When will the 400th Starship Mission Successfully Reach Orbit?

[jongoff]

I took the liberty of giving this an end date as it didn't have one (thus leaving voting open forever). I set it to the end of Jan even though Jon likes short polls as I think most voters already voted anyway.  PM me with complaints.

Thanks Lar, that works for me! You'd think with the number of polls I start, that I'd get better at making sure I have the settings configured correctly before hitting the post button...

~Jon

[sdsds]

Given Gwynne Shotwell's statement that she wouldn't be surprised if they had 400 launches in the next four years (call it by the end of calendar year 2028), what do you think? Is this a "Green Lights to Malibu" number? Or something you think is totally realistic. As always, just morbidly curious to see what people think about how fast Starship will be able to ramp up its launch rate.

https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1857527413061857317


Rules for the poll:
1- To count, the Starship has to make it all the way to a circular orbit, with apogee and perigee both simultaneously above 100km.
2- This is counting missions, not vehicles -- so if a specific Starship flies 20 times to orbit, that counts as 20 Starship missions to orbit.

If any of you see any other ambiguities you'd like me to clarify, I'll edit this post to address them. I was going to leave this open for a week, but accidentally hit send too soon, and I think I only left it open for 1 day. Editing the poll doesn't seem to allow me to change that. Sorry.

Oh, and if you do vote, please feel free to explain your rationale in a follow-on comment.

~Jon

From my perspective now, knowing how many are likely to occur before the end of 2025, it does look like there have already been a few red lights on the way from downtown LA to Malibu.

[jongoff]

Given Gwynne Shotwell's statement that she wouldn't be surprised if they had 400 launches in the next four years (call it by the end of calendar year 2028), what do you think? Is this a "Green Lights to Malibu" number? Or something you think is totally realistic. As always, just morbidly curious to see what people think about how fast Starship will be able to ramp up its launch rate.

https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1857527413061857317


Rules for the poll:
1- To count, the Starship has to make it all the way to a circular orbit, with apogee and perigee both simultaneously above 100km.
2- This is counting missions, not vehicles -- so if a specific Starship flies 20 times to orbit, that counts as 20 Starship missions to orbit.

If any of you see any other ambiguities you'd like me to clarify, I'll edit this post to address them. I was going to leave this open for a week, but accidentally hit send too soon, and I think I only left it open for 1 day. Editing the poll doesn't seem to allow me to change that. Sorry.

Oh, and if you do vote, please feel free to explain your rationale in a follow-on comment.

~Jon

From my perspective now, knowing how many are likely to occur before the end of 2025, it does look like there have already been a few red lights on the way from downtown LA to Malibu.

Yeah. They're an amazing team, with tons of resources. Will they likely get to 400 flights? More likely than not. Not guaranteed, but there are few other LVs currently in existence that I'd have as high of confidence getting to 400 flights during their lifetime. But by November 2028? Not impossible, but yeah I like how you put it about there being some other-than-green colored lights on the road to Malibu so far.

~Jon

[AmigaClone]

Yeah. They're an amazing team, with tons of resources. Will they likely get to 400 flights? More likely than not. Not guaranteed, but there are few other LVs currently in existence that I'd have as high of confidence getting to 400 flights during their lifetime. But by November 2028? Not impossible, but yeah I like how you put it about there being some other-than-green colored lights on the road to Malibu so far.

~Jon

I agree that out of all non-Chinese launch vehicles with a first flight after 2020, Starship or a launch vehicle derived from Starship has the greatest chance of reaching 400 successful orbital launches. If more than one vehicle with a maiden launch between 1 January 2020 and 31 August 2025 reaches 400 launches, Starship likely will be the first.

As for cadence, I can see the 400th successful orbital (LEO+) launch within 5 years after the first launch that successfully reaches a LEO or above orbit.

[AndrewM]

With the 1st true orbital mission now NET the 2nd flight in 2026 (Flight 12 - V3 debut is 1st 2026 launch so NET Flight 13 for orbit and a max (currently) approved cadence of 145/year, the earliest they could hit 400 is in ~September 2028.

That would assume operating at the max cadence from all 3 sites (Starbase, LC-39A, and SLC-37) from the start of 2026. This obviously won't happen as not all sites will be operational at the start of 2026 and they definitely don't have a production rate to support that many flights in the near term. I'm thinking probably 2032/2033 for 400 successful missions.

Max Currently Approved Cadence:
Starbase - Up to 25/year
LC-39A - Up to 44/year
SLC-37 - Up to 76/year

[Robotbeat]

I didn't get a chance to vote, but "After 2032" is not a remote possibility. It's possible they do it earlier, but it takes time to ramp up. If we assume they get 8 fully orbital launches in 2026, then 12 in 2027, 18 in 2028, 27 2029, 45 2030, 60 2031, 90 2032, 130 2033, etc... That's basically the same ramp rate as Falcon 9, and and the "after 2032" would be the correct answer.