SpaceX progress towards a 100 launch year

[woods170]

Good to end this thread by confirming that from the outset Elon was indeed talking about Falcon launches, and did not include Starship test flights in this discussion:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1740628828135756267?s=46&t=eQrUtTJk6IAt4GyTzH7J2w


96 flights is an excellent achievement. I predict next year’s 144 flights will be the high point of the Falcon era, after which Starship flights will gradually start eroding Falcon launch cadence.

Nope. You are off by at least two years.

[steveleach]

Well that wraps it up for the year.  Any and every way you look at it, this was an amazing year.  96 launches or (for those who color outside the lines) 98.  Might as well complete what I started so here is the update for December.  Spread sheet is at the top of thread as always and for fun I am adding the two year cumulative plot.  With a linear fit to 2022 you can see the 'kink' at the beginning of 2023.  Visual artifact? proabably - looking at the whole two years you can also visualize exponential growth but either way, the rate this year seemed to take off from the start.

Happy New Year to all.

Overlaying straight lines onto it, from the first to the last point in each time period, also helps highlight the trends.

I wonder if SpaceX knew the 2023 total was going to be 96 when they selected 96 x 1.5 (144) as the 2024 target?

[alugobi]

Overlaying straight lines onto it, from the first to the last point in each time period, also helps highlight the trends.

I wonder if SpaceX knew the 2023 total was going to be 96 when they selected 96 x 1.5 (144) as the 2024 target?

Only if they could have predicted those winds and the FH rollback in December.

[cpushack]

in 2016-2017 (when they began to transition to reused rockets) they launched 7 and 18 (13 new and 5 reflown) times respectively . Lets call it 12 average. With brand new rockets/engines/fairings each time thats:
12 First Stages
12 Second stages
120 Engines
10 sets of fairings (2 dragon missions)

In 2023 we have 96 launches (9 new cores, 5 Heavies)
9 First Stages
96 Second stages
177 engines (maybe some spares too)
~20 sets of fairings (4 Dragon missions and fairings are being reused over 10 times a set, so say an avg of 5 flights each)

so to launch 8 times more rockets, they are making LESS first stages, 50% more engines, and about double the fairings.

[Brigantine]

96 flights is an excellent achievement. I predict next year’s 144 flights will be the high point of the Falcon era, after which Starship flights will gradually start eroding Falcon launch cadence.

Nope. You are off by at least two years.

While I broadly agree 2025 and 2026 will likely be higher than 2024, and Falcon will still fly for decades, I note it is highly sensitive to a single customer. If Starlink loses its appetite to invest, then it's even plausible 2023 will end up being the peak year

[meekGee]

96 flights is an excellent achievement. I predict next year’s 144 flights will be the high point of the Falcon era, after which Starship flights will gradually start eroding Falcon launch cadence.

Nope. You are off by at least two years.

While I broadly agree 2025 and 2026 will likely be higher than 2024, and Falcon will still fly for decades, I note it is highly sensitive to a single customer. If Starlink loses its appetite to invest, then it's even plausible 2023 will end up being the peak year

There's a chance Falcon will launch most of Kuiper.  Vulcan absolutely can't, and NG is still an unknown.

[DanClemmensen]

96 flights is an excellent achievement. I predict next year’s 144 flights will be the high point of the Falcon era, after which Starship flights will gradually start eroding Falcon launch cadence.

Nope. You are off by at least two years.

While I broadly agree 2025 and 2026 will likely be higher than 2024, and Falcon will still fly for decades, I note it is highly sensitive to a single customer. If Starlink loses its appetite to invest, then it's even plausible 2023 will end up being the peak year

I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. Starlink is a division of SpaceX. SpaceX intends for Starlink to reach 40,000 satellites. Starlink is already cash flow positive. They will switch from F9 to Starship as soon as it is technically possible to do so, but they will keep launching satellites.

[Robotbeat]

Note that Starlink has regulatory requirements to launch a lot of satellites or risk losing spectrum rights. They want as many launches as possible, probably 200-300 in 2025 or 2026 if Starship hasn't ramped up to over 40 flights per year by that time.

This applies to some of the other providers, too. This is why Falcon launched OneWeb and is even getting some Kuiper launches. Through 2026, no one will be ramping up enough launches to make a dent in this demand source for Falcon 9, even if they're launching as many Vulcan, New Glenn, Neutron, Antares300/MLV, Ariane 6, and Terran-R rockets as they can muster. It just takes a while to ramp up capacity of ANY rocket (SpaceX or otherwise); don't bet on more than a ~2-3x annual increase in launch rate from anyone.

(Assuming they get 2 or 3 Vulcan (or New Glenn) launches in 2024, it'll be still fewer than 30 Vulcan (or New Glenn) launches in 2026 at the fastest possible ramp rate, and I don't think they'll ramp that fast... kind of a similar thing applies to Starship, but Starship is about one year ahead in operations, although not reliability of course.)

2027 is the first possible year that other launchers could actually significantly eat into SpaceX's launch share, if everything goes right for them. 2026 if SpaceX has an anomaly, MAYBE.

[Zed_Noir]

<snip>
While I broadly agree 2025 and 2026 will likely be higher than 2024, and Falcon will still fly for decades, I note it is highly sensitive to a single customer. If Starlink loses its appetite to invest, then it's even plausible 2023 will end up being the peak year

There's a chance Falcon will launch most of Kuiper.  Vulcan absolutely can't, and NG is still an unknown.

Falcon will also deployed the Lightspeed constellation from Telesat and the Rivada Space Network constellation concurrent with the Kuiper constellation deployment. Maybe OneWeb constellation replenishment as well. SpaceX will not lack LEO constellation customers anytime soon. Especially if other launch providers might have launch capacity shortfalls with new launchers and production limitations.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

#SpaceX launches of 2023

https://twitter.com/_rykllan/status/1742117051462750371

@elonmusk's 100 launches plan as of Jan 2, 2024

[Comga]

Here is the corner of the last version of the chart posted previously.
It shows, as has been previously noted that as of December 8, SpaceX had conducted 100 launches in the past year.
If we marked the start of the year by the earliest sunset (in the northern hemisphere) (and counted the Starship test launches) Musk would have had his 100 launches in 2023.
Note that this mark was hit again on January 7, 2024.  Soon it should become the rule that there have been more than 100 Falcon launches in the previous 365 days.
The pace of the previous ten launches briefly went over 150, before the December weather crashed it back to around 100.
Nice work all. It's been fun to watch but I am glad it's over.