3 ms·
The're a large customer, but probably not the largest. SpaceX has a lot of commercial customers, including a fully private manned spaceflight (Inspiration4) lat
by trothamel 5y ago
The're a large customer, but probably not the largest. SpaceX has a lot of commercial customers, including a fully private manned spaceflight (Inspiration4) later this year.
When it comes to Starship, it seems like one of the main applications will be to launch hundreds of Starlink satellites at once. I don't believe that there is a noticable amount of NASA funding in Starlink - it's possible they might be using it for some reason, but it'd be as a customer.
- _Microft 5y agoNASA is the largest single customer of SpaceX but does not make up the lion's share of SpaceX launches.
- sebzim4500 5y agoMaybe they consider Starlink to be a customer of SpaceX? NASA would still be the largest customer though, with 36 launches versus Starlink's 33. That would probably change by the end of the year though.
- trothamel 5y agoThat is sort of of what I was thinking. It's not exactly right, but out of 20 launches in the first half of 2021, you have 13 Starlinks, 2 Transporter (SpaceX-brokered rideshare), 2 NASA (Crew/Commercial Resupply), 2 Commercial, and 1 Space Corps. The second half of the year looks more NASA-Heavy, with CRS-23, Crew 3, and CRS-24, plus 2 science satellite. But that's among 17 other missions. I guess my point is that SpaceX probably won't lose NASA, but they're not as dependent on government business as ULA is.
- lizknope 5y agoWikipedia has a list of Falcon launches and a column with the customer name. NASA is on there quite a bit but there are plenty of other customers including other US government agencies, other governments, and private companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...