Memorandum
- From
- Caroline Mercer via Fast Company
- Date
- Filed
- Business·5 min to read
- Re
SpaceX stops taking Falcon 9 bookings as satellite launch capacity tightens
ReSpaceX stops taking Falcon 9 bookings as satellite launch capacity tightens
SpaceX has stopped accepting new Falcon 9 reservations while it shifts to Starship, raising questions about how satellite operators will get their hardware into orbit.
SpaceX has stopped taking new reservations for its Falcon 9 rocket, the workhorse that has carried much of the world's satellite traffic since its first successful orbital landing in December 2015. The shift leaves commercial satellite operators facing a tighter launch market just as demand for orbital capacity keeps growing.
The author, a former SES executive who spent three decades at the satellite operator, argues that satellites underpin ordinary economic life. They tell ships, aircraft, cars and phones where they are, keep parts of the financial system and communications networks synchronized, carry data across oceans and remote areas, forecast weather, and monitor crops, roads, fires, floods and supply chains. Armed forces depend on them to communicate, navigate, track threats and guide weapons.
Falcon 9 changed the economics of reaching orbit. By lowering the cost of launch, increasing its frequency and reusing boosters, SpaceX turned launch from a rare, custom event into something closer to routine. SES was SpaceX's first commercial customer to launch a satellite to geostationary transfer orbit, in 2013, and later became the first commercial customer to fly on a reused Falcon 9 booster.
The company is now moving into what the author calls its Starship era. Falcon 9, which is expected to keep flying until around 2030, is no longer taking reservations. The main manufacturing and engineering center for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in Hawthorne, California, is being wound down, and SpaceX is redirecting people and resources to Louisiana, where a spaceport valued at $100 billion is under construction. In September, Starship reached orbit for the first time despite an engine failure and deployed a fleet of Starlink satellites. If it performs as intended, its capacity will far exceed Falcon 9's.
Commercial operators should not assume that this capacity will be available to them. SpaceX has its own large appetite for launches. Starlink is by far the largest satellite constellation in the world, and its new V3 satellites, which Starship is designed to deploy, are central to its expansion. NASA relies on Starship for its lunar plans, and demand from the U.S. Department of Defense for SpaceX launches keeps rising. The author notes that Starship may create vast capacity, but internal and government demand may absorb much of it.
Alternatives exist, but they trail SpaceX. Europe's Ariane 6 is flying regularly, though not at anything like Falcon 9's pace. New Glenn, Vulcan and Neutron are important additions to the market, and Relativity Space's Terran R is promising but still a few years from commercial service. None yet combine the frequency, reliability and cost that Falcon 9 achieved. Amazon Leo, a developing satellite internet constellation, has booked more than 100 launches across several providers, including Ariane 6, and recently raised its order from 18 to 24 missions. Defense customers are also seeking larger and more widely distributed constellations.
The author warns that if the launch bottleneck is not resolved, launch prices will rise significantly, though availability may matter more than cost. Companies with the strongest balance sheets could book launches years ahead, spread their bets across providers and absorb delays. Smaller firms, even with strong technology, may lack a dependable route to orbit. Without it, they cannot build flight heritage, meaning proof that their technology has worked in space, which can deter investors and slow innovation. Launch access, and the diversity of providers, therefore has consequences for competitiveness and for defense, the author says.
The author concludes that everything in the space industry, including laser communication ground stations, phased-array antennas, large satellites and high-resolution cameras, depends on reliable access to space. The open question, in the author's framing, is who will carry forward the push toward affordable, reliable and available launch capability now that Falcon 9 has reshaped the field.
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