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The 160 launches figure includes falcons. Seems like Starship fuels and flight tests faster than Falcon though. And if they manage to reuse second stages, the

The 160 launches figure includes falcons. Seems like Starship fuels and flight tests faster than Falcon though. And if they manage to reuse second stages, then that eliminates a significant manufacturing bottleneck.

ben_w 5mo ago
If you're counting Falcons, you are making my point for me: even with those, on three launch sites, they still can't get close to the minimum for an extremely small, to the point of being unreasonable, target satellite mass. Further, until they actually do solve upper stage reuse, it is an "if" which can kill the economics of the vehicle itself, let alone reach the eventual potential cost reductions necessary for space based data centres to be worthwhile.
- timschmidt 5mo ago
  I don't see any reason a non-renewable Starship upper stage would kill the economics of the vehicle. No one else has a renewable upper stage yet, so there's no competition in that space until someone else does. Stoke have an interesting design but it hasn't flown yet and is only about the size of Falcon. If they do manage to reuse the upper stage, then they should have no problem exceeding falcon launch cadence. Starship is much easier to build than Falcon. Welding is simpler and less expensive than the carbon composites used on Falcon upper stages.
  - ben_w 5mo ago
    The competition isn't other launch providers, it's not going to space at all. According to Google, the price threshold to make space make more sensible than building on the ground is $200/kg: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 Without full reusability, the estimated cost for Starship to LEO is kinda hard to find (necessarily, given the design isn't yet finalised), Wikipedia says $100m/launch in expendable mode, and the SpaceX website* says 250 metric tonnes in expendable mode, which is $100e6/250 metric tonnes = $400/kg. * at least it does at time of writing: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship

ben_w 5mo ago

If you're counting Falcons, you are making my point for me: even with those, on three launch sites, they still can't get close to the minimum for an extremely small, to the point of being unreasonable, target satellite mass. Further, until they actually do solve upper stage reuse, it is an "if" which can kill the economics of the vehicle itself, let alone reach the eventual potential cost reductions necessary for space based data centres to be worthwhile.

timschmidt 5mo ago
I don't see any reason a non-renewable Starship upper stage would kill the economics of the vehicle. No one else has a renewable upper stage yet, so there's no competition in that space until someone else does. Stoke have an interesting design but it hasn't flown yet and is only about the size of Falcon. If they do manage to reuse the upper stage, then they should have no problem exceeding falcon launch cadence. Starship is much easier to build than Falcon. Welding is simpler and less expensive than the carbon composites used on Falcon upper stages.
- ben_w 5mo ago
  The competition isn't other launch providers, it's not going to space at all. According to Google, the price threshold to make space make more sensible than building on the ground is $200/kg: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19468 Without full reusability, the estimated cost for Starship to LEO is kinda hard to find (necessarily, given the design isn't yet finalised), Wikipedia says $100m/launch in expendable mode, and the SpaceX website* says 250 metric tonnes in expendable mode, which is $100e6/250 metric tonnes = $400/kg. * at least it does at time of writing: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship