POLL: Number of SpaceX orbital flights in 2025

[Lar]

Although I used to do quite lengthy intros including the manifest for the year, it's becoming increasingly pointless...
See here for the rules: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=55469.msg2325443#msg2325443

Groups of 5 like last two years.

(HERE https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58338.0
    and https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60093.0)

Companion landing poll here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62077.0

[Lar]

my guess of 176-180 is not too aggressive, given their track record so far, I feel.

[DanClemmensen]

175. I think they are reaching their logistical limits on FH/F9 at  somewhere below 160, but they will launch maybe 15 Starships.

[deltaV]

I voted 161-165. I think they're concentrating on Starship now so they won't try super hard to increase Falcon cadence further.

[Narnianknight]

Next year there should be bins of 10 (or 25) rather than 5. This is getting rather ridiculous.

[deltaV]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1868890203123073078

Probably >180 Falcon launches in 2025

[Rebel44]

Since I underestimated SpaceX in both 2023 and 2024, I will go this time with 8 Starship orbital launches and 185 F9/FH launches

[Comga]

Notes:

1 We are getting bored with this poll.  Only 53 votes so far

2 People must love my extrapolation.   Almost 1 in 4 chose the same guess as mine.

3 Always someone fails to read the rules.  It’s “orbital launches”. What’s with that really low vote?  It’s for 2025, not January or Starship

[Lar]

Notes:

1 We are getting bored with this poll.  Only 53 votes so far

2 People must love my extrapolation.   Almost 1 in 4 chose the same guess as mine.

3 Always someone fails to read the rules.  It’s “orbital launches”. What’s with that really low vote?  It’s for 2025, not January or Starship

1. I think we are. Next year might be time to discontinue these polls, or refactor them further (I refactored the landing one, and introduced inadvertant ambiguity...)

3. I read that as a catastrophic failure early in the year that shuts down SpaceX operations entirely for a long period. (unlikely) or a technology destroying apocalyptic event ... (hopefully even less likely) ...

note, I MEANT to use higher groupings in the under 75 area (groups of 25..) but forgot. As it turns out that would have made our lone under 25 guess lower fidelity.

[Paul451]

Out of curiosity...

If Starship is able to take over Starlink launches next year, say from February onward, but no other booked payloads switch over to Starship and Starship doesn't fly more often that you expect, what does that do to your estimate for total number of launches?

[Paul451]

Lar,
The lack of interest might (in part) be due to the fine granularity of the poll. 50+ options. How many people are going to care whether it's 180 rather than 175 or 185? It feels like you are explicitly excluding anyone who doesn't have an extremely deep understanding of the nuances of F9 launches.

But, given comments in the thread, a more interesting question (and discussion) might be whether launch numbers are going to plateau due to Falcon's capacity limits or continue to increase exponentially (or, if Starship steals Starlink launches, perhaps even decline.)

So perhaps the poll should have been:

How many SpaceX orbital flight attempts do you anticipate in 2025?

More than 185 (Increasing rapidly)
146 to 185 (Increasing)
106 to 145 (Plateauing)
66 to 105 (Declining)
1 to 65 (Declining rapidly)
0 (For some reason)

Only six options, centre brackets are around 40 each, and the main focus is on rate-of-increase.

[AmigaClone]

Out of curiosity...

If Starship is able to take over Starlink launches next year, say from February onward, but no other booked payloads switch over to Starship and Starship doesn't fly more often that you expect, what does that do to your estimate for total number of launches?

SpaceX does not currently have a license that would allow it to reach one of the Starlink shells using Starship with a significant number of satellites per launch.

That will change in the future with LC-39A becoming operational for Starship launches. There are alternatives from Boca Chica using a new shell, but one option would need for the FCC to expand the number of authorized satellites for Gen2 Starlink including that new shell or the FAA issue a launch license allowing a new launch corridor from Boca Chica and the FCC modifying the current Gen2 license to allow Starlinks to be launched using this new launch corridor.

So for 2025, I don't expect the number of Starlink launches using Starship to affect the number of Falcon 9 launches.

[Tywin]

I voted 146-150


Almost the same number than this year, plus some orbital Starship flights...

[Lar]

Lar,
The lack of interest might (in part) be due to the fine granularity of the poll. 50+ options. How many people are going to care whether it's 180 rather than 175 or 185? It feels like you are explicitly excluding anyone who doesn't have an extremely deep understanding of the nuances of F9 launches.

But, given comments in the thread, a more interesting question (and discussion) might be whether launch numbers are going to plateau due to Falcon's capacity limits or continue to increase exponentially (or, if Starship steals Starlink launches, perhaps even decline.)

So perhaps the poll should have been:

How many SpaceX orbital flight attempts do you anticipate in 2025?

More than 185 (Increasing rapidly)
146 to 185 (Increasing)
106 to 145 (Plateauing)
66 to 105 (Declining)
1 to 65 (Declining rapidly)
0 (For some reason)

Only six options, centre brackets are around 40 each, and the main focus is on rate-of-increase.

I like that a lot, actually. Do we want yet another poll for this year, structured that way, or save the idea for next year?

I think 2026 is the year we'll start seeing declining numbers of F9.... that might be an interesting poll, which year do the numbers decline?

[Comga]

Now that the poll has "closed" some conclusions.
This year's votes seem to be best evaluated by the arithmetic average, assuming each vote is represented by the middle of the five launch range.
(Two votes for about a dozen launches were ignored.  Not sure what question they were answering.)
That evaluation put the consensus at 164.

The number of votes in the 2022, '23, '34, and '25 polls was 96, 109, 88, and 76, so interest is down, but not dramatically.
As in all previous years, most of the votes came in quickly and afterwards the consensus was moved only slightly.  We could cut it off after New Years and the results would be the same.
YMMV