by Surprise, surprise: SpaceX plans to set more space flight records this year.
Elon Musk’s company launched 96 orbital missions in 2023, a big jump from the previous high of 61, set a year earlier. And SpaceX has another big step planned in 2024, one that will go well beyond the century.
“As we look to next year, we want to expand [our] flight rate to about 12 flights per month, or 144 flights,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of construction and flight reliability, on October 18 during a hearing of the US Senate Space and Science Subcommittee.
That works out to one launch every 2.8 days, an end that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. But SpaceX has a history of reframing our ideas about what is possible in spaceflight, so that it seems possible to achieve that ambitious goal.
Related: 8 ways SpaceX changed spaceflight
Starlink will lead the way
About two-thirds of SpaceX’s launches in 2023 were aimed at building out Starlink, the company’s satellite-internet mega-constellation. That trend is likely to continue in 2024, as the network is far from complete.
Starlink currently has about 5,230 operational spacecraft, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. But SpaceX has permission to deploy a total of 12,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), and the company has applied for permission for another 30,000 on top of that.
So Starlink batches should continue to fly from both coasts – California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base and Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center – through 2024.
We’ll also see a few more SpaceX astronauts this year.
The company launched three crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2023 – two for NASA and one for Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that aims to set up its own job in LEO a few years from now. shin.
SpaceX will send five astronaut missions into the sky this year, if all goes as planned. Crew-8 and Crew-9 flights for NASA are scheduled to end in February and August, respectively. Axiom’s Ax-3 mission will launch on January 17, with Ax-4 targeted no earlier than October. And, in April, SpaceX plans to launch Polaris Dawn, a free-flight mission to LEO that will feature the first-ever spacewalk by a private astronaut.
Related: SpaceX’s Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space in photos (gallery)
Starship getting ready to go
Ninety-one of SpaceX’s 96 orbital missions last year were flown by its working Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s mighty Falcon Heavy accounting for the other five.
But there were also two test flights in 2023 of the launcher that SpaceX thinks will spark a revolution in space flight and exploration – Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
Both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy feature reusable first stages, a major advance in spaceflight technology. But Starship, which stands about 400 feet (122 meters) tall when fully stacked, is designed to be completely reusable. In fact, Musk wants the Super Heavy Starship’s massive booster to land directly on its launch mount after lifts, to enable rapid inspection, refurbishment and re-flight.
Two Starship test flights took off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, in April and November of last year, respectively. Both missions aimed to send the vehicle’s upper stage most of the way around Earth, with a splashdown aimed at a patch of Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
April’s flight did not last long. The starship had several serious problems, including the failure of its two stages to separate, and SpaceX destroyed the tumbling vehicle on purpose just four minutes after liftoff.
A starship made progress on a second flight; 33 Raptor Super Heavy engines fired as planned, and successfully separated the booster from the upper stage. But this mission also ended early, when the upper stage was destroyed about eight minutes into flight.
We shouldn’t have to wait long for flight number three. Last week, SpaceX tested the engines of its latest Starship prototype, which it plans to launch as soon as it receives a license from the US Federal Aviation Administration. (The FAA is currently overseeing an investigation into what happened on the November Starship flight.)
SpaceX is also working to get other Starship vehicles ready, in keeping with the company’s development philosophy, which prioritizes frequent test flights and rapid iterations.
“I think, maybe by the end of the year, they will get it down in a functional way. Not on cadence, but just showing reusability,” Justus Parmar, CEO of the venture capital and advisory firm Fortuna Investments, which focuses a lot. on the space industry, said about the efforts of SpaceX Starship. “So that will be huge.”
Time is of the essence for Starship development. NASA chose the giant vehicle to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The plan calls for Starship to carry astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time on the Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled to lift off in late 2025 or 2026.
Related: NASA’s Artemis Program: Everything you need
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Private spaceflight taking off
The past two years have been rough for investors in most areas, and space was no exception.
“Growth has been crushed,” Parmar told Space.com. “Everything is down like 70 to 90%.”
But he sees a turnaround coming. Money will start flowing into the space ecosystem in a serious way again this year, which could lead to a “flagship year” in 2025, Parmar predicts.
“Technology is the longest it’s ever been, and yet we have valuations that are somewhat the lowest they’ve ever been in some capacity. So I think a deal with new capital is really promising,” a he said.
Low prices and rapidly advancing technology aren’t the only factors poised to move the needle. The continued success of SpaceX, which dominates the private spaceflight industry, shows investors that there is money to be made in the final frontier. And that is crucial, according to Parmar.
“In every industry that’s emerging or emerging, you’re always going to need a leader — you need success,” he said. “If there are no winners in the industry, no one will ever support [it].”
Such Google was at the forefront in the early 2000s, when investors needed a success story after the internet bubble burst, Parmar noted. Google ended up reshaping the entire internet economy, and SpaceX may do something similar in the final frontier.
That’s not to say that SpaceX is the only spaceflight company that will have a big 2024. Parmar thinks Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos back in 2000, is about to have a breakout year.
Blue Origin has got a new CEO – Dave Limp, who was Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services. In addition, Bezos recently announced that he is moving from Seattle to Miami. He broke the news in an Instagram post, which also noted that “Blue Origin operations are moving more to Cape Canaveral.” The Space Coast is just a few hundred miles from Bezos’ new home in South Florida
These signs indicate that Bezos is prioritizing Blue Origin more than before, and that he is more actively involved in the company’s activities, Parmar said. (Like SpaceX, Blue Origin has bold ambitions; Bezos has said he wants to help humanity expand its reach into the solar system.)
“I think everything they were doing will just be sped up,” said Parmar. “It’s all going in on this.”
