{"id":53536,"date":"2023-04-27T22:42:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacexs-starlink-position-remains-protected-from-most-starship-delay-scenarios-analysts-say\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T22:42:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:42:24","slug":"spacexs-starlink-position-remains-protected-from-most-starship-delay-scenarios-analysts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacexs-starlink-position-remains-protected-from-most-starship-delay-scenarios-analysts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Position Remains Protected from Most Starship Delay Scenarios, Analysts Say"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

SpaceX<\/strong>\u2019s recent Starship test may have sparked a mishap investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and raised concerns over potential damage to the environment, but leading space and satellite industry analysts still think the company\u2019s powerful political and financial position will protect it through delays. <\/p>\n

Despite SpaceX founder Elon Musk\u2019s Thanksgiving \u201cdisaster\u201d email to employees last year warning of potential bankruptcy and the need to reach a flight cadence with Starship to deploy Starlink satellites \u2014 several analysts told Via Satellite that they are doubtful that any Starship delays \u2013 pending environmental review \u2014 could lead to real trouble for the Starlink constellation. <\/p>\n

Dallas Kasaboski, principal analyst for NSR, an Analysys Mason company, pointed out that even if Starlink is delayed in reaching full market takeup with its complete Gen 2 constellation due to the Starship timeline, it will still be ahead of competitors OneWeb and Amazon. He cited SpaceX rolling out \u201cV2 Mini\u201d satellites to launch on Falcon 9 as a hedge against delays. <\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceX has the first generation that [exists] and has contracts and customers. Downstream, the Starlink brand is very strong. There are many use cases we\u2019ve seen where people who don\u2019t know about satellite internet are excited about Starlink,\u201d Kasaboski said. \u201cThere is some pressure, but there\u2019s a lot of momentum and they have a full constellation that they could leverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see a scenario where Starship is delayed by years,\u201d he adds. \u201cIf there was a case where the FAA really came down on them and said the environmental report is a disaster and there\u2019s some problem that SpaceX can\u2019t overcome and it delayed them by a year or two \u2014 then we could see problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, said Starlink is at a point where it could be self-sustaining without Starship launches, albeit with lower market expectations. \u201cIt\u2019s still not clear if Starlink will generate a return on the investment for SpaceX\u2019s investors, let alone justify the $150 billion valuation that the company has attracted. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea to assume that just because there might not be a great return on investment, this thing will go away,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

When SpaceX tested the complete Starship rocket last week for the first time, the rocket cleared the launch pad and passed MaxQ, but fell out of the sky before exploding mid-air. Since the test, photos and videos show the destroyed launch pad, which was built without a flame trench or diverter to handle the impact of the launch on the pad. <\/p>\n

In addition, reports from CNBC and Bloomberg show that particles fell out of the sky about 6 miles away from the launch site, well beyond the 1-mile radius SpaceX projected, and started a fire on state park land. <\/p>\n

The FAA has activated an anomaly response plan, the agency confirmed in a statement emailed to Via Satellite<\/i>. The mishap plan was referenced in SpaceX\u2019s environmental assessment before the launch with the FAA. <\/p>\n

Starship\u2019s return to flight is \u201cbased on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,\u201d the agency said, and it requires that SpaceX have ongoing monitoring of vegetation and wildlife by a qualified biologist. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have \u201cofficial observer status\u201d to the investigation.<\/p>\n

Farrar believes the FAA was under a lot of political pressure to allow the launch to move forward, as NASA is depending on Starship for the Artemis program, and the Department of Defense has shown interest in the rocket as well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the FAA, to some extent, takes things on trust if a company assures you everything is going to be okay.\u201d Farrar said. \u201cSometimes that has disastrous consequences, as we\u2019ve seen with Boeing and the 737. Companies are often under a lot of pressure to move quickly, and sometimes they cut corners and give assurances that are overly optimistic \u2014 if not underplaying the risks. That\u2019s clearly what happened in this case.\u201d <\/p>\n

The day after the launch, Billy Nolen, the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration withdrew his nomination to lead the agency, and said he will step down this summer. Farrar said it\u2019s \u201cdistressing\u201d that the agency faces a Starship review amid a leadership vacuum. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be harder to get answers about what considerations were made in the approval process \u2014 how they came to approve something that went so wrong, or miscalculated the impact,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope we\u2019ll hear more from the FAA, but I am concerned that the lack of leadership may make that more difficult.\u201d <\/p>\n

The analysts Via Satellite<\/i> spoke to for this story are largely confident that despite the FAA mishap investigation, SpaceX will move through the regulatory process and make the engineering progress needed to make Starship a reality \u2014 although the timeline for that is uncertain. However, all agree that the most pressing deadline \u2014 NASA\u2019s Artemis III mission in 2025 \u2014 will not be met. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe this is a major setback. At this time, we don\u2019t have enough information to really know what kind of delay this will bring,\u201d said Laura Seward Forczyk, founder and executive director of consulting firm Astralytical. \u201cBut I don\u2019t see anything within this launch that will be a major delay, like years. We already know that it takes longer than Elon Musk predicts to get the development of hardware, especially with new rockets on board.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX kept expectations low for the first launch, and no one really expected the first launch to be a complete success, commented Chris Daehnick, who leads McKinsey\u2019s aerospace and defense market analytics platform. Data from the test will help the company move faster, and he expects SpaceX to get back on the launch pad in \u201creasonably short order.\u201d <\/p>\n

Musk has tossed out a number of ambitious timelines for Starship that came and went, like an orbital flight in 2020, an uncrewed Mars mission by 2022, and the crewed dearMoon mission set for this year.<\/p>\n

Maxime Puteaux, principal advisor for Euroconsult, doesn\u2019t expect the Artemis III mission to take off before 2028 at the earliest. He expects SpaceX to build confidence in Starship by launching Starlink satellites, but cautions about the many technical hurdles Starship must clear before it will be able to launch the Artemis III mission. <\/p>\n

\u201cArtemis III is the most complex Starship mission profile. There are so many technical elements that need to be checked \u2014 the end goal of having astronauts with boots on the Moon isn\u2019t happening anytime soon,\u201d Puteaux said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to secure what I think is a very underestimated part \u2014 refueling cryogenic propellant in orbit, which is a massive complexity that hasn\u2019t been tested yet,\u201d he said. Puteaux also pointed to steep requirements to safely launch from Cape Canaveral and with its nearby national security infrastructure. \u201cConsidering the consequences of the launch failure last week, they will need to convince a lot of people that any launch of Starship from the Cape is safe. This is a major obstacle,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

Despite the hurdles to make Starship operational and satisfy NASA as a key customer \u2014 many analysts are also skeptical that the commercial space industry needs or can support a launch vehicle as big as Starship. Japanese satellite operator Sky Perfect JSAT is the only commercial satellite operator so far to have publicly announced a Starship launch contract. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe national security launch market is not designed today for a vehicle as massive as Starship,\u201d comments Carissa Christensen, founder and CEO of BryceTech. \u201cPayloads are designed to take advantage of available launchers. There\u2019s not been, to my knowledge, a major development program to transform payloads specifically to take advantage of Starship\u2019s capacity, either on the national security or on the commercial side.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the launch market is capacity constrained, Christensen said an operational Starship brings more capacity to market than the current industry can support. <\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk has talked about very high launch rates. With a vehicle of that capacity, that\u2019s more launch capacity than there\u2019s demand for today,\u201d she said. \u201cWho\u2019s going to take advantage of that? SpaceX is clearly banking on the fact that there will be users who can take advantage of that, whether that is commercial exploration, new kinds of satellite architectures, [or] human rated vehicles that go to Mars.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kasaboski believes that SpaceX\u2019s dominant position in the space industry \u2014 between commercial launch, human spaceflight for NASA, and government launch contracts \u2014 means the company can afford to fail publicly as part of this development program, and not risk government contracts or investor confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceX can afford to fail. In terms of their support from the U.S. government, they are almost critical as part of the deployment of satellites and other infrastructure,\u201d he said. \u201cGiven how bottlenecked launch is, and how competitive SpaceX is \u2014 most programs are tied to a very limited number of launch vehicles, and some of them are still in development. SpaceX can afford to take a very Silicon Valley bullish [approach]. They play by different rules.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s recent Starship test may have sparked a mishap investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and raised concerns over potential damage to the environment, but leading space and satellite industry analysts still think the company\u2019s powerful political and financial position will protect it through delays.  Despite SpaceX founder Elon Musk\u2019s Thanksgiving \u201cdisaster\u201d email to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}