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This is a bit of a higher level conversation that we've had here before, but global launch capacity is not supply constrained, it is demand constrained. There simply aren't enough big things that need to be launched into space. The reason is that, despite the disruptive pricing of F9, similar disruption is lagging on the satellite side of the industry. Its coming down, but its a lot harder for the satellite side to get on board with Industry 4.0 type of stuff because of the product mix/uniqueness, and the general lack of demand in the big satellite industry doesn't help matters. Check out the trend in commercial awards over the past two years compared to the previous 10 or so (note that in typical western circles, the Chinese and Russians aren't included in these numbers), and consider that that those are a pretty big piece of the annual launch demand pie: Recently awarded GEO-Sat Contracts
So...don't expect to see a huge bump in SpaceX launches in 2019, or even 2020--like, we're not looking at a falcon launch per week for a while. The big internet constellations are really the thing that's going to step-function launch demand, and a rudimentary analysis of the funding for those constellations combined with an honest, if not eye-rolling assessment of ever optimistic space schedules pretty safely points to minimal launch action over the next ~two years. Starlink is the closest; I'd buy that they might start ramping up later in 2020.
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Interesting.
So SpaceX is building its own demand - Starlink - to match its increased supply.
They did expect to have a number of launches from Commercial Crew. None of those happened due to bureaucratic red tape and moving goalposts. Hopefully next year we get a US astronaut launched on a US rocket.
Very much so. And they are doing it because of ... Mars.
Basically, Elon needs lots of customers to develop the BFR/Spaceship. I don't know if you remember, but the biggest thing Elon was excited about during, I think, the second talk he gave about the BFR, was that they had figured out how they were going to pay for the BFR. It was always an issue. R&D for the Mars Colonial Transporter was never going to be cheap, and as the upthreads have pointed out, launch demand isn't going up.
So he invented a customer. Himself. This isn't an unheard of strategy in business. It would be akin to a car manufacturer owning and operating a car rental business to soak up manufacturing capacity. Usually, companies don't do this because the secondary industry is itself crowded with competitors and hard to run. Time will tell whether Starlink will be similarly impacted by (terrestrial) competition and/or operational complexity. It's a bold move, but frankly, he had no choice to fulfill his strategic objective.
Yeah. I’d actually spin the nuance slightly differently too. Its as much or even more about building Falcon as a low cost solution for the bigger picture vision as it is building internal launcher demand under the SpaceX Umbrella.
The real downside to the notion that Starlink creates internal demand is that, regardless where the corporate P&L lines are drawn between Falcon and Starlink, it basically boils down to at-cost launches for the mother entity [ostensibly SpaceX]. There's of course plenty of secondary benefits to that demand, like all the production and design efficiencies enabled by more volume, but that arrangement leaves the Falcon product line with zero direct profit.
I do fully believe that Elon could give a *sugar* about profit--I believe his sights are solely set on Mars--but he also knows that profit is a convenient way to fund development, so until Starlink can start to make a buck I wouldn't expect to see much favoritism over external Falcon customers.
Photos of B1046 back on land at SpaceX caps major Falcon 9 Block 5 reuse with spectacular Port of LA recovery
Reentry scorchmarks on a booster that is on the pad ready for liftoff are the mark of a real rocket company.
