13 comments

• Richard M

  February 22, 2026 at 9:44 am

  “I think a $5 million launch or a $15 million launch is a bit of a dream. Personally, I think reusability is a dream. How am I going to respond to a dream? My answer to respond to a dream is, first of all, you don’t wake people up.”

  — Richard Bowles, Managing Director of Sales, Arianespace, Singapore Satellite Industry Forum, 2013
  _____

  Booster 1067 is here to wake us up.
• Nate P

  February 22, 2026 at 3:56 pm

  I am curious what the maxima of booster reuse will be, as the Falcon 9 won’t be flying forever, and SpaceX would like to transition away from it as soon as possible. Forty flights per booster? Fifty? How close is SpaceX to reaching the material limits of an individual rocket? Of its engines? Probably a closely-held company secret.
• Ronaldus Magnus

  February 22, 2026 at 4:17 pm

  Richard Bowles opened Arianespace’s Asean office in December 1996 and is currently their Regional Director for Asean countries.

  STILL ! ! ! ! That about says it all.

  Amazon has just contracted MORE LEO launches with that ridiculous, reusable SpaceX.

  I believe that the only entity that has not contracted with SpaceX are the Chicoms.
• Richard M

  February 22, 2026 at 4:39 pm

  Hello Nate,

  Whatever the answer ends up being, I have to think it will be higher for methalox launchers. But that’s why everyone is chasing that now.
• Jeff Wright

  February 23, 2026 at 2:29 am

  I would think it would be even longer with winged fly-back boosters since those engines would suffer no boostback wear.
• Dick Eagleson

  February 23, 2026 at 6:24 am

  Given that SpaceX has been re-flying B1067 roughly every other month for some time now, I would anticipate it tying Discovery about a year from now and hitting the Big 4-OH in April 2027. Extrapolating beyond that, B1067 should hit 44 flights by the end of 2027, 50 by the end of 2028, 56 by the end of 2029 and 62 by the end of 2030 – assuming no misadventures or any accumulated aging effects that would mandate earlier retirement.

  I think it is a reasonably safe assumption that Falcon 9 will continue in service through the end of ISS operations. Shotwell has said that SpaceX will fly the Falcons so long as there are customers who want them but how many customers would want them beyond 2030 is decidedly problematical. SpaceX will likely deploy at least a load or two of V3 Starlinks from Starships this year, but, with everything else on Starship’s dance card, I foresee no slowdown in Starlink deployments on F9 this year and probably not in 2027 either.

  After that, SpaceX may elect to retire F9 from Starlink deployment service but there will still likely be enough non-Starlink 2nd-party business to keep an average cadence of one a week or better in 2028 and 2029, especially if SpaceX is using Starship exclusively for its own LEO deployments, lunar missions and Golden Dome deployments for the Space Force. F9 could very well continue to operate into at least the early 2030s in such a case.
• Richard M

  February 23, 2026 at 6:40 am

  Hello Jeff,

  You have to ask yourself why none of the many launch companies and startups around the world are pursuing lifting bodies or planes. One or two might miss the optimum path, but dozens? The mass penalty hit is just very big and that makes it harder to close a business case.

  There are niche cases for winged vehicles. Right now the only one that seems to have been realized is long-term orbital testing platforms for national security agencies. But those are payloads, not launch architectures.
• Richard M

  February 23, 2026 at 6:51 am

  “Shotwell has said that SpaceX will fly the Falcons so long as there are customers who want them but how many customers would want them beyond 2030 is decidedly problematical.”

  I think Elon would love to retire it at the first possible opportunity. That said….the most obvious customer case is Dragon flights to commercial space stations; but I also think the military has developed a very high level of comfort with Falcon 9, and I think it will take some time before they’re willing to see it removed completely as a launch option.

  But time will tell!
• Dick Eagleson

  February 23, 2026 at 1:44 pm

  Richard M,

  Yeah, time always does tell. She’s a blabbermouth, that one. Just not, unfortunately, an oracle.

  Anent F9’s future prospects, crew and cargo to post-ISS commercial LEO space stations might be a thing in the earliest going, but I don’t see that as decisively keeping F9 in service if most other use cases fall away in favor of Starship. For one thing, there isn’t going to be all that much cadence to be had from that source. Also, compared to my frequently posited Starship-based “city bus” LEO space station crew/cargo service concept – a nice once-in-awhile job for a Dear Moon-class Starship once those start flying with crews aboard – F9-Dragon is expensive. Plus, the Dragons will not have unlimited service lives and SpaceX isn’t planning to build any additional units.

  Military conservatism might be a factor in keeping F9 in service, but the military is going to have to get comfortable with Starship pretty quickly if it expects to make even a low-end run at getting Golden Dome up before Trump leaves office. That about-to-be experience should make the military a lot more comfortable with the idea of retiring the Falcons.

  So the next four or so years look to be a lock, but keeping F9 in service beyond that seems decidedly iffy.
• Jeff Wright

  February 24, 2026 at 6:19 am

  That companies aren’t pursuing space planes is exactly why I don’t think only companies should go to space.

  There are more important things than ledgers. I don’t see a lot of companies building ballistic missile submarines either.

  A winged fly-back booster should have even longer service life than boost-backs…and X-37 is a bit small for military utility.

  Like subs, articles like Dream Chaser need funding that doesn’t rely on the caprices of the market. It, not Starliner, should have been the down-select with Falcon…so America can have a capsule and space plane both.
• Nate P

  February 24, 2026 at 7:53 am

  Jeff Wright: the military would invest in a successor to the X-37b if there was a need for it. You would fund one just to develop one, not because it’s actually needed. It’s a false equivalence to compare them to boomers, you need a new argument.

  Better the caprices of the market than of the state. The state is slower, more expensive, and much less responsive to the needs of the people.
• Edward

  February 24, 2026 at 5:57 pm

  Nate P asked: “I am curious what the maxima of booster reuse will be, as the Falcon 9 won’t be flying forever, and SpaceX would like to transition away from it as soon as possible. Forty flights per booster? Fifty? How close is SpaceX to reaching the material limits of an individual rocket? Of its engines? Probably a closely-held company secret.”

  My recollection is that with this version of Falcon, SpaceX intended for up to 100 flights per booster. I think your point is that the boosters are unlikely to reach that number, given that retirement of the Falcon fleet is inevitable. One thing that we can be sure of: Falcons will continue to fly as long as the Dragons continue to fly, so Dick Eagleson‘s analysis could conceivably apply.

  I do not recall SpaceX making any suggestions of expectations for the number of flights for the Merlin engines (other than 1 for the Merlin Vacuum engine).
  ___________
  Jeff Wright wrote: “A winged fly-back booster should have even longer service life than boost-backs …”

  Unfortunately, stage separation occurs too high for the atmosphere to support a winged turnaround of the booster. Wings would only be active upon approach and landing, not at high altitude. Even with wings, the booster would require a boost-back burn.
• pzatchok

  February 24, 2026 at 6:38 pm

  Any winged fly back vehicle would have to have a near perfect shield system. Not something the shuttle had that took at best weeks to replace and fix. it normally took months for the shuttle.

  Plus the engines would have to work all the time every time which the shuttles engines were often changed out between flights and in some cases switched to another shuttle entirely.

  We cant do that right now.Anything close to the size of the shuttle would be impossible to fly once a month. Small vehicles would turn around faster.