It was an historic rocket, but its successor will be much more so.
33 thoughts on “Falcon 9”
Here’s the rub. There’s no recovery drone ship for Starship. It will either have to RTLS, which is currently not possible for the Cape assuming the SuperHeavy booster has to be recovered there.
That leaves the current requirement that Pad 2 at Boca Chica remain open for that purpose. Once Pad 1 becomes operational again you could leave either open. Until a 2nd tower is built at the Cape.
For Boca Chica launches, once Pad 1 becomes operational again you have both pads open for full recovery or use the tower at the Cape to recover one or the other. I’m assuming cross range (both longitudinally and latitudinal) for the SuperHeavy isn’t large enough to allow boost-back to the Cape from BC, but I could be mistaken.
For an orbiting Starship you have some time to move the booster off the tower to free it for recovery. What a problem to have no?
It will be good practice. How many times a day do you think they could cycle Mechazilla?
Not really a problem. Any Starship launched to orbit, even Starlink/Starlink Mobile/AI data center deployments and tanker missions, will do at least a few circuits of Earth before orbital mechanics line things up for a minimum cross-range re-entry. Plenty of time to put freshly-caught boosters back on the launch mounts, stack different Starships up top and execute additional launch missions. To make way for returning Starships, a caught booster just has to be swung aside, plopped onto a transport stand and rolled far enough away to remain undamaged by Starship re-entry-and-catch flight ops.
SpaceX is going to build two special towers at Pad 37 just for Starship recovery. There will also be two launch pads there plus another at Pad 39b. Add in two more towers at Starbase and eventually another at Vandenberg in another year or two. It looks like SpaceX is going all in on infrastructure.
Yeah, by the time current pad infrastructure underway is completed, SpaceX could have as many as 7 launch towers to catch a returning Super Heavy — theoretically, at least.
If rumors of that massive land purchase on Pecan Island, LA prove true, 7, or even more, launch towers built elsewhere may wind up being small beer by comparison.
All of that may well prove true and perhaps even more besides. There will also likely be a Starship factory and a launch complex or two built at Vandy at some point.
But the rumored Pecan Island land purchase in Louisiana suggests that this site may well be where more than half of total Starship-related infrastructure gets built. Proximity to major liquified natural gas sources suggests Pecan Island may be where the vast majority of tanker missions depart from once the place is even partly built-out.
What azimuth could you launch to from there? FAA would have kittens if you proposed to drag the IIP of that beast over even remotely populated areas. This ain’t China. For the purpose of orbital launch Louisiana is landlocked.
It’s no more landlocked than Starbase and maybe not even as much. Starbase launches go a bit south of east and have to avoid Florida and thread a needle through all of those Caribbean islands. From Louisiana, one can launch southeast over the Yucatan Channel – avoiding both Mexico and Cuba – and then there’s nothing else of consequence to dodge around before the coast of Colombia 1400 miles from Pecan Island.
It will be possible for Super Heavies to RTLS to LC-39A at the same time the Starship pad there is capable of supporting launch operations. The launch tower will also be the catch tower just as has been done already at Starbase. Whether any dedicated catch-only towers will be built at KSC or Canaveral remains to be seen, but I’m inclined to doubt that.
The Air Force has approved at least one landing catch tower for Pad 37.
That authorization is not for catch-only towers, but for “catch-also” towers of the type SpaceX has already built next to each pad at Starbase and LC-39A.
“Was I a good rocket?” “No, you were the best rocket…”
Oh yeah, big time. F9’s 2025 launch record exceeds the lifetime launch records of every other rocket except the R-7 and maybe one of the more venerable Long Marches – I haven’t done the digging to find out.
And at least 2 towers in Louisiana for refueling tankers.
Likely a lot more than that.
I would think basic high-volume shipping and receiving wisdom would indicate that returning Starship have their own landing tower. Except perhaps for dedicated refueling versions, every returning Starship is going to get processed before returning to the pad. Tiles and engines will be inspected (even if that’s fast an automated), any waste will be removed, and new cargo will be loaded and secured. Then a bunch of people will have to sign off on everything. Only then will it be ready to return to the pad to get loaded onto a Superheavy.
I can’t think of a reason to catch a Starship at a tower that already has a Superheavy mounted, other than the case where there’s only one available tower and it’s already occupied, except for the possible case of those dedicated refueling ships.
The detailed nature of routine Starship flight ops once the development phase is mostly over is definitely TBD, but almost certainly will feature Starships being caught above Super Heavies already in place on the launch mounts. A Starship will be caught as high up the launch/catch tower as possible and only one or two engines will be running at less-than-max power as it settles onto the chopstick arms. The top of a Super Heavy is designed to withstand the gaff of six – and soon, nine – Starship Raptors igniting above it at full chat and at point-blank range.
You are likely correct, though, that prompt re-stacking of freshly-caught Starships atop waiting Super Heavies is only likely to be SOP for propellant tankers. The payload tanks of those can be refilled as part of the normal process of propellant load prior to flight employing the Ship Quick Disconnect arm. Both a flight load and a payload of prop will simply be pumped in as part of a single operation mediated by internal valving in the Starship tanker. As prop is loaded into both the Super Heavy and the Starship in parallel, the total prop loading time for a tanker flight will probably be the same as for any other type of Starship mission.
I agree that some form of automated AI-based inspection process will be in order before the freshly-caught Starship is lowered back down and re-mated to a booster. There might need to be additional swingarms attached to the towers for this purpose, though the use of camera drones might do instead and would certainly be more flexible. This process, whatever the details of its implementation, will probably take only minutes to accomplish for each Starship catch.
For Starship types other than tankers, though, you are correct that such Starships will be swung aside and lowered all the way onto transport stands and SPMTs for short rides to sheltered bays where downmass, if any, can be extracted and fresh payload inserted. For Dear Moon- lunar and Mars-class crew transports, said “downmass” and “fresh payload” will be people and their baggage, both checked and carry-on. Trips to other worlds will begin with short rides on SPMT’s and stacking atop boosters via chopsticks.
In addition to tankers, it seems likely that Pez-compatible flat-packed satellite Starships can be reloaded on the pad, maybe with some kind of jack-up loader. Starlinks now, but there will be others, as this will be the cheapest modality. Chomper and crew will probably need a facility.
That is certainly a possibility, particularly for those AI data center sats. Launching a notional million of those is going to require the most streamlined possible ground turnaround procedures. That might well turn out to involve some sort of “magazine” module that can be hoisted to loading position alongside a stacked Starship using the tower chopsticks.
I agree that Starships able to carry and eject large, unitary payloads will have to be loaded with same somewhere other than outside at the pad. Nearby, but indoors.
Counting chickens before……
Technical success doesn’t guarantee commercial dominance. Unless the markets beyond Starlink develop, Starship could become the A380 of spaceflight.
I am skeptical of the low cost numbers many accept. We will know within a few years.
Technical success does guarantee commercial dominance when most of said “commerce” is intra-company. Starship launches to deploy Starlink V3 and successors, Starlink Mobile direct-to-cell birds, AI data center birds, tanker, cargo and crew launches to support the build-out of SpaceX Moon Base Alpha and its mass driver(s) as well as Mars armada departures every 26 months will provide plenty of work for Starship absent any 2nd-party customer missions at all.
But there will be no shortage of those either. Golden Dome-related missions and Artemis-related missions will likely be the two largest such categories, but commercial LEO space station deployments and logistics as well as next-gen Transporter and Bandwagon missions will also figure in the Starship manifest.
In mid 2021 you and I bet on whether Starship would be operational by 1 Jan 2024. My position has been that Starship skipped bases in development that have bitten the company and well may continue to do so. This post from almost 4 years ago could be today with minor editorial changes. https://selenianboondocks.com/2022/09/second-guessing-starship/
Even in-company commerce better have profit built in. Rolling the dice and letting it ride sounds great when forgetting the problems with one bad roll. Starship is likely to technically work without actually dropping prices “too cheap to meter”.
Falcon 9 currently has a 50% profit margin on commercial launches. SpaceX is charging all the traffic will bear like any good capitalist company. Arguments to the contrary are political in nature, at best. The stuff on Selenian Boondocks is interesting, but sometimes you guys are so full of beans it’ a wonder you don’t float away on the gas. I haven’t forgotten the short-lived “Starship HLS Will Tip Over!” article.
It’s looking as though I was about three years off on Starship operational status. What can I say? I’ve always been an optimist.
As to profit potential for intra-company commerce:
Starlink is solidly profitable and growing like a weed. No problem there.
Starlink Mobile, SpaceX’s global direct-to-cell-anywhere service, will be selling into an already established, and genuinely gargantuan, world market. I don’t see a profit question there either.
AI data center sats in high-inclination LEO. In addition to providing massive compute power for all of the enterprises within the corporate Muskiverse – especially Tesla and Neuralink – Musk can also sell capacity to other AI companies as he has already done with extant terrestrial compute capacity.
That will be just as true for AI data center sat capacity built and launched from the Moon. And in order to get to the point of being able to build and launch these sats, SpaceX will have to build lunar industries whose outputs would be readily saleable to other enterprises for other purposes.
It is interesting that a single Starship-load of Starlink V3 satellites will add as much bandwidth to the constellation as roughly two dozen Falcon 9-based Starlink V2-Mini+ missions. Two dozen is, probably by no particular coincidence, also roughly the difference between SpaceX’s 2025 launch total of 165 and the notional 140 – 145 F9 launch total Shotwell has suggested as being the current year’s target. This strongly suggests, in turn, that SpaceX isn’t planning to get off more than a single proof-of-concept Starlink V3 deployment mission for Starship this year. Given everything else on its Starship plate, that is probably quite a reasonable plan.
It is also worth noting that 122 of the 165 Falcon 9 missions SpaceX launched last year were Starlink deployments. That is the equivalent of merely five Starship V3 Starlink deployment missions.
So was, say, Amazon to come looking for a large additional tranche of LEO-deployment launches on short notice, SpaceX could accommodate it by jacking this year’s Falcon 9 manifest back up to roughly match last year’s or by looking to work in a second Starlink V3 deployment mission on a Starship and cutting an additional couple of dozen F9 Starlink missions in favor of Amazon LEO deployments.
Even should SpaceX elect to end all further F9 Starlink missions within, say, the coming 12 months, the F9 would still have enough 2nd-party customer business to continue launching at an average cadence of four or five times a month. That’s plenty enough to keep the launch crews in practice while also allowing them to transition gracefully from a completely Falcon manifest to an almost-completely Starship one. Among other things, it would allow SpaceX to lay on more F9 Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare missions per year during the transition.
As far as the towers go, this is all moot. V3 is a massive redesign requiring a new tower and pad design, so pad 2 will launch and recover while pad 1 is rebuilt. The new towers can rotate the chopsticks to 3 sides. So, rotate to left side to pick up a vehicle from a transporter. Rotate to front to place vehicle on launch mount (or 2nd stage on booster). Rotate to right side for catch. This is done over a concrete pad so if the worst happens (crash) damage to tower and especially launch mount is minimized. I guesstimate a single tower can cycle through six launches a day (every 4 hours), requiring one booster and six starships. Note that would allow a lunar mission from one tower in 3 days’ time. The assumption is, the booster would require little or no refurb, but if necessary, could be swapped out for a spare in a half-hour.
So, with this paradigm, 7 towers could theoretically launch 42 starships a day. Elon sez: “So ling and thanks for all the fish!
The bottleneck might not be the tower but the crawler way.
It has a traffic light. Or at least it used to… 🙂
There are no crawler ways at Starship pads because there are no crawlers to use them. Starship stages travel on Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) which, compared to the Apollo/Shuttle/SLS crawler-transporters, are nimble and quick.
To reenforce this, all an SPMT requires is a flat surface, reasonably hard (packed dirt will do). You can combine them in any permutation or combination, both linear and parallel. The heaviest object moved by SPMT to date was an office building weighing 11,000 metric tons. That’s two *fully fueled* Starship/Superheavies! The antique crawler transporters could be replaced by SPMTs, which are available in diesel or electric, either manned or by remote control.], to move the SLS Mobile Launcher, rocket and all.
Here’s the rub. There’s no recovery drone ship for Starship. It will either have to RTLS, which is currently not possible for the Cape assuming the SuperHeavy booster has to be recovered there.
That leaves the current requirement that Pad 2 at Boca Chica remain open for that purpose. Once Pad 1 becomes operational again you could leave either open. Until a 2nd tower is built at the Cape.
For Boca Chica launches, once Pad 1 becomes operational again you have both pads open for full recovery or use the tower at the Cape to recover one or the other. I’m assuming cross range (both longitudinally and latitudinal) for the SuperHeavy isn’t large enough to allow boost-back to the Cape from BC, but I could be mistaken.
For an orbiting Starship you have some time to move the booster off the tower to free it for recovery. What a problem to have no?
It will be good practice. How many times a day do you think they could cycle Mechazilla?
Not really a problem. Any Starship launched to orbit, even Starlink/Starlink Mobile/AI data center deployments and tanker missions, will do at least a few circuits of Earth before orbital mechanics line things up for a minimum cross-range re-entry. Plenty of time to put freshly-caught boosters back on the launch mounts, stack different Starships up top and execute additional launch missions. To make way for returning Starships, a caught booster just has to be swung aside, plopped onto a transport stand and rolled far enough away to remain undamaged by Starship re-entry-and-catch flight ops.
SpaceX is going to build two special towers at Pad 37 just for Starship recovery. There will also be two launch pads there plus another at Pad 39b. Add in two more towers at Starbase and eventually another at Vandenberg in another year or two. It looks like SpaceX is going all in on infrastructure.
Yeah, by the time current pad infrastructure underway is completed, SpaceX could have as many as 7 launch towers to catch a returning Super Heavy — theoretically, at least.
If rumors of that massive land purchase on Pecan Island, LA prove true, 7, or even more, launch towers built elsewhere may wind up being small beer by comparison.
All of that may well prove true and perhaps even more besides. There will also likely be a Starship factory and a launch complex or two built at Vandy at some point.
But the rumored Pecan Island land purchase in Louisiana suggests that this site may well be where more than half of total Starship-related infrastructure gets built. Proximity to major liquified natural gas sources suggests Pecan Island may be where the vast majority of tanker missions depart from once the place is even partly built-out.
What azimuth could you launch to from there? FAA would have kittens if you proposed to drag the IIP of that beast over even remotely populated areas. This ain’t China. For the purpose of orbital launch Louisiana is landlocked.
It’s no more landlocked than Starbase and maybe not even as much. Starbase launches go a bit south of east and have to avoid Florida and thread a needle through all of those Caribbean islands. From Louisiana, one can launch southeast over the Yucatan Channel – avoiding both Mexico and Cuba – and then there’s nothing else of consequence to dodge around before the coast of Colombia 1400 miles from Pecan Island.
It will be possible for Super Heavies to RTLS to LC-39A at the same time the Starship pad there is capable of supporting launch operations. The launch tower will also be the catch tower just as has been done already at Starbase. Whether any dedicated catch-only towers will be built at KSC or Canaveral remains to be seen, but I’m inclined to doubt that.
The Air Force has approved at least one landing catch tower for Pad 37.
https://satnews.com/2025/12/04/spacex-starship-authorized-for-operations-at-slc-37/
That authorization is not for catch-only towers, but for “catch-also” towers of the type SpaceX has already built next to each pad at Starbase and LC-39A.
“Was I a good rocket?” “No, you were the best rocket…”
Oh yeah, big time. F9’s 2025 launch record exceeds the lifetime launch records of every other rocket except the R-7 and maybe one of the more venerable Long Marches – I haven’t done the digging to find out.
And at least 2 towers in Louisiana for refueling tankers.
Likely a lot more than that.
I would think basic high-volume shipping and receiving wisdom would indicate that returning Starship have their own landing tower. Except perhaps for dedicated refueling versions, every returning Starship is going to get processed before returning to the pad. Tiles and engines will be inspected (even if that’s fast an automated), any waste will be removed, and new cargo will be loaded and secured. Then a bunch of people will have to sign off on everything. Only then will it be ready to return to the pad to get loaded onto a Superheavy.
I can’t think of a reason to catch a Starship at a tower that already has a Superheavy mounted, other than the case where there’s only one available tower and it’s already occupied, except for the possible case of those dedicated refueling ships.
The detailed nature of routine Starship flight ops once the development phase is mostly over is definitely TBD, but almost certainly will feature Starships being caught above Super Heavies already in place on the launch mounts. A Starship will be caught as high up the launch/catch tower as possible and only one or two engines will be running at less-than-max power as it settles onto the chopstick arms. The top of a Super Heavy is designed to withstand the gaff of six – and soon, nine – Starship Raptors igniting above it at full chat and at point-blank range.
You are likely correct, though, that prompt re-stacking of freshly-caught Starships atop waiting Super Heavies is only likely to be SOP for propellant tankers. The payload tanks of those can be refilled as part of the normal process of propellant load prior to flight employing the Ship Quick Disconnect arm. Both a flight load and a payload of prop will simply be pumped in as part of a single operation mediated by internal valving in the Starship tanker. As prop is loaded into both the Super Heavy and the Starship in parallel, the total prop loading time for a tanker flight will probably be the same as for any other type of Starship mission.
I agree that some form of automated AI-based inspection process will be in order before the freshly-caught Starship is lowered back down and re-mated to a booster. There might need to be additional swingarms attached to the towers for this purpose, though the use of camera drones might do instead and would certainly be more flexible. This process, whatever the details of its implementation, will probably take only minutes to accomplish for each Starship catch.
For Starship types other than tankers, though, you are correct that such Starships will be swung aside and lowered all the way onto transport stands and SPMTs for short rides to sheltered bays where downmass, if any, can be extracted and fresh payload inserted. For Dear Moon- lunar and Mars-class crew transports, said “downmass” and “fresh payload” will be people and their baggage, both checked and carry-on. Trips to other worlds will begin with short rides on SPMT’s and stacking atop boosters via chopsticks.
In addition to tankers, it seems likely that Pez-compatible flat-packed satellite Starships can be reloaded on the pad, maybe with some kind of jack-up loader. Starlinks now, but there will be others, as this will be the cheapest modality. Chomper and crew will probably need a facility.
That is certainly a possibility, particularly for those AI data center sats. Launching a notional million of those is going to require the most streamlined possible ground turnaround procedures. That might well turn out to involve some sort of “magazine” module that can be hoisted to loading position alongside a stacked Starship using the tower chopsticks.
I agree that Starships able to carry and eject large, unitary payloads will have to be loaded with same somewhere other than outside at the pad. Nearby, but indoors.
Counting chickens before……
Technical success doesn’t guarantee commercial dominance. Unless the markets beyond Starlink develop, Starship could become the A380 of spaceflight.
I am skeptical of the low cost numbers many accept. We will know within a few years.
Technical success does guarantee commercial dominance when most of said “commerce” is intra-company. Starship launches to deploy Starlink V3 and successors, Starlink Mobile direct-to-cell birds, AI data center birds, tanker, cargo and crew launches to support the build-out of SpaceX Moon Base Alpha and its mass driver(s) as well as Mars armada departures every 26 months will provide plenty of work for Starship absent any 2nd-party customer missions at all.
But there will be no shortage of those either. Golden Dome-related missions and Artemis-related missions will likely be the two largest such categories, but commercial LEO space station deployments and logistics as well as next-gen Transporter and Bandwagon missions will also figure in the Starship manifest.
In mid 2021 you and I bet on whether Starship would be operational by 1 Jan 2024. My position has been that Starship skipped bases in development that have bitten the company and well may continue to do so. This post from almost 4 years ago could be today with minor editorial changes. https://selenianboondocks.com/2022/09/second-guessing-starship/
Even in-company commerce better have profit built in. Rolling the dice and letting it ride sounds great when forgetting the problems with one bad roll. Starship is likely to technically work without actually dropping prices “too cheap to meter”.
Falcon 9 currently has a 50% profit margin on commercial launches. SpaceX is charging all the traffic will bear like any good capitalist company. Arguments to the contrary are political in nature, at best. The stuff on Selenian Boondocks is interesting, but sometimes you guys are so full of beans it’ a wonder you don’t float away on the gas. I haven’t forgotten the short-lived “Starship HLS Will Tip Over!” article.
It’s looking as though I was about three years off on Starship operational status. What can I say? I’ve always been an optimist.
As to profit potential for intra-company commerce:
Starlink is solidly profitable and growing like a weed. No problem there.
Starlink Mobile, SpaceX’s global direct-to-cell-anywhere service, will be selling into an already established, and genuinely gargantuan, world market. I don’t see a profit question there either.
AI data center sats in high-inclination LEO. In addition to providing massive compute power for all of the enterprises within the corporate Muskiverse – especially Tesla and Neuralink – Musk can also sell capacity to other AI companies as he has already done with extant terrestrial compute capacity.
That will be just as true for AI data center sat capacity built and launched from the Moon. And in order to get to the point of being able to build and launch these sats, SpaceX will have to build lunar industries whose outputs would be readily saleable to other enterprises for other purposes.
It is interesting that a single Starship-load of Starlink V3 satellites will add as much bandwidth to the constellation as roughly two dozen Falcon 9-based Starlink V2-Mini+ missions. Two dozen is, probably by no particular coincidence, also roughly the difference between SpaceX’s 2025 launch total of 165 and the notional 140 – 145 F9 launch total Shotwell has suggested as being the current year’s target. This strongly suggests, in turn, that SpaceX isn’t planning to get off more than a single proof-of-concept Starlink V3 deployment mission for Starship this year. Given everything else on its Starship plate, that is probably quite a reasonable plan.
It is also worth noting that 122 of the 165 Falcon 9 missions SpaceX launched last year were Starlink deployments. That is the equivalent of merely five Starship V3 Starlink deployment missions.
So was, say, Amazon to come looking for a large additional tranche of LEO-deployment launches on short notice, SpaceX could accommodate it by jacking this year’s Falcon 9 manifest back up to roughly match last year’s or by looking to work in a second Starlink V3 deployment mission on a Starship and cutting an additional couple of dozen F9 Starlink missions in favor of Amazon LEO deployments.
Even should SpaceX elect to end all further F9 Starlink missions within, say, the coming 12 months, the F9 would still have enough 2nd-party customer business to continue launching at an average cadence of four or five times a month. That’s plenty enough to keep the launch crews in practice while also allowing them to transition gracefully from a completely Falcon manifest to an almost-completely Starship one. Among other things, it would allow SpaceX to lay on more F9 Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare missions per year during the transition.
As far as the towers go, this is all moot. V3 is a massive redesign requiring a new tower and pad design, so pad 2 will launch and recover while pad 1 is rebuilt. The new towers can rotate the chopsticks to 3 sides. So, rotate to left side to pick up a vehicle from a transporter. Rotate to front to place vehicle on launch mount (or 2nd stage on booster). Rotate to right side for catch. This is done over a concrete pad so if the worst happens (crash) damage to tower and especially launch mount is minimized. I guesstimate a single tower can cycle through six launches a day (every 4 hours), requiring one booster and six starships. Note that would allow a lunar mission from one tower in 3 days’ time. The assumption is, the booster would require little or no refurb, but if necessary, could be swapped out for a spare in a half-hour.
So, with this paradigm, 7 towers could theoretically launch 42 starships a day. Elon sez: “So ling and thanks for all the fish!
The bottleneck might not be the tower but the crawler way.
It has a traffic light. Or at least it used to… 🙂
There are no crawler ways at Starship pads because there are no crawlers to use them. Starship stages travel on Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) which, compared to the Apollo/Shuttle/SLS crawler-transporters, are nimble and quick.
To reenforce this, all an SPMT requires is a flat surface, reasonably hard (packed dirt will do). You can combine them in any permutation or combination, both linear and parallel. The heaviest object moved by SPMT to date was an office building weighing 11,000 metric tons. That’s two *fully fueled* Starship/Superheavies! The antique crawler transporters could be replaced by SPMTs, which are available in diesel or electric, either manned or by remote control.], to move the SLS Mobile Launcher, rocket and all.