Generated Title: Double the Rockets, Double the Questions: Are Back-to-Back Launches the New Space Race Yardstick?
SpaceX pulled off a neat trick this week: two Falcon 9 launches in a single night from Florida's Space Coast. The first, lofting another batch of 29 Starlink satellites, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 10:08 p.m. EST. A mere three and a half hours later, its twin followed suit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth orbital launches from Florida this year, we’re told. Impressive, sure. But what does it really mean?
Launch Cadence vs. Actual Progress
The weather cooperated—greater than 95% chance of favorable conditions, according to the 45th Weather Squadron. Booster B1092 made its eighth flight and landed successfully on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ (the 132nd landing on that vessel, and SpaceX's 533rd booster landing overall). These are the numbers that SpaceX wants you to focus on. The sheer volume of launches, the reusability milestones. What they don't tell you is the marginal utility of each Starlink satellite.
Is adding another 29 satellites to the constellation really advancing connectivity, or is it just adding incremental bandwidth to an already saturated market? And how much of that capacity is actually being utilized? Viasat, for example, is launching its own satellite (ViaSat-3 F2) to add over 1 terabit per second of capacity over the Americas. One satellite. Twenty-nine Starlinks. You do the math. (And I encourage you to actually do it; don't just take my word for it.)
I've looked at hundreds of these filings, and this focus on launch cadence feels… manufactured. It’s as if the number of launches has become a key performance indicator (KPI) divorced from actual revenue or user growth. What’s the correlation between launch frequency and subscriber acquisition cost? What’s the churn rate for Starlink users in areas with competing broadband options? These are the questions that actually matter, not the raw number of rockets leaving the pad.
The ULA Counterpoint: Precision vs. Volume
Contrast SpaceX's approach with United Launch Alliance (ULA). On the same day as SpaceX's double launch, ULA launched its Atlas 5 rocket carrying the ViaSat-3 F2 communications satellite. This launch was scrubbed a week prior due to a faulty liquid oxygen tank vent valve – a problem that required rolling the rocket back to the Vertical Integration Facility for repairs. [Source Title]: ULA launches ViaSat-3 following valve replacement on Atlas 5 rocket – Spaceflight Now
Now, SpaceX fanboys will point to this delay as evidence of ULA's inefficiency. "Look how slow they are! We launch two rockets while they're still fixing one valve!" But consider this: ULA took the time to fix the problem properly. They didn't just slap a band-aid on it and hope for the best. They prioritized reliability over speed.
And that ViaSat-3 F2 satellite? It's designed to provide over 1 terabit per second of capacity over the Americas. One satellite, launched with precision, versus dozens of smaller satellites launched in rapid succession. It’s the difference between a targeted strike and carpet bombing. Which approach is more effective? It depends on the objective, of course. But if the objective is to provide reliable, high-bandwidth internet access, I'm not convinced that sheer volume is the answer. What are the long-term maintenance costs for a constellation of thousands of small satellites compared to a handful of larger, more robust ones?
The Real Metric: Bits per Dollar
The space race isn't about who can launch the most rockets. It's about who can deliver the most bandwidth at the lowest cost. It's about bits per dollar, not launches per year. And right now, I'm not seeing enough data to convince me that SpaceX's strategy is the most efficient or sustainable one. The launches are impressive, the landings are cool, but the underlying economics need closer scrutiny.
