2 comments

• Dick Eagleson

  August 31, 2025 at 1:04 pm

  108 of SpaceX’s 110 launches thus far this year have been Falcons. That’s an annualized rate of 162, assuming no further improvements to launch cadence in the last 1/3 of 2025. That would be an increase of 28 Falcons over the 134 SpaceX launched last year. If SpaceX can manage to average 15 Falcon launches per month for the rest of the year – a rate it has achieved or exceeded in individual months already – then that would be 60 more launches for a year-end total of 168. The early-in-the-year stated goal of 180 appears to be out of reach, but 170 still looks like a possibility.

  If 2nd-stage production continues its advance, and with a new pad at Vandy coming on-line in the back half of next year, plus the steadily increasing launch cadence from its existing SLC-4E pad there, SpaceX might have a shot at reaching or breaking the 200 Falcon launches-per-year mark next year.

  The one potential fly in that ointment is most likely drone ship availability. That new pad at Vandy really ought to be accompanied by a fourth drone ship too. But I have noted before that a possible dodge around that would be to reduce the Starlink loads out of Vandy by a few birds each on some launches to allow for more RTLS landings at LZ-4.

  Exciting times – and that’s even without any consideration of what seem certain to be major advances on the Starship side of the launch ledger for 2026. For the remainder of this year, I think we will see IFT-11, the last of the Block 2 stacks, launching from Pad 1 and IFT-12, the first of the Block 3s, launching from the new Pad 2 at Starbase. There is at least a modest possibility of seeing IFT-13 fly at the very end of this year too. If IFT-11 and IFT-12 both go well, IFT-13 – whenever it flies – could be the first actual orbital Starship mission, the first to deploy real Starlink V3 birds and the first to be caught by the tower chopsticks – perhaps at the original Pad 1 rather than the one it will launch from. This would only be precluded if SpaceX decides to immediately begin demolition of Pad 1 and its replacement with a Pad 2 clone following the launch of IFT-11.

  Getting the Starship heat shield to a state in which it actually requires no refurbishment between missions will, I think, prove to be a process of incremental approach. This won’t preclude Starship effectively entering revenue service next year, at least for Starlink V3 launches. Returning Starships can be inspected and refurbished in the extant Megabays, then in the Gigabay as the latter is completed at least enough to be closed in and ready for partial use.

  Starship refurbishment will initially follow the route of F9 booster refurbishment – lengthy at first, then working down as experience is gained, lessons are learned, and incremental improvements are made to new-production V3 and V4 Starships.

  As the old joke goes, the first 95% of the work will take 95% of the time and the last 5% of the work will take the other 95% of the time.
• Robert Zimmerman

  August 31, 2025 at 1:17 pm

  Dick Eagleson: A minor correction to your most excellent analysis. Of the 110 launches so far this year, 109 were Falcons. I included only one of the Starship/Superheavy launches, the 10th. The others failed to operate as planned in orbit.