SpaceX Starship : Superbird 9 : Florida (?) : NET 1H 2027

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

A quick comment then lets see if wee can keep this thread more on items direct impact about this mission and not so much others.

This comment is to support and show that even if Starship is unable to get to reuse of even the SH for the HLS demo and then crew landing missions. The costs (no profit added yet) would be at ~$0.9B for each mission. Or the incremental costs subtracted from the $2.89B leaves $1.090B for development and profit. A simple note here is that SpaceX is not likely to be that trying to make a profit but on getting these basic capabilities developed and demonstrated.

Now lets get back to Superbird 9 and what state the Starship launch program would need to be in to support commercial GTO launches like Superbird 9 at competitive prices to even F9.

[vaporcobra]

I wouldn't assume a payload has to be large/heavy just because it's going on Starship.

Just to reiterate this, Falcon 9 has launched at least eight missions where the total payload was a fraction of a ton. At the end of the day, the two things that matter most are affordability and reliability, and I'm sure Sky Perfect JSAT is getting a large discount to (probably) be Starship's first GTO customer.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

This seems caught up somewhere between 'don't bet against Elon' and it'll happen, just on 'Elon time'.

My prediction is either it happens, just with a 90% of losing starship on re-entry, or they switch to a F9/FH.

Well, think of it this way.  If they still don't have EDL down by this launch...they going to have some issues with HLS's needs and all those tanker flights.......

I would hope EDL would be working by this time or HLS is going to the right.

The HLS contract is pretty safe and doesn’t require recovery. Even full expendable Starship launches ($150m apiece, but with maybe 200t payload so 4 flights could be enough per HLS mission, 8-10 total) would be for far less than the total $3B price. Partial (booster) reuse would make the cost per launch comparable to list price for F9 ($50-60m?).

I have worked on and revised from time to time my spreadsheet on manufacture costs for SS and SH. At the moment it is showing SS manufacture costs at ~$40M and SH costs at ~$45M. Initial launch ops another ~$15M creates a launch cost full expendable of ~$100M. The note here is that with just 4 flight totals of a single SH and no reuse for SS the cost per flight becomes ~$66M. Add $14M profit margin and that becomes $80M per GTO launch. Such that just 2 GEO sat payloads would lower the price per sat to $40M. That is less than the price for a single sat on F9 at $50M.

Basicly think Airiane 5 and dual payload launch being the low cost launcher per sat until F9 replaced it at the low cost point. With 20t capability and most GEO sats unlikely until after 2030 to be more than 7t . Starship carrying 2 GEO sats should be easy at a max of 14t + the hardware to hold and deploy them. NOTE is that all that hold and deployment equipment once SS can be recovered will be recovered as well and can be reused too. So prices starting at $40M per launch could quickly drop to $20M or even less. And then prices for a single sat launched prices to less than $40M.

That sounds very interesting, old_Atlas_Eguy.  The last estimate I recall reading was from quite a while ago.  I'm not sure about the number, I think it was $11 million(?), but that was over a year ago.  And it was the sum of the estimated cost of the engines plus the sum of the salaries of the number of people working at Boca Chica for one month, based on a count of the number of cars.

Yes but it was for just the tank section a single engine and no complex ancillary hardware. The note here is that all that ancillary hardware is nearly as much as the cost of just the stainless steel superstructure part and the engines (6 of them). Ancillary hardware is the fins, actuators, cold gas thrusters, piping, wiring. batteries, COPVs, tiles, avionics, and the costs of mounting/assembly of all that hardware as well as other odds and ends. A value of ~$20M. Of all the costing items of the SS the superstructure and engines are the most reliable and accurate at ~$15M for the superstructure ($10M for prop section and $5M for faring section) and ~$6M for the 6 engines (>$1M for each R2 Vac and <$1M for each R2 SL).

The primary costing variability is in the ancillary hardware used on the SS.

In comparison the SH is very simple and has clear low variability in costing due to it being mostly tank and engines and the manpower to do all the assembly is much easier to estimate too.

[ninjaneer]

I was curious about the approximate mass and dimensions of the onesat kit, and found that it's approximately 3000kg.  No dimensions but it's also slated to fly on Ariane-64 next year with Optus 11.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/airbus_onesat.htm

[Zed_Noir]

Presuming an estimated launch cost of $160M to GTO by the Starship split between 4 or 5 large GEO comsats. That will be a cheap launch opportunity too tempting for a comsat operator to pass up on.

If my guess is correct. It is terrible news for SpaceX's competitors.

Why would a fully-reusable Starship have a launch cost of $160M? The launch cost should be lower than the cost of an F9 launch. SpaceX has put an enormous amount of money and effort into reducing the cost of a launch. The only reason the cost to the customer would be that high is if SpaceX charges the market price. Once Starship is fully operational, any F9 payload will cost SpaceX less to launch on Starship, except initially Dragon launches. Why go to the administrative, technical, and scheduling trouble of "ridesharing" those comsats? Just launch each one separately.

Don't presume this mission will have a successful Starship recovery or Super Heavy recovery. Hence the high estimated cost for a fully expendable launch. This is a hardware recovery development mission with paying customers like the early Falcon 9 missions developing propulsive landings.

The $160M number is the from the $150M cost of a fully expendable Falcon Heavy launch plus $10M for payload processing for 3 additional GEO satcom payloads. The number is probably too high. But it illustrates the low launch cost to each of the rideshare customers even at that high expendable cost number.

As to the question to why GTO rideshare. There is a limit to the number of launches out of the Eastern range annually. Also the customers will be happy to have a lower launch price. It gets extremely interesting if the launch cost of a fully reusable Starship drops to less than $60M while carrying 4 GEO satcoms.

 

[mlindner]

I think this will be a nice wake up call for many, even some within the community, who continuously assume that Starship required large payloads to be able to be launched to be profitable and thought the talk of it replacing Falcon 9 was something far in the future. This was always the intention folks, from the day they bid under $10M for the launch of a bunch of cubesats in the form TROPICS (that Astra recently dumped into the ocean). Starship is intended to self-cannibalize Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights eventually leading to the retirement of both vehicles, including Dragon. (I personally expect the last Falcon 9 launches to be the final flights of Dragon to the ISS before it's retirement.)

But, I digress. The info that this payload is only a few tons (if accurate) seems like would be in-line with the amount of fuel required to do a return from a GTO orbit with an apogee burn.

[Galactic Penguin SST]

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1560627503546281985?s=21&t=_pEmCdd78lQlPRCVx-9_Og

[AmigaClone]

As to the question to why GTO rideshare. There is a limit to the number of launches out of the Eastern range annually. Also the customers will be happy to have a lower launch price. It gets extremely interesting if the launch cost of a fully reusable Starship drops to less than $60M while carrying 4 GEO satcoms.

It is very likely that the number of launches the Eastern Range can handle will increase over time. By 2024, I can see the Eastern Range supporting over 100 launches/year, eventually going even higher.

As for the price SpaceX might charge, that would likely be between the minimum SpaceX could change and have a profit and what the market would pay. I can see that eventually being less than $60M (adjusted for inflation) for four GEO Satcoms, but that might be an aspirational goal.

[Chinakpradhan]

I think this will be a nice wake up call for many, even some within the community, who continuously assume that Starship required large payloads to be able to be launched to be profitable and thought the talk of it replacing Falcon 9 was something far in the future. This was always the intention folks, from the day they bid under $10M for the launch of a bunch of cubesats in the form TROPICS (that Astra recently dumped into the ocean). Starship is intended to self-cannibalize Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights eventually leading to the retirement of both vehicles, including Dragon. (I personally expect the last Falcon 9 launches to be the final flights of Dragon to the ISS before it's retirement.)

But, I digress. The info that this payload is only a few tons (if accurate) seems like would be in-line with the amount of fuel required to do a return from a GTO orbit with an apogee burn.

nicely mentioned all at https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-first-satellite-launch-contract/

[mlindner]

I think this will be a nice wake up call for many, even some within the community, who continuously assume that Starship required large payloads to be able to be launched to be profitable and thought the talk of it replacing Falcon 9 was something far in the future. This was always the intention folks, from the day they bid under $10M for the launch of a bunch of cubesats in the form TROPICS (that Astra recently dumped into the ocean). Starship is intended to self-cannibalize Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights eventually leading to the retirement of both vehicles, including Dragon. (I personally expect the last Falcon 9 launches to be the final flights of Dragon to the ISS before it's retirement.)

But, I digress. The info that this payload is only a few tons (if accurate) seems like would be in-line with the amount of fuel required to do a return from a GTO orbit with an apogee burn.

nicely mentioned all at https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-first-satellite-launch-contract/

Teslarati in general isn't a very good source for anything.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

As to the question to why GTO rideshare. There is a limit to the number of launches out of the Eastern range annually. Also the customers will be happy to have a lower launch price. It gets extremely interesting if the launch cost of a fully reusable Starship drops to less than $60M while carrying 4 GEO satcoms.

It is very likely that the number of launches the Eastern Range can handle will increase over time. By 2024, I can see the Eastern Range supporting over 100 launches/year, eventually going even higher.

As for the price SpaceX might charge, that would likely be between the minimum SpaceX could change and have a profit and what the market would pay. I can see that eventually being less than $60M (adjusted for inflation) for four GEO Satcoms, but that might be an aspirational goal.

The number one item limiting range usage is the use of range FTS services. But SpaceX does not use any of the range FTS services. Its F9 and on Starship will be a self-contained GPS automated FTS that is in a box riding on the vehicle. Such that SpaceX could launch as often as it wants. Already with the use of such system SpaceX has shown a possibility for multiple launches per day with the recent F9 and Atlas V launches 12 hrs apart. Just 2 per day in a year is a capability of a launch rate of >700 from the Eastern range. Unfortunately for ULA they are years behind the curve and need to push their work to get their automated onboard FTS certified for use. Else it means that they are limited being at least 3 days separated from other ops that use the range services for FTS.

[Vahe231991]

Since the Starship is the biggest-ever SLV, will the Starship spacecraft component be specially modified to house the Superbird 9 satellite?

[AndrewM]

Superbird 9 is now 2027.

Also, "Superbird-9" is scheduled to start operation in the first half of 2027, so it is a little behind. Please tell us about the background and impact of that.

https://minkabu.jp/news/3675246

[AndrewM]

As of Jan 31, 2025 this launch is still tracking 2027.

[AndrewM]

As of July 31st, this is still targeting a 2027 launch according to SKY Perfect JSATs FY25 Q1 Investor Presentation.

[eeergo]

This is the Falcon missions section, this thread and the other one https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=57378.0 about Starship should go on its dedicated section.

[AndrewM]

As of December, this is still targeting 2027.

SKY Perfect JSAT Signs Contracts with SpaceX for Two Launches of Next-Gen Communication Satellites [Dec. 7]

3) Communications Satellite “Superbird-9”

1. Satellite Bus

Airbus Defence and Space:  OneSat

2. Satellite Specification

(1) Frequency bands: Ku and Ka
(2) Primary Coverage: Japan and Eastern Asia
(3) Target launch date: 2027 (scheduled)
(4) Service Life: 15 years or more

[AndrewM]

Sounds like Airbus won't be ready to deliver the satellite until 2027 so Starship delays haven't been the driving factor yet.

Airbus Targets Superbird-9 Launch In 2027 After Delays [Feb. 2]

“While this program has faced significant challenges and yes, delays, it's also been a period of intense learning and stabilization for us, with delivery now anticipated in 2027,” he said here at the Space Summit 2026 at the Singapore Airshow.

[AndrewM]

As of January 31st, this is still targeting a 2027 launch according to SKY Perfect JSATs FY25 Q3 Investor Presentation.