Mass Value Report for August 2025

Milestones in re-usability

August has seen the 10th test flight of Starship, and it has been a complete success. This has come after a string of failures in the program, which hopefully now have been left behind.

Starship is not the only reusable, or potentially reusable, rocket flying. Blue Origin is soon to attempt its second test flight of New Glenn rocket. I’ll be discussing the progress and future of those programs, but before that I will update my model of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy - and highlight two important milestones this month

Falcon Flights

The Falcon rockets had a good month, with 14 launches - compared to 12 last August. Here is the overall model:

The prediction is now for 172 flights this year, with a range from 163 and 181. This is pretty stable at this point month-to-month. This would represent a 28% increase on the last year - smaller than the 40% increase from 2023 to 2024. The slowdown that began with the anomalies of mid-2024 seems to be a long term trend. This is to be expected, as there are no natural permanent exponentials, only S curves with flatten out. At a certain point Falcon cadence will max out, and at which point hopefully Starship and other vehicles will be ready to pick up the baton and maintain growth.

Outside of raw numbers, there continues to be significant progress in other aspects.