Could Elon Musk Lose the Satellite Market -- and Win the Solar System?
Previewing the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, The Wall Street Journal seemed perplexed. Yes, the Falcon Heavy is big, admitted the Journal. But as a "heavy-lift booster," it said, it is a product designed to serve a market that's suffering "significantly eroded commercial demand" and "uncertain commercial prospects."
From article, (When SpaceX launched the world's biggest rocket ship on Feb. 6, that kind of seemed like a big deal -- but not everyone is impressed.
Previewing the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, The Wall Street Journal seemed perplexed. Yes, the Falcon Heavy is big, admitted the Journal. But as a "heavy-lift booster," it said, it is a product designed to serve a market that's suffering "significantly eroded commercial demand" and "uncertain commercial prospects."
The problem, as the Journal (correctly) pointed out, is that thanks to advances in rocketry, electronics, and materials technology, "both national security and corporate satellites continue to get smaller and lighter" (and cheaper).
Falcon Heavy is big, but it's not quite big enough to land astronauts on Mars -- and that's what Elon Musk really wants to do.
That's good news for small rocket-launching start-ups like Vector Launch, Virgin Orbit, and Rocket Lab (which recently launched its first satellite into orbit). They hope to capitalize on burgeoning demand for cheap, on-demand access to orbit. But as the market for satellite launch moves toward satellites whose mass in measured in kilograms, not tons, it appears to make SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launcher -- which aims to put 70 tons of cargo in low Earth orbit in one go -- a solution in search of a problem.
Citing SpaceX's own launch manifest, the Journal points out that the company has only four contracts signed that call for the heavy lifting capabilities of the Falcon Heavy. That's versus dozens of launches slated to fly aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9. SpaceX's ultra-low prices for space launch have made its Falcon 9 incredibly popular among commercial satellite launchers. But there just doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for an even bigger launcher like the Falcon Heavy.
Either way,you want to build the biggest rocket ship possible. And that's why, after building and flying the Falcon Heavy earlier this month, Musk mused that what is now the world's biggest rocket ship was actually still "a bit small " for his purposes.
To make his Mars dreams a reality, Musk believes he will need an even larger rocket ship, the vessel he now calls the BFR. At almost 350 feet tall and weighing 4,400 tons, the BFR will probably comprise two main parts: a 190-foot-tall, 3,200-ton first-stage booster section; and a 157-foot-tall, 30 feet in diameter, 1,200-ton spaceship on top of it. That's big enough to cram in some really sizable spaceship parts for assembly in orbit. Alternatively, the BFR would be big enough to transport a team of colonists all the way to Mars in relative comfort, all on its own.
Musk wants the to be big enough that it can tackle just about every big mission you can throw at it -- sending astronauts to the Moon or Mars, gigantic-spaceship-construction in orbit, fueling those gigantic spacecraft, and even transporting cargo (and people) around between continents on Earth.
The BFR could, by the way, also carry supermassive satellites into Earth orbit -- just like the Falcon Heavy, but more so -- if predictions of the market shifting to all small satellites, all the time, don't pan out. But if they do, that should be fine with Elon Musk. Other companies can handle the small stuff, while he focuses on the big problem of designing really big rocket ships for interplanetary spaceflight.)
Me, "While not stated in this article, with smaller and lower weight satellites you can launch more satellites, at one time, on one rocket. Some people would make the criticism that not all satellites go to the same locations above Earth. Well, you can add a mini upper stage to each Satellite that can move it into the proper orbit. This is not unheard of. Satellites have been moved to other orbits with their own thrusters."
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