{"id":91403,"date":"2026-10-28T19:43:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T11:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-launch-crunch-is-coming-as-falcon-9-winds-down\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T19:43:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T11:43:51","slug":"the-launch-crunch-is-coming-as-falcon-9-winds-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-launch-crunch-is-coming-as-falcon-9-winds-down\/","title":{"rendered":"The Launch Crunch Is Coming as Falcon 9 Winds Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Four
Promus Ventures\u2019 Mike Collett (right) and fellow panelists on \u201cAfter SPCX: The Public Market\u2019s Verdict on Space\u201d at Silicon Valley Space Week on Oct. 27. Photo: SatNews<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Launch got cheap. Now it\u2019s getting tight.<\/p>\n

Speaker after speaker at the opening of Silicon Valley Space Week\u2019s Satellite Innovation track on Tuesday landed on the same warning. As SpaceX winds down Falcon 9 and bets its launch business on Starship, the rest of the industry should plan for less capacity and higher prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it very difficult to imagine that launch costs will not be higher in a year,\u201d said Mike Collett, managing partner at Promus Ventures, on the panel \u201cAfter SPCX: The Public Market\u2019s Verdict on Space,\u201d moderated by Hogan Lovells partner Alexis S\u00e1inz. The Falcon sunset, he said, \u201chas tremendous ramifications on the entire space startup industry, which I still don\u2019t think understands the weight of what that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Promus has invested in Rocket Lab, one of the few other providers positioned to pick up demand.<\/p>\n

Wall Street sees it too<\/h2>\n

Ron Epstein, a managing director at Bank of America Securities who covers aerospace and defense, made the same point in the morning keynote. \u201cLaunch prices went down, but now launch prices are starting to go back up because there\u2019s a scarcity in launch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Epstein said BofA\u2019s bull case for SpaceX already assumes Falcon 9 goes away, which pushes customers onto Starship. How much Starship capacity will be available to the rest of the industry, he said, is \u201can open question.\u201d He also said that, by his understanding, Falcon 9 rideshare is sold out almost to the end of the decade.<\/p>\n

BofA was one of the lead banks on SpaceX\u2019s initial public offering, and Epstein covers SpaceX with a Buy rating.<\/p>\n

What the record shows<\/h2>\n

The wind-down is no secret. On July 20, SatNews reported that SpaceX had stopped taking commercial rideshare bookings past 2028. Four days later, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was not taking future Falcon 9 rideshare reservations and had begun turning away some dedicated launch orders for after 2028. In August, Elon Musk said Falcon would be winding down once Starship is flying reliably several times a week. And on Sept. 28, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said SpaceX intends to \u201csunset\u201d Falcon and Dragon as it concentrates on Starship.<\/p>\n

Falcon 9 is still flying. In March, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told TIME the company expected roughly 140 to 145 Falcon launches this year, down from 165 in 2025. The question for everyone else is what happens to their manifests between Falcon\u2019s last open slots and Starship\u2019s first commercial ones.<\/p>\n

The orbital data center problem<\/h2>\n

The squeeze hits hardest for companies betting on orbital data centers, which need launch to get far cheaper, not more expensive. On the afternoon\u2019s orbital data center panel, Cowboy Space COO Joseph Yaffe said ride-along availability is \u201cdwindling, if not gone, in the very short term.\u201d Cowboy unveiled its own rocket, Big Iron, the night before.<\/p>\n

In the technical brief before that panel, Dr. Paul Struhsaker, CEO of Arrasar Partners, put the dependency plainly: \u201cIf launch costs do not fall, then orbital data centers will not fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Room for another launcher<\/h2>\n

Several speakers saw an opening in the squeeze. Epstein said there is \u201cprobably a pretty good market out there for another player who can do launch successfully,\u201d naming Rocket Lab\u2019s Neutron among the vehicles to watch. Collett was more cautious about how fast new supply arrives, noting there aren\u2019t many launch companies and building one takes years and a lot of capital.<\/p>\n

Stoke Space is another contender. The Pentagon\u2019s Office of Strategic Capital this week conditionally committed a $150 million loan guarantee for a second Stoke launch pad in Florida. Devon Papandrew, Stoke\u2019s vice president of business development, spoke later Tuesday on the conference\u2019s launch panel, \u201cLaunch Isn\u2019t Settled: Scarcity, Queues, and the 2029 Gap.\u201d Stoke is a sponsor of Silicon Valley Space Week, which SatNews produces.<\/p>\n

The next marker is Starship itself. Epstein said he is eager to see whether SpaceX catches both stages on the next flight, which would be one more step toward the reusability the whole transition depends on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews Promus Ventures\u2019 Mike Collett (right) and fellow panelists on \u201cAfter SPCX: The Public Market\u2019s Verdict on Space\u201d at Silicon Valley Space Week on Oct. 27. Photo: SatNews Launch got cheap. Now it\u2019s getting tight. Speaker after speaker at the opening of Silicon Valley Space Week\u2019s Satellite Innovation track on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-91403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91403"}],"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=91403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}