SpaceX progress toward 25 Starship launches in 2025

[catdlr]

Here is from a potential commercial user for Starship and his needs:

TBPN@tbpn
"It's extremely difficult to imagine what's about to come down the line with Starship."

"We're really talking about 1000x more tonnage per year that we can get to space. And that's coming in three to five years, which is really not that far away."

"The launch cost might come down by between 10 and 100x. Launch capacity is set to go up by 1000x or more."

"The reason is if you build a new Starship every day for a year, which is a very conservative estimate for what
@SpaceX is trying to do, at the end of the year you have 365 Starships, which have 5x the current payload capacity, and you're launching 10x as frequently."

Starcloud CEO @PhilipJohnst0n on the huge change @elonmusk's Starship represents for how much payload we'll be able to take to orbit.

https://twitter.com/tbpn/status/1982941438200717777


More on this at this thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=61453.msg2621818#msg2621818

[spacenut]

So, what are the bottlenecks?

Raptor production, especially R3?

Superheavy production?

Starship production?

TPS production?

Launch facility construction?

Manufacturing production and facilities?

Otherwise, they should be launching more. 

[DanClemmensen]

So, what are the bottlenecks?

Raptor production, especially R3?

Superheavy production?

Starship production?

TPS production?

Launch facility construction?

Manufacturing production and facilities?

Otherwise, they should be launching more.

This thread is about 2025. The "bottlenecks" were:
   *time required to evaluate test failures
   *time required to modify the next ship to accomidate the lessons learned
   *the major mishap at Massey's and time taken to work around the loss
   *shift to V3 and resulting inability to launch after IFT-11

Your list of bottlenecks may affect 2026 and you should probably take them to a new thread. I do not think any of them affected the 2025 launch rate.

[Cabbage123]

SpaceX launched 5 times out of 25 this year, anyone want to calculate how many launches before 2028 would be required for this percentage?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1982442502956212305/

Despite significant growth by our competitors, especially China, SpaceX will probably increase from ~90% of Earth’s total payload to orbit to ~98% in about 24 months due to Starship

Obviously a very rough and ready way of doing it, with lots of assumptions, but going from 90% to 98% is 5 times the amount of payload right?

Approx 130 Falcon 9 flights in 2024, if that was ~90% then you would need 650 F9 flights to get to ~98%.

F9 non-expendable mass to LEO is ~17 tons, v3 Starship could be 200 tons.

650/200*17= ~55 flights per year (assuming that Elon is saying that, from 2028, 98% of new payload will be SS).

So, if you just used Starship for all flights, maybe 55 flights with so, so many assumptions (including not knowing what percentage of the 17 tons was actually used in 2024).

Quite possibly less, as with more capacity you can also have less wasted space.

[DanClemmensen]

SpaceX launched 5 times out of 25 this year, anyone want to calculate how many launches before 2028 would be required for this percentage?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1982442502956212305/

Despite significant growth by our competitors, especially China, SpaceX will probably increase from ~90% of Earth’s total payload to orbit to ~98% in about 24 months due to Starship

Obviously a very rough and ready way of doing it, with lots of assumptions, but going from 90% to 98% is 5 times the amount of payload right?

Sorry, but no. You first need to estimate the world's total payload in the target year, and then estimate how much of it is non-Spacex. Neither of these is simple. For example, non-SpaceX might remain fixed, and SpaceX add all new payload:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=9.        (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=49.      (98%)

Or, SpaceX might take lots of business away from other launchers:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=10, SpaceX=90    (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=2, SpaceX= 98    (98%)

[meekGee]

So, what are the bottlenecks?

Raptor production, especially R3?

Superheavy production?

Starship production?

TPS production?

Launch facility construction?

Manufacturing production and facilities?

Otherwise, they should be launching more.

This thread is about 2025. The "bottlenecks" were:
   *time required to evaluate test failures
   *time required to modify the next ship to accomidate the lessons learned
   *the major mishap at Massey's and time taken to work around the loss
   *shift to V3 and resulting inability to launch after IFT-11

Your list of bottlenecks may affect 2026 and you should probably take them to a new thread. I do not think any of them affected the 2025 launch rate.

Exactly.  You can't extrapolate number without understanding trends. I mean you can, and people do, but it's inherently flawed...   Extrapolation works when the underlying processes remain relevant.

Ship lost a year due to life sucking. but that doesn't mean you take the "wish/reality" ratio and apply it from now till forever.

People did that with F9 during the "life sucking" couple of years, and how accurate did that turn out to be?

[Cabbage123]

Sorry, but no. You first need to estimate the world's total payload in the target year, and then estimate how much of it is non-Spacex. Neither of these is simple. For example, non-SpaceX might remain fixed, and SpaceX add all new payload:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=9.        (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=49.      (98%)

Or, SpaceX might take lots of business away from other launchers:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=10, SpaceX=90    (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=2, SpaceX= 98    (98%)

Sure Dan. Two assumptions (none of which I listed) is that we are looking at the upper range of Starships needed to reach 98% and that no other launcher is going to gain significant extra payload.

The lower range would be, as you say, if SpaceX cannibalises other launchers (which, of course, is very likely), but the upper end would be if it is all new payload (including Starlink).

In that case you would need to increase 5 times.

Of course, is other launchers did gain more payload, then you need to do more to reach 98%. I don't know what those figures are and so just extrapolated 2024 (and assumed Elon was claiming 90% for that year).

[Vultur]

So, what are the bottlenecks?

Raptor production, especially R3?

Superheavy production?

Starship production?

TPS production?

Launch facility construction?

Manufacturing production and facilities?

Otherwise, they should be launching more.

This thread is about 2025. The "bottlenecks" were:
   *time required to evaluate test failures
   *time required to modify the next ship to accomidate the lessons learned
   *the major mishap at Massey's and time taken to work around the loss
   *shift to V3 and resulting inability to launch after IFT-11

Your list of bottlenecks may affect 2026 and you should probably take them to a new thread. I do not think any of them affected the 2025 launch rate.

Yeah. They basically lost ~half a year due to failures, and the downtime before V3 will eat up more.

at this point it's about how smoothly the first couple flights of v3 go.

[DanClemmensen]

Sorry, but no. You first need to estimate the world's total payload in the target year, and then estimate how much of it is non-Spacex. Neither of these is simple. For example, non-SpaceX might remain fixed, and SpaceX add all new payload:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=9.        (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=1, SpaceX=49.      (98%)

Or, SpaceX might take lots of business away from other launchers:
     in 2025 non-SpaceX=10, SpaceX=90    (90%)
     in 2028 non-SpaceX=2, SpaceX= 98    (98%)

Sure Dan. Two assumptions (none of which I listed) is that we are looking at the upper range of Starships needed to reach 98% and that no other launcher is going to gain significant extra payload.

The lower range would be, as you say, if SpaceX cannibalises other launchers (which, of course, is very likely), but the upper end would be if it is all new payload (including Starlink).

In that case you would need to increase 5 times.

Of course, is other launchers did gain more payload, then you need to do more to reach 98%. I don't know what those figures are and so just extrapolated 2024 (and assumed Elon was claiming 90% for that year).

Or alternatively, the Chinese might double their payload mass or even double the non-SpaceX payload mass, in which case SpaceX would need a factor of about ten increase.

We also have this weird problem if how to count the mass of a Ship that will stay in space and operate there for months or years. Is is a second stage (zero payload) or is it a spacecraft that has been delivered to orbit? Would that be the dry mass plus whatever fuel was left after it reached orbit? We would certainly count the whole mass of a Blue Moon MK II, so what is the equivalent for Starship HLS?

[thespacecow]

Of course, is other launchers did gain more payload, then you need to do more to reach 98%. I don't know what those figures are and so just extrapolated 2024 (and assumed Elon was claiming 90% for that year).

Elon is claiming 90% for 2025, not 2024.

And they still have some way to go, at least in Q2 they didn't hit 90%, it's about 86%: https://x.com/FutureJurvetson/status/1969855376129659252

[AmigaClone]

Of course, is other launchers did gain more payload, then you need to do more to reach 98%. I don't know what those figures are and so just extrapolated 2024 (and assumed Elon was claiming 90% for that year).

Elon is claiming 90% for 2025, not 2024.

And they still have some way to go, at least in Q2 they didn't hit 90%, it's about 86%: https://x.com/FutureJurvetson/status/1969855376129659252

Based on the Brice Reports SpaceX is responsible for ~86% of the known mass to orbit by launch provider in the first half of 2025.

https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/bryce-briefing-2025-Q1/
https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/bryce-briefing-2025-Q2/

Some launches don't include the payload mass.

[thespacecow]

Not precisely on topic but this thread is the closest I can find for discussing launch cadence ramping.

What would a “simplified” Starship plan for the Moon actually look like?
The problem is that it may be difficult to find options that both NASA and SpaceX like.

Eric Berger – Nov 13, 2025 7:09 AM |  68

From the article:

There is a third downside, and this is perhaps the most important one. An “expendable” Starship plan would be anathema to the leadership of SpaceX, including founder Elon Musk. Officials there do not believe the space industry has fully digested how Starship will transform the launch industry.

“You don’t yet understand how many Starship launches will happen,” a senior SpaceX source told Ars.

The company is aiming to launch 1 million tons of payload to orbit per year, the majority of which will be propellant. SpaceX simply believes that once it locks in on Starship operations, launching a dozen or many more rockets per month won’t be a big deal. So why waste time on expendable rockets? That era is over.