Mass Value Report for March 2025

Is there any competition for SpaceX on the horizon?

This month probably the most significant news was the Starship program suffering another setback. Flight 8 was delayed from March 3rd to the 6th, and its flight unfortunately ended in the same way as that of Flight 7, so Block 2 of Starship has yet to complete a second stage burn. Despite the two anomalies in a row, SpaceX is pressing on and its preparing for Flight 9 in April. The company had a stated target of 25 launches this year, which always seemed aspirational, and I predicted based on the successes of Flights 5 and 6 that they would have 12 flights in 2025.

The linear trend still points to around 9 flights this year, and so my prediction could be accurate if there is an acceleration in the second half of this year. Progress on the second launch tower, which has recently been undergoing tests of its catch arms, suggests it may be ready this year, and if the rest of the booster and ship pipeline can support it this could potentially double the flight rate.

Musk has mentioned that the propellant transfer demo is now in 2026, not this year, likely as a result of the issues with Block 2 Starship. It is now 565 days until the opening of the Mars transfer window, and if it is not made then there is a 26 month delay to the Mars effort. I imagine that SpaceX are very conscious of this fact right now.

But SpaceX have been here before; there were a string of failed booster landings before they got it right, and the first successful one was the return to flight after an anomaly. The pessimists only ever get to be right in the short term.

Meanwhile, Falcon rockets continue to be the main way humanity puts stuff into space...

Falcon Cadence

With only 11 flights in March, SpaceX is slowing down this year. The primary culprit is a 9 day stand down after booster B1086 caught fire and was destroyed shortly after landing on the barge Just Read The Instructions on March 3rd.

This drags the expected flights this year to 160, from 174 last month, but with larger error bars reflecting how off trend March has been. I consider the February prediction more credible still, but from next month I’ll be using the same method I applied to last years anomalies to try and get a more accurate prediction including it.

For the time being, lets assume a simple reversion to the long term monthly growth trend from April onward:

Adding up the flights for 2025 this gives a prediction of 188 flights in total. Maybe this is too rosy, but I did estimate 185 flights for this year in my last Mass Value Report of 2024.

The Up and Comers

This isn’t, technically, a SpaceX newsletter. But with their utter domination of the launch industry it is hard to talk about the transformation in the space industry without heavily focusing on them.

But there are other companies who want to be similarly as transformative. Two of them I’d like to look at are Blue Origin and Rocket Lab.

If we look at the first few years of Electron versus the first few years of Falcon 9, then just counting the number of flights, they appear to follow a similar growth trajectory.