Mass Value Report for September 2024

Where do current trends, and plans and statements by leading players in the industry, point towards in the next few years?

As I was preparing this report, Falcon 9 suffered another second stage anomaly. Once it had launched the Crew 9 mission - which was flying with two crew instead of 4 in order to recover the two astronauts left behind by the Starliner test flight - the deorbit burn of the second stage failed somehow causing the stage to reenter in the wrong place. All falcon flights have been stood down until the cause is known. The last time this happened the delay was not too long, so there is no reason for concern just yet. But it does underline that despite its revolutionary nature, Falcon has its limits and SpaceX may encounter them soon.

To look beyond Falcon, I want to push my usual projections further into the future. New information about New Glenn and Starship has been published, which can inform a model that goes through to 2026 at least. What is of interest to me is if the pace of exponential increase of mass to orbit, set by Falcon 9, historical 43% a year, is going to be maintained once that vehicle reaches its maximum flight rate. Is this growth rate a one time surge, or is the pace going to solidify into an empirical law of the industry?

Forward looking statements from companies are always prone to error - and Elon Musk is in particular known for offering very aggressive timetables. For the purposes of this analysis, I’m going to consider both companies falling short of their objectives. You can’t help here as well - for SpaceX and Blue Origin, estimate what fraction of their goal they will achieve, between 0 and 1. Note down or remember those numbers and don’t change them. I will revisit them at the end of the article.

First, let’s look at the current pace setter for launch, the Falcon 9, and how its year is looking after suffering two upper stage failures and a landing failure.

Recovering From Anomalies

Last month I modeled the cumulative rate of Falcon 9 flights against scaled flight rates for the past two years, by 57% per year. These two years of increase have been anomalously fast - and for a while it looked as if this new higher pace might continue in 2024.

For the light blue area projecting future flights I used the average flight rate after the first return to flight, which is 7 flights every 21 days. I now project there being 126 flights this year, compared to the projection of 137 last month. This comes from the average rate since the anomaly dropping.

I’ve marked down the Crew 9 anomaly here, but not added in any delay from it yet, as it’s too early to see what impact it will have. It is likely to remove a few flights from the 2024 total but in the calculations I do below this doesn’t turn out to make much of a difference.

What it is looking like is that the Falcon program is approaching a limit. SpaceX have said to NASA they expect 200 flights next year, which would seem unlikely if the growth rate is tailing off - perhaps they could get there in 2026 though. This starts to gives us a picture of the end of the S-curve for this vehicle.

Now its time to see how new vehicles impact this picture.

The Tortoise Arrives

Blue Origin announced New Glenn in 2016, and expected the first flight in 2020. After a significant delay, it is finally heading to the pad. As of writing the launch infrastructure seems ready, the flight hardware for the first flight is built and the second stage has undergone static fire. After having missed an October window to launch the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, the maiden flight is scheduled for November.

As reported by Space News’ Jeff Foust, Blue Origin expects to move quickly in expanding their launches