SpaceX Vehicles and Missions > SpaceX General Section
SpaceX's next big commercial customer
rockets4life97:
In the next several months SpaceX is poised to complete their manifest for their two largest commercial customers: Iridium (8 launches) and SES (6 launches).
Who will be SpaceX's next big commercial customer?
Hauerg:
SpaceX/Starlink.
speedevil:
--- Quote from: Hauerg on 03/11/2018 12:03 pm ---SpaceX/Starlink.
--- End quote ---
It would surprise me to see at least one full launch of satellites this year - perhaps even a whole plane, on falcon heavy.
At that point, you have a 'basic' starlink constellation that gives really good internet in most of the globe - but only twenty minutes a day.
Following this, and investment, a very, very rapid and aggressive rollout in 2019, with more launches than they have ever done, spread over a couple of years.
Perhaps BFS comes along in the middle and starts delivering some too.
Inoeth:
--- Quote from: Hauerg on 03/11/2018 12:03 pm ---SpaceX/Starlink.
--- End quote ---
While SpaceX is clearly going to be launching a lot of their own satellites and that should eventually make them money, they need paying customers to actually pay the bills, pay for BFR R&D, etc... Iridium and SES will indeed be done soon, so the question really is if there's any new satellite players in town (for medium to large sats) that are going to take advantage of SpaceX's price like Iridium did and create a solid new contract... To me it looks like SpaceX will finish out their entire manifest in a couple years, and while they're gonna need a lot to launch their own satellites, I think they may have more capacity to launch than there will be demand...
guckyfan:
--- Quote from: Inoeth on 03/11/2018 02:05 pm ---I think they may have more capacity to launch than there will be demand...
--- End quote ---
That was always the declared goal of SpaceX. Being able to fly any payload at any time.
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