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In February 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time.
This was an incredible launch which showed the world exactly what SpaceX was capable of.
But just a few weeks later, another SpaceX launch took off with much less publicity.
This was the launch of satellites Tintin A and B, SpaceX's very first Starlink satellites.
With plans to create an enormous constellation of internet satellites, SpaceX started producing
and launching Starlink satellites at a ridiculous rate. By the end of 2020, they already had around
1,000 starlink satellites in orbit. But this incredible launch cadence didn’t last forever.
After launching satellites on an almost weekly basis at the start of 2021,
SpaceX suddenly went silent after June. In this video, we’re going to look at why SpaceX decided
to put their Starlink launches on hold. We’re also going to look at why their commercial satellite
launches have decreased and what the future of SpaceX’s launch schedule might look like.
Before Starlink came around, SpaceX made most of its revenue from launching other
people’s satellites and sending cargo to the international space station. When they started
launching Starlink, it gave the Falcon 9 much more work to do. But since SpaceX was its own customer,
it was losing an enormous amount of money on these launches. Now that Starlink is operational,
SpaceX is pulling in some revenue. But since its coverage is still relatively small,
Starlink is far from being profitable. The cost to manufacture each Starlink user kit alone
is around double the price that they sell them for. So Starlink still has many improvements to
make before it’s successful. One of the most crucial parts of the Starlink constellation
is having satellites that are able to communicate with each other.
Initially, Starlink satellites could only communicate with ground stations.
Meaning that data traveling extremely far distances around the globe
had to take a much longer and slower path. In order to send data quickly around the Earth,
it makes more sense to send the data from one satellite to another. And so,
SpaceX designed Starlink to eventually have lasers that can beam enormous amounts of
data to nearby satellites, creating a chain of data that could reach any part of the globe.
The reason this is so game changing is because the speed of light in space is considerably
faster than the fiber optic cables beneath the sea, where most of our internet travels.
Nevertheless, these new and improved laser satellites weren’t quite ready.
But SpaceX didn’t want to keep producing and launching the old satellites,
which would soon be obsolete. SpaceX manufactures all of its Starlink
satellites in a factory in Washington, where around 120 satellites can be made each month.
But at the start of summer, SpaceX most likely shut down its production line and
redesigned the manufacturing process to support the new and improved satellites.
The final dedicated Starlink launch lifted off in May with an extra 3 Starlink sats
being launched during a rideshare mission in June. SpaceX then went almost 2 entire months
without launching a single rocket. But it’s not just Starlink launches that took a hit in 2021.
In general, SpaceX’s commercial satellite business has seen a decrease in launches since 2018. This
is largely down to the satellite industry as a whole. In recent years, satellites have gone from
being enormous and bulky to being much smaller and capable machines. If you’ve got a small satellite,
it’s not worth buying an entire Falcon 9 launch if you will only use a fraction of the space and
payload capacity. So, small satellites typically launch on smaller rockets like Rocketlab’s
Electron - or they group together with many other satellites and share the ride into space.
But it wasn’t until mid September that Starlink launches resumed - this time with the new and
improved laser satellites. But as SpaceX continues to develop Starlink, the future of their launches
will look very different. In the near future, SpaceX will start launching Starlink version 2.
These will be larger satellites, so in order to launch many at the same time, it’s crucial that
SpaceX has Starship up and running, or else Starlink could fail to become profitable.
Right now, the success of Starlink and Starship is far from guaranteed,
only time will tell. Either way, it’s incredible to see these amazing projects come together
right in front of our eyes. In order for this amazing future to become a reality,
SpaceX has to build a team of the world's best engineers and technicians.
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