearth of launch opportunities. If I get my new venture off the ground, it will be a personal concern to me as well.
It will be a sad day when the Falcon 9 is discontinued. Hopefully, it never really is, even if it isn’t their main product. Money is money.
More money is made if less is spent on building disposable F9-2nd stages.
It’s also more economical to operate one vehicle than two dissimilar ones (see: Southwest Airlines).
You really need details before making definitive statements. How much money is actually being left on the table? Are the Falcon9 people and assets needed elsewhere that would be more lucrative? Is Falcon operation somehow detrimental to other aspects of the company?
Different sections of a company serving different needs for profit is not automatically a losing proposition. Spacelaunch/Starlink.
Yup, money is money.
I expect we’ll see Falcon 9 launches for another 7-8 years, depending on ISS splash. The clue will be when new S1 manufacturing stops. Then they’ll stockpile S2s before the shut down the assembly line and convert to something else. Flight life of Dragon 2 Crew is maybe 50-60 more missions. Cargo will lose one at ISS EOL.
I expect to see Starship Pez, Depot, Tanker and HSL appear over the next year or so, follow by Champer, Expendable-Fairing, and Starkicker in order of need. Crew ascent and EDL? Somewhere in there, but no later than 2030-2032, depending on Mars.
Anyone who expects Musk to fail is just an antifanboi. Although we may see him stood before a firing squad if he doesn’t escape to China in time. Or WW3 happens and we’re all in the Heavenly Choir (or screaming in Hell).
Generally agree.
But I also think SpaceX’s halt to F9 Starlink missions out of FL may be by way of clearing room on its manifest for not only the 10 Amazon LEO deployment missions it already has booked but also for a possible large block of additional such deployment launches for Amazon LEO starting late this year. Amazon is up against a hard deadline to get its entire planned constellation up and its other launch options are, to say the least, iffy. As the year wears on, we will see a number of things:
1. How many V3s SpaceX can put up with Starships over what sort of interval as Starship enters operational service for that use case while development of its other use cases continues in parallel.
2. How soon New Glenn and Vulcan can return to flight. These things will get steadily clearer as the year marches toward concluding and Amazon will have confidential insider knowledge of both RTF schedules given its status as Customer Numero Uno for both.
3. An announcement of the follow-on SpaceX-Amazon LEO deal once Amazon is more certain of what it can expect from its other launch providers and, perforce, how big its buy of F9 deployment missions has to be.
There are over 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, mostly V2s. SpaceX may be making the rational decision that they don’t need any more in low inclination orbits. Starship will start launching much more capable V3 satellites as soon as next month. Meanwhile, VSFB can keep launching V2 Minis into higher inclination orbits as needed. The target market is lower there, so there isn’t as pressing a need to move on the V3s in high inclination orbits until the Louisiana launch sites start operations in a few years.
As for Falcon 9, I think William’s estimate is a good one. The launch rate will decrease but they’ll still be flying F9s for special customers for some time to come. Meanwhile, other launch providers can (hopefully) expand to fill the market opportunities left by the wind down of the Falcon 9.
Sounds right. The lower-inclination orbital shells cover most of the current customer base so getting them additional bandwidth is important to keep the flood of new customers from compromising the service of previous customers. The high-inclination shells don’t serve many civilian customers, comparatively, but military customers like them their full coverage.
What about licensing the F9 or selling it to other countries as another line of income? It shouldn’t take too much away from Starship as the costs of operation are expected to be much lower for Starship.
F9 is a complete system from the engineers in the factory to test site to pads, as well as the vehicles themselves. You can’t just separate SpaceX from the vehicle and expect it to work.
Not to mention there would likely be people concerned about selling an ICBM program to a foreign country.
Yeah, ITAR is a drag like that.
See also: the ITAR complications around recovering The Little Starship That Could. In some ways, having S40 explode and/or sink would have saved a lot of paperwork and contractor vetting.
About the only reasonable thing would be for SpaceX to spin off the entire Falcon operation, perhaps selling it to someone like ULA. You’ have to spin off everything and everyone Falcon related from production to recovery and everything in between.