SpaceX’s Launch Growth: Quantity Over Quality?
Next week is our Thanksgiving holiday, so the newsletter will not be sent out next Friday.
It’s interesting, if not exciting, to count to large numbers in the space industry. Contracts, launches, deployments, mass, etc., if a thing can be counted, it will be. Large numbers portend great activity going on within the industry, which can be true…until it isn’t.
2024 will be a record-setting year for launches. It will also be a record-setting year for the mass deployed into space from the Earth. It might be a record-setting year for spacecraft deployments. That all sounds great. By numbers alone, the space industry sounds healthy and active.
But it’s not.
Most of this space industry activity–the deployments, launches, mass, etc.- is accomplished by one company: SpaceX. While that’s good for SpaceX, the lopsidedness in the numbers has obscured some hard truths undergirding the space industry's health at the end of 2024. With this in mind, I look at SpaceX’s most recent launch goal revisions, seriously pondering whether more launches are better. Especially since most of SpaceX’s launches benefit no one but SpaceX.
I have many questions, which will be the source of future content. I’m unsure whether the company's future political entanglements will benefit the industry. I think excitement over Starship is clouding judgment and reality in the industry. There’s also the cult of commercial space, which, as humans have always done, pushes too much of a good thing, wielding the commercial hammer to solve every space problem. The cult and others point to those aforementioned numbers to talk of U.S. space dominance and health when, in reality, it’s SpaceX’s dominance and health.
Like Wall Street and the U.S. economy, they are not the same.
Going to Eleven
SpaceX’s management looks to have recently revised its 2024 launch goal (135, according to NASASpaceflight.com). That’s down about 9% from the company’s initial goal of 148 launches for 2024. Considering that the company has averaged slightly more than ten launches per month and the total Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches conducted so far are 115, even that decreased goal seems unlikely. The company would have to perform 23 more orbital launches in over a month. As noted, it’s averaged slightly over ten launches/month in 2024.
In an analysis I provided in February 2024, I noted that SpaceX would need a monthly launch average of 12 in 2024 to reach that goal. The company had only launched ten in January 2024, so it was already behind and would need to launch more than 12 monthly. Instead, based on two months, it averaged about ten launches each month, so it will probably have about 120 Falcon 9/Heavy launches by the end of 2024. I also observed (and still believe) that one company conducting 120 launches in a year is still an achievement.
At the time, I wondered why SpaceX’s management would set such a goal. It was not about the fact that it set a goal but the act of setting one that was well beyond what the company had achieved. Sure, it will motivate SpaceX’s workforce to try to hit that goal, but there’s a risk of demoralizing a workforce if unrealistic goals are always set. If the workforce tries hard to meet them and fails, always because the goalposts have been moved, then those employees are smart enough to understand the farce that those goalposts have become.
Considering these circumstances, I concluded that SpaceX’s publicly stated goal for 2024 was designed more as a marketing stunt than an actual goal. After all, if the company didn’t hit 148 launches but did launch over 100, it still would have launched more often than any of its competitors. It would have launched more than it had in 2023. The goal-setting was a low-risk announcement.
At the beginning of August 2024, after a ~two-week pause due to a Falcon 9 second-stage problem, I noted the company had managed to up its monthly cadence to ~11 launches per month–including July, during which SpaceX had conducted six launches. During May, it conducted a company record of 13 orbital launches. However, even eleven launches per month are not enough to achieve the SpaceX goal of 148 launches for 2024.
10.5?
Which brings us to November.
While announcing a goal at the beginning of the year makes sense, it’s unclear why a company would decide to reset to a less ambitious goal less than two months before the year ends. Again, even if the company fails to hit 148, it’s already conducted 115 orbital launches (as of 18 Nov 24). That’s 19 more than it conducted during ALL of 2023–~20% increase.
And the year isn’t over, with a little over a month to go. If SpaceX conducts 15 more launches (two more in November and 13 in December), which is a generous assumption, it will have conducted 130 launches for 2024. To perform more in November and December would require exceeding SpaceX’s May 2024 launch record (13). Could the company do it? Maybe, but with the upcoming holidays, it’s doubtful.
One hundred thirty launches are 35% more orbital SpaceX launches than in 2023. This means that the company’s workforce isn’t slouching but working hard. Launchwise, they are more dynamic than employees from SpaceX’s competitors. This isn’t a slight against those competitor employees but at their companies’ business models. Still, even after the revision down to 135, SpaceX’s employees will have failed to hit a goal that was unrealistic, based on the company’s performance to date.
So, why publicize a new goal? Especially when the averages make it plain that the company's likelihood of achieving it is very low. Assuming that SpaceX’s managers are looking at the same performance numbers and history, why set a goal to make employees feel like they have failed (even if they’ve just broken their company record and dominated the industry–again)?
Part of that sadism comes from Elon Musk. He seems to believe that employees need something to chase (“...that extra push over the cliff”), even if it’s in pursuit of something that isn’t achievable. It’s one thing to pursue reusability, but piling on more launches each year is, at this point, accounting. It also clouds the point. Adding more launches, especially Starlink launches, isn’t particularly groundbreaking for the company anymore. More launches don’t indicate serving more customers, either.
Licking the Cone
Most of SpaceX’s launches do not serve external customers. Of the 115 launches it has conducted so far in 2024, 101 (not 101, but 78—I double-counted the Starlink Cellular launches (which also have regular Starlink satellites) and then regular Starlink launches) have been for Starlink deployments. That means that 12% (32%)of its launches catered to external customers. The SpaceX business is almost a full-on self-licking ice cream cone, with the company lapping away at its Starlink missions (88% (66%) pure Starlink). Adding more Starlink launches provides the appearance of diligence. If only Spectrum fiber layers were so lucky.
Even the increased mass SpaceX deployed into orbit in 2024, while record-breaking, is only due to the larger mass internet relay Starlink satellites. It would have been more interesting if the increased mass had been for deploying prototype space habitats or other forward-looking facilities or spacecraft. But doing the space equivalent of laying fiber in the ground as the space version of Verizon or Comcast is, while useful, also mundane.
However, here’s the thing: we’ll see the same activity with Starship if it ever gets fielded. Mars might be the stated goal, but it will remain in the stretch realm of goals for many years. Starlink will continue to be the primary driver of hundreds of Starship launches for a while if only to prove the new system's reliability. So, it would be silly to think that SpaceX won’t be increasing its annual launch cadence.
Ultimately, barring some kind of interruption, SpaceX will keep launching Starlink, even as it caters to smaller and smaller shares of customer launches. That won’t be because there are fewer customers or customers are walking away, but because the company will continue tacking Starlink launches onto the launch manifest each year. It will do that because no competitors are causing it to nervously look behind itself, which is not ideal for innovation or marketplace competition.
It’s evident that SpaceX is an expert in its launch operations. For a long time, analysts, including myself, counted launches to understand how capable a company is and compared the companies’ launch activities to each other. To launch as often as SpaceX has during 2024 highlights the company’s extraordinary capability, putting its competitors' performance to shame. The result, however, is there is no meaningful competitor comparison to make involving SpaceX.
There hasn’t been for a few years now.
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If you liked this analysis (or any others from Ill-Defined Space), please share it. I also appreciate any donations (I like taking my family out every now and then). For the subscribers who have donated—THANK YOU from me and my family!!
Either or neither, please feel free to share this post!
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