— Peter H. Diamandis, MD (@PeterDiamandis) March 31, 2026
The Q4 2025 Rocket Report dropped yesterday and the number that should terrify every government on Earth is not the one going viral.
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 31, 2026
SpaceX launched 1,159 of the 1,404 spacecraft put into orbit worldwide in Q4 2025. That is 83% of all spacecraft launched by every nation and… pic.twitter.com/UXq33nfMIC
This all looks very good on paper. We still have a ways to go. Not long, but still a ways. At least with New Space we aren’t hostage to the whims of the Federal government.
Starlink I think can and should be pointed to as a break-out technology. I use for evidence the fact that MORE than a *decade* earlier, Craig McGraw envisioned a similar system and founded a company called Teledesic to exploit offering high-speed Internet to rural areas and the planet in general via LEO satellites. But the company soon foundered because the required infrastructure couldn’t be economically launched from Earth (at ~$250/m per launch). The partially reusable Falcon 9 fixed that. Which was the barrier to entry that allowed Starlink to literally get off the ground and has without doubt contributed to financially bootstrapping the rest.
So two dates. May 2019 with the launch of 60 operational Starlink satellites and before that December 2015 with the first successful landing of a Falcon 9 class orbital first stage or April 16 2016 with the first successful at sea landing which allowed for booster recovery over a more extended range of launch trajectories. I personally put December 21, 2015 right up there with July 20, 1969. Both dates I remember vividly.
If you want you could go back to September 28, 2008 but other companies have achieve that milepost but not to the effect of Starlink. So I think my dates above are more pertanent to the topic at hand.
Craig McCaw. Fascinating individual.
oops you are right! Typo on the name, can’t edit to fix, my bad…
That was originally Ed Tuck’s idea. He called it “Calling Communications.” McCaw later picked it up and renamed it “Teledesic.” I think there was Microsoft money involved. But it was for phone calls, not Internet (which at the time few people were even aware of, other than for email).
I beg to disagree. I think you are thinking of Iridium and Globalstar.
And yes, according to the Wikipedia link, Gates was an early investor in Teledesic.
No, it was Ed Tuck and Calling Communications. Iridium came along later. I know because I was still at Rockwell at the time and talking to him about it as a potential payload for a commercial launch system, which I was still (in futility, which is why I eventually left) trying to convince management to do.
Hi Rand,
I wasn’t referring to Calling Communications and Ed Tuck, but McCaw’s envisioning of Teledesic.
At the time I was only observing Teledesic from the outside. It’s quite possible that McCaw was running with Tuck’s idea and maybe starting with telephony, but it was clear from Teledesic’s early pressers that the goal was broadband (i.e. Internet-style) service.
I was paying particular attention in that time-frame because I was a user of Hughes’ DirecPC (now called HughesNet and not to be confused with DirecTV) until Comcast finally came along…
Very much agree. At every point in its history, SpaceX has made what it was doing five years previously look like kid stuff. That’s going to continue. We are looking at an exponential function do its thing right in front of our eyes.
Mr. Perera is right too – “It is the first vertically integrated civilization-scale stack in human history.” It’s still under construction, but, yeah, that’s what it is. And that is what it needs to be as Musk intends not only to transform Earthbound civilization but to establish new civilizations elsewhere in the Solar System.
The concrete never sets on Elon Musk’s empire.
The other day, they launched one of the F9 cores for the 35th time and people thought they would be lucky to get 10 launches out of them. Pretty amazing.
It was actually for the 34th time, but hey, by May B1067 probably will fly for the 35th time.
I doubt we’ll ever get a real answer to the question “How many times can you fly a Falcon 9 1st stage?” because the Falcons will be retired before they wear out.
If you want an analog for upcoming Starship launch operations and the growth of industrial operations on the Moon and Mars look at the history of railroads in the US. It took from 1835 to 1850 to lay 10,000 miles of track. Over the next 50 years another 180,000 miles were laid.
Elon has already put 10,000 satellites in orbit in 7 years and putting each satellite in orbit represents a lot more industrial sophistication than laying a mile of railroad track.
And in future, Optimus robots will do more and more of the work. They’ll be the equivalent of the hordes of immigrant Irish and Chinese that laid track in the US in the 19th Century, but they’ll work longer hours and won’t need air, water, food or much in the way of “habitation” – just recharging stations. Elon’s growth curve is going to be much steeper than that managed by the Robber Barons of old.
I see a different use for Starlink. Put a constellation above the planets you plan to inhabit. Instantly you have global communications and navigation. Add some RADAR/LIDAR, and you have mapping as well.
Absolutely. Moon then Mars.
How many launch towers will they need to hit that launch rate and where will they put them?
Launch towers (and pads and tank farms) are probably less the limiting items on cadence than is propellant production. SpaceX is going need more air-separation plants and more natural gas liquefaction/refining facilities – probably at least one of each for every launch tower complex.
“Falcon 9 costs $67 million, with total fuel running $150,000.”
Nota Bene: That’s what SpaceX charges as a launch price to external customers, but it is not what it costs it to launch a Falcon 9 with reused booster and fairings. The actual cost is generally thought to be now only $10-15 million, most of which is the fabrication cost of the second stage. (Eric Berger confirmed this again in his reporting just a couple weeks ago.)
So SpaceX is even more cost effective than Mr Perera thinks!