2 ms·
> Launch capacity as a whole was never really a big bottleneck and is also driven by demand and supply. But even cutting down cost didn’t really meaningfully i
by mlindner 5y ago
> Launch capacity as a whole was never really a big bottleneck and is also driven by demand and supply. But even cutting down cost didn’t really meaningfully increase demand, as Falcon showed.
I disagree. The excess payload and cheapness of Falcon 9 created a huge market for smallsats and microsats as secondary payloads. If you look at the _number_ (not mass) of operational payloads since Falcon 9 has come online, the numbers have been shooting up dramatically (and that is excluding Starlink). There's been a 5-fold increase in the number of smaller satellites being launched (excluding Starlink) since the last decade.
See (pdf): https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/Bryce_Smallsats_2021.pdf https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/Bryce_Smallsa...