The most recent launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket showed that the company is making serious progress in getting the vehicle ready for prime time. SpaceX COO, Gwynne Shotwell, believes that Falcon and Dragon’s days are numbered, as soon as 2030.
Speaking at the Baron Investment Conference in New York, Shotwell discussed her beliefs about the future of Starship flights. “We want to fly it a lot,” she said now that the FAA has recently given the green light for Starship flights to increase up to 25 a year.
“We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years.” NASA is expecting at least bi-weekly launches to begin sometime in 2025 as flight cadences start to pick up.
We saw the fastest turnaround yet between Flight 5 and Flight 6. However, with Flight 7, we will likely not see that until January due to extra testing on the new Starship block and the need for a new FAA launch license. If the recovery of both the Starship booster and ship can be successful enough for reuse, reaching 25 launches could be a possibility.
A potential roadblock could be environmental concerns; however, SpaceX has a new ally in the government in the form of President Trump, who received millions in donations from Elon Musk’s political action committee during the campaign. It is likely that President Trump will make sure that SpaceX doesn’t run into any hurdles within the FAA or EPA for increased launch limits.
“Starship obsoletes Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule,” Shotwell said. “Now, we are not shutting down Dragon, and we are not shutting down Falcon. We’ll be flying that for six to eight more years, but ultimately, people are going to want to fly on Starship.”
The first likely mission to be removed from the Falcon 9 will be Starlink missions. This takes up the vast majority of missions for SpaceX and is the only reason why you see such high launch rates from the company. Without Starlink missions, we’d be many more years, if not decades, away from seeing a triple-digit launch year like 2024.
Starship’s fully reusable nature means that it will be highly cost-competitive for anyone out there. Even with its size, it would likely be cheaper than any heavy or medium-lift rocket on the planet. What this means for its competition is unknown and could make it even harder for a real competitor to materialize.
Shotwell believes that it will be more appealing for commercial launches to use Starship once launch rates match those of the Falcon 9. If proven to be reliable, the lower cost will only push more customers in their direction.
