When will the 400th Starship Mission Successfully Reach Orbit?

[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

[DanClemmensen]

I voted for 2030.  400 will mostly be for Starlink, and they need about 80/yr to achieve steady state replacement.

There is a caveat: If they replace Starship with another vehicle with another name, as long as it is fully rapidly reusable and is at least as large, then its launches count as Starship launches.

[Eer]

I didn't see Gwen Shotwell's statement Jon cited in his first post, which is a bit more conservative than my estimate (end of 2027). Rationale: Give them 12 in 2025. In 2026 they'll be working with refueling, and the number will rise sharply, so give them 100 in '26. That would require 250 or thereabouts in '27, which isn't out of the question. Not based on any facts, only on my assumptions about their likely ability to more than double mission pace each year...

[sdsds]

Ever the optimist: somewhere in the first half of 2028.

For clarity, this includes 'Gagarin' missions where a Starship reaches an orbit higher than 100km x 100km, delivers its payloads, and then re-enters and is caught one revolution (~90 minutes) after launch. Those will be the bulk of the launches in 2027/2028. "So say we all."

[Galactic Penguin SST]

A good rule of thumb would be to use the previous record holder before Falcon 9 came in - the Soviet R-7/Soyuz series
Its 700th and 1100th launch - all of which aimed at orbit by that time - was in March 1977 and October 1983 respectively, at the busiest time of its career (63 launches in 1980, a record for orbital LV families till F9 blasted it last year). That's 6.5 years in between.
You can try to think if Starship can be worked harder than that within these few years.

[jongoff]

I voted 2032, and I think even that's probably optimistic. It took SpaceX 14yrs to do 400 Falcon 9 flights (they just past the 400 mark like last month). I think they can get there faster with Starship, but I think 400 flights in the next 4 years is beyond a "Green Lights to Malibu" scenario. The only way they'll get there, with stages as large and complex as Starship and Super Heavy is once they're able to reuse both stages without significant refurbishment between flights. I wouldn't be surprised if they got there with the Super Heavy in the next 1-2yrs, but I think that getting the upper stage not just recoverable, but recoverable with negligible damage and refurbishment needed is going to take a lot more time and iteration to get there.

~Jon

[redneck]

I went with 2030. IF Starship is successful in the next year or two, then increased tempo should be fairly painless. That would be something less than 100/year 27-30. That's if Starship is successful.

 I still think there is a possibility that Superheavy works just fine but the Starship (upper) will have to make a few pivots to get where it needs to be. It seems to me that many forget that Starship is the first attempt at this class and style of ship. Wright brothers used wing warping and others (Curtis?) went to ailerons.

[AmigaClone]

I also believe that it will likely take SpaceX until 2030 to launch Starship 400 times. That date will depend on the number of operational launch towers and how fast SpaceX is able to increase it's launch cadence.

As for what those 400 orbital missions will do? About 1/4 would involve general tests, and missions supporting crewed missions to either the Moon or Mars and the other 300 or so would be to deploy V3 Starlink satellites.

[DanClemmensen]

I also believe that it will likely take SpaceX until 2030 to launch Starship 400 times. That date will depend on the number of operational launch towers and how fast SpaceX is able to increase it's launch cadence.

As for what those 400 orbital missions will do? About 1/4 would involve general tests, and missions supporting crewed missions to either the Moon or Mars and the other 300 or so would be to deploy V3 Starlink satellites.

I just went with Starlink at 80 launches a year for 5 years. That only requires one launch pad, one booster, and two Ships, replacing them as they wear out. 80 launches at 100 satellites per launch is 8000 satellites per year. with a 5-year lifetime, this supports a 40,000-satellite constellation, forever.

All other Starship uses are in excess of this base load.

[Yggdrasill]

I'm going to go with 2028. I assume they'll be doing regular and reasonably fast booster reuse in 2026, and regular and reasonably fast Starship reuse in 2027. At that point, they can start doing missions at an incredibly high rate. I'd expect something like:

2025: 10 launches
2026: 30 launches
2027: 60 launches
2028: 400 launches

Of course, with the graph just going vertical at a point, it's very sensitive to when exactly they get reuse sorted out. Shifted a year out they could be under 100 at the end of 2028. Shifted a year in and they could be over 1000 at the end of 2028.

[Stan-1967]

I went with 2028 for the following reasons:
Falcon 9's current pace is a baseline for operational cadence capability.   Assuming even a 1:1 exchange of flight rate as F9 ramps down vs. SS/SH ramping up, they are around 150-200 launch per year operational capability.  They are doing this with 3 pads & a vehicle with a turnaround time of around 30 days. ( iirc )

Moving to SS/SH leverages specific investment returns in faster turnaround times with methalox & pad operations to quickly stack vehicles.  Payload integration will maybe gate launch rate.

Investment in new pads suggest Boca will have two, and the Cape also will have at least 2.  I don't know what the plan is for Vandenburg.  I would think they will need perhaps 1, but maybe they can do without that. I don't know.  So that gives at least 5 operational SS/SH pads, and maybe more depending on what happens with EIS actvity at the Cape. 

400 should not be a problem with that many pads. 

2024 ==> 150 launch cadence
2025 ==>  200 launch cadence with F9 still the bulk, and SS/SH adding 20 launches
2026 ==>  SS/SH moving into operational status, +150 launches ( Artemis, Mars window, Starlinks)  + 100 F9 launches as ramp down begins
2027 ==>  40 something F9 launches & 300 SS/SH
2028 ==>  20 or less from F9, +400 SS/SH ( Artemis, Mars, & all Starlinks plus other LEO constellations)

[Tywin]

After 2032

[deltaV]

I voted 2031 because I'm guessing it'll take them 4 years from now to get the first 100 and then 100 per year thereafter. The standard deviation of my estimate is 2 years.

[M.E.T.]

I voted “during 2029”.

Their stated target - and NASA’s expectation as well - is 25 launches in 2025.

I expect them to double that annually, as Starfactory and additional launch towers come online.

2025 - 25 launches
2026 - 50 launches
2027 - 100 launches
2028 - 200 launches

That’s 375 by end of 2028, so just missing out on 400 cumulatively being reached during 2028. Hence my (conservative) estimate of “during 2029”.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

I guestimate 12 successful orbital flights in 2025. Doubling that number every year thereafter means 400th successful flight in 2030.

Even with what SpaceX has achieved with F9 that's still a crazy fast exponential growth for 5 years and for the largest ever LV. Plenty of things could slow that down, including (I think inevitable) failures that ground Starship potentially for months at a time.

I'm adding a year of contingency: 2031

[DeimosDream]

After 2032.
I'm guesstimating Starship ramps up twice as fast as Falcon 9, but it took F9 10 years to go from F9v1.1 to the 200th flight. Maybe 8 years if we count from F9v1.1-FT, but with Starship V2 flying 2025 that is still 2033 for the 400th.

[laszlo]

I picked never because unlike some folks upthread I'm going with the actual literal definition of Starship, we're almost done with 2024 and:

    1. SS has yet to truly reach orbit, just ICBM-like sub-orbital ballistic lobs
    2. There has been no significant operation of a Raptor in the orbital micro-gravity environment after a relight  and,
    3. Paradoxically, because of the increasing rate of progress.

I believe that it's going to take more than a single additional flight to clear SS for true orbital flight, especially descent over populated/sensitive areas. I see that pushing the first actual orbital flight to 2025.

I also believe that SS will be superseded by its much improved successor. There's constant revisions and upgrades. Long before 400 flights the sum total of the incremental improvements will make it easier to replace SS with a new model instead of trying to maintain lots of variants with different hardware configurations. In traditional aerospace companies they would have just added a series suffix as was done with the Atlas, but SpaceX is being run like a software company. They'll make it a whole new product once it's different enough, unlike what was done with the Atlas.

So that cuts into the orbital flight from both ends. As a result, I don't see 400 before the operational window closes.

[shm6666]

I voted after 2032. I do believe they will get there, but it will take longer time. Especially when they do have failures that will ground them for some time. Also the transition time from V2 to V3 will take more time I think.

Currently as it stands V3 is the final version. But I do think there will be more versions when they learn how to squeeze more performance out of the thing. All of that will take time and if it is going to be human rated it will take longer. I don't think SpaceX will have parallel production lines for say V2 and V3. I do think that when they commit to V3 all of the V2:s will be flown out pretty quickly to make room for the new V3:s.

All of this will take time and lover flight cadance. But come 2031 I do think there flight cadance will be very high. So it will probably be just after 2032.

[guckyfan]

I vote 2029.

2025 will not have a high flight rate.

2026 will not reach 100. The years after that will be more than 100, but not very much more. So it will take 4 years, beginning 2026, to reach 400.

Still enough launches in 2026 to get 5 Starships to Mars, if things go well.