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I assume they'll have figured out a deployment strategy for Project Kuiper where the unit economics works; there are advantages and disadvantages to launching m
by notahacker 11mo ago
I assume they'll have figured out a deployment strategy for Project Kuiper where the unit economics works; there are advantages and disadvantages to launching more satellites, less frequently. SpaceX isn't that different in creating its own demand: the launch cadence of the Falcon 9 is so frequent mainly because they have a lot of their own satellites to launch.
You can make money on infrequent launches of niche stuff (and Blue Origin will target orbit injections and stuff like handling nuclear material for big one-off missions that SpaceX isn't interested in competing for). But New Glenn and to an even greater extent Starship owe their existence to an assumption that we'll be launching bigger stuff than constellation class satellites in volume to build space infrastructure in the next decade: space stations, space solar, lunar resource extraction stuff etc. If that comes to pass, the bigger question is whether New Glenn is too small...
- NetMageSCW 11mo agoIncorrect. Starship is predicated on the idea that reusing the second stage will let them lower the cost of launch another ten times and it won’t matter if you don’t fill Starship completely, it will still be the cheapest option.
- notahacker 11mo agoAnd the unit economics of a smaller launch vehicle with a reusable second stage would be better still, especially since rapid launch cadences are what SpaceX does best. They've built it big because they think the demand exists.