Starship is designed to be completely and quickly reusable, ultimately allowing for multiple flights per day. But that's still a long way off, and it's unknown how many years it will take Starship to beat Falcon 9's proven launch rate.
The Starship rocket and Super Heavy launch vehicle launch from Starbase, Texas.
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In any case, thanks to Starship's payload capacity and upgraded next-generation satellites, SpaceX could provide a year's worth of new Starlink capacity in just two fully loaded Starship flights. Starship will be able to deliver 60 times more Starlink capabilities into orbit than a constellation of satellites on Falcon 9.
There's no reason to believe that SpaceX will be content to simply keep up with Starlink's current rate of growth. There are new market opportunities in connecting satellites to smartphones, space computer processing and data storageAnd military application.
Other companies have medium- and heavy-duty missiles that are either new to the market or will debut soon. These include New Glenn from Blue Originwhich is now set to make its second test flight in the coming days, with a reusable booster designed to facilitate the frequency of rapid launches.
Despite all the newcomers, most satellite operators see a shortage of launch capacity in the commercial market. “The industry is likely to remain supply-constrained for the rest of the decade,” writes Caleb Henry, research director at industry analyst firm Quilty Space. “This could pose a problem for some of the many major constellations on the horizon.”
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, Rocket Lab's Neutron, Stoke Space's Nova, Relativity Space's Terran R, Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman's Eclipse are among the other rockets vying for a share of the launch apple.
“Whether or not the market can support six medium-heavy launch service providers from just the US.—plus starship—“is an open question, but launch demand is likely to remain strong for the rest of the decade, providing an opportunity for one or more new players to establish themselves in the hierarchy,” Henry wrote in his report. publish on the Quilty website.
China's space program will also need more rockets. The country's two megaconstellations, known as Govan And Qianfanwill have thousands of satellites, requiring a significant increase in the number of Chinese launches.
Taking all this into account, the demand curve for access to space is likely to continue its upward trajectory. How companies meet this demand and how many times they ship from Earth is less clear.
