Rocket Lab, which flies a much smaller launch vehicle than the Falcon 9, has launched two orbital missions from different spaceports within about seven and a half days and from the same launch pad within about nine days.
SpaceX’s rapid pace would not be possible without reusability, which allows the company to reduce costs and increase launch rates. SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket is designed to be fully reusable, potentially further reducing costs and solving concerns about production bottlenecks.
Just imagine the vast footprint and headcount of the SpaceX factory if a new Falcon 9 booster, nine engines, and a set of payload fairings had to be manufactured every 2.7 days. . How cost-effective would it be? Is it possible? Just visualizing the breakneck production pace of the Falcon 9 upper stage in Hawthorne or SpaceX’s Starlink satellites in Redmond, Washington, is impressive enough.
As far as we know, SpaceX has no plans to build reusable satellites. Some companies are interesting Reusable satellite conceptbut they focus on in-space manufacturing rather than consumer services.
This frame from a SpaceX video shows a stack of Starlink internet satellites attached to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, just after the launcher’s payload fairing is jettisoned.
Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket is designed to be fully reusable, further reducing the marginal cost of each flight and potentially solving concerns about production bottlenecks. But someone will still need to build a starship, and a lot of starships.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has said that to achieve his ambitions of colonizing Mars, his company needs to produce 100% of its waste per year, even if it is completely reusable. He suggested that it would be necessary to produce more than one starship. When you think about next-generation rocket factories, you probably want to imagine an aircraft manufacturer with multiple factories scattered across the country or around the world.
With Falcon 9, SpaceX has already produced more than 100 upper stages (and a handful of new boosters) Every year. Starship is significantly larger and more sophisticated than the Falcon 9’s upper stage, with high-thrust, finely tuned Raptor engines and heat shields that allow it to fly multiple times without modification. That would require larger buildings and likely require more people on the manufacturing floor, at least in the short term. Still, the Falcon 9’s upper stage is a complex device.
Aside from the drama and challenges of capturing and reflying rockets, the task of building so many spacecraft in one year is difficult. SpaceX’s ability to reuse Falcon 9 boosters has garnered a lot of attention, but—Rocket landing is still incredible after watching it nearly 400 times-the The production capacity of the Falcon 9 upper stage suggests that building 100 Starships each year may someday be possible.
The combination of rocket reuse and high-speed manufacturing is the cornerstone of SpaceX’s Starship ambitions, and has already proven successful with the Falcon 9. You could say that this is truly a match made in heaven.
