Who will deploy more third-party commercial cargo in the next 5 years, NG vs SS?

[thespacecow]

I don't think it's a silly metric. If you're a customer of launch as opposed to a SpaceX or Blue Origin employee (or amazing people), it reflects how available those vehicles actually are for anything beyond Blue and SpaceX's constellations.

It's silly because if you're a customer of launch, Starship or New Glenn are not the only options in the next 5 years. This completely ignores Falcon, which just won two GTO launches in the 2027/28 time frame, right in the middle of the time range considered by this poll.

SpaceX can afford to ignore customers wrt Starship because they have Falcon to pick up the slack.

[envy887]

I don't think it's a silly metric. If you're a customer of launch as opposed to a SpaceX or Blue Origin employee (or amazing people), it reflects how available those vehicles actually are for anything beyond Blue and SpaceX's constellations.

~Jon

"Availability" is still a silly metric to compare Starship vs. New Glenn, because customers don't really care what rocket they ride as long as their other requirements (price, timing, reliability, etc) are met. They will happily ride F9/FH instead of Starship, unless F9/FH can't meet their needs - and there are very few cases of that. There's no rational reason to compare New Glenn only to Starship (while inexplicably exclude all the stuff Starship is custom designed to launch), and not compare it to the vehicles it is actually competing against, which are Vulcan and Falcon.

Which company will deploy more "commercial" payloads, or more properly, more external payloads, in the next 5 years?

[DanClemmensen]

I don't think it's a silly metric. If you're a customer of launch as opposed to a SpaceX or Blue Origin employee (or amazing people), it reflects how available those vehicles actually are for anything beyond Blue and SpaceX's constellations.

~Jon

"Availability" is still a silly metric to compare Starship vs. New Glenn, because customers don't really care what rocket they ride as long as their other requirements (price, timing, reliability, etc) are met. They will happily ride F9/FH instead of Starship, unless F9/FH can't meet their needs - and there are very few cases of that. There's no rational reason to compare New Glenn only to Starship (while inexplicably exclude all the stuff Starship is custom designed to launch), and not compare it to the vehicles it is actually competing against, which are Vulcan and Falcon.

Which company will deploy more "commercial" payloads, or more properly, more external payloads, in the next 5 years?

If SpaceX makes good on their stated goals, a Starship launch will have a lower marginal cost than an F9 launch for any payload mass, and F9 will be withdrawn from commercial service. This will require SpaceX to develop a general-purpose cargo Ship variant, which might be in service a year after Pez is in service. The window in which NG competes with F9 is very short.

Do you feel that SpaceX will fail to achieve this goal?

[envy887]

I do think Starship will eventually completely replace Falcon for general payload launches, but that's going to take more than 5 years. Starship will cannibalize some Falcon business before that, but not all of it. Probably not even most of it.

[DanClemmensen]

I do think Starship will eventually completely replace Falcon for general payload launches, but that's going to take more than 5 years. Starship will cannibalize some Falcon business before that, but not all of it. Probably not even most of it.

I think they intend to use Pez to immediately cannibalize about 2/3 of the F9 payloads: all of Starlink, so that's most of it right there, perhaps starting as early as late 2026. IMO they will also use Pez to launch a bunch of other payloads that will use the Starlink V3 form factor, starting even before they have a general-cargo Ship. F9/FH will still be needed for Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, and USDV, and possibly for NSSL, all for contractual reasons, all until about 2031, but that's less than ten launches/yr.