SpaceX Orbits 53 Starlink Satellites, Ties Annual Launch Record
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, Fla., July 17, 2022 — On Sunday, July 17 at 10:20 a.m. ET, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
It was SpaceX’s 31st successful launch of 2022, which ties a company record set last year. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the company is aiming to launch 60 times this year.
Jonathan’s Space Pages reports that 2,858 Starlink satellites have been launched, with 2,604 spacecraft still in orbit and 2,074 in the licensed operational shells.
This was the 13th flight for the Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Dragon’s first crew demonstration mission, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, SXM-7, and now 10 Starlink missions.
48 responses to “SpaceX Orbits 53 Starlink Satellites, Ties Annual Launch Record”
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Remarkable launch cadence. Reusability has turned the industry upside-down. Still waiting for ANY other launch provider to pull it off.
remarkable launch cadence…sadly they are making no money with reusability
You have not the slightest excuse to pretend that. You are trolling.
sadly no. if you have made any money in the free enterprise system by developing a product (which you have not) you would know the signs of not making money
I would be surprised if he is breaking even on reusability sadly . it is pretty clear he is not making money 🙁
Right, I guess according to you – someone who have made money in the free enterprise system by developing a product (wasn’t you a pilot?) – Elon Musk – currently the richest man on Earth – didn’t make any money…
I never said what you are claiming. period
he has made money but mostly through stock speculation on his companies. I suspect in terms of his wealth there is very little real money there…now that is all “relative” but one of the reasons he ran out at twitter is well they wanted real money and he doesnt have it
I dont have his money but I dont have his baggage of endless kids everywhere failed relationships and the like…and I have turned a farm that was not making much money (about 10K or so) when I got it into a 1 million plus money maker for me
if he was making real money on reusability he would be having more customers. he isnt and he is cutting corners in Starship. I feel comfortable with what I actually said
what I SAID not what you wrote 🙂
Musk’s current companies have appreciated in value hugely over a period of two decades, as did his previous start-ups before them. That is not a product of “speculation,” it’s a product of actual wealth creation.
There has certainly been speculation in Tesla stock – it may well be the most-shorted stock in history. The people who thought Tesla would blow away and they would make billions are easily identifiable. Just go down to Wall Street. They’re the guys dressed in empty barrels holding signs that read “Will work for food.”
If stock shares aren’t “real money,” what is? There are certainly myriad 401K owners who would like to know. Also pretty much everyone on the Forbes Billionaires List. Or do you have a Scrooge McDuck Money Bin definition of “real money?”
Musk obviously has the wherewithal to buy Twitter, but he has legitimate questions about the basis for the initial price. There’s a negotiation dance going on. It isn’t over.
Last year, SpaceX flew 31 times with 14 of those being revenue missions. This year, SpaceX has also flown 31 times with 13 of those being revenue missions. And it’s only July. Four of the seven missions planned for August launch will be revenue missions and there are many others queued up through the end of this year. There would be even more revenue launches this year, but NASA and DoD seem to have a lot of payload problems.
How many customers do you think SpaceX should have – beyond what it already has? With double the number of missions this year vs. last year and no new capex to support Falcon mission ops, the fixed overhead of a Falcon 9 launch is now half what it was last year. That alone should guarantee a profit relative to last year even if 2021 was break-even – which it wasn’t.
What corners is Musk allegedly cutting on Starship? There has been an increase, not a diminution, in total visible build-out of Starship facilities this year, compared to last, and Starship vehicle construction proceeds unabated. If B7 must be scrapped, B8 is right across the Mega Bay and is nearly complete so Musk certainly can’t be accused of stinting on spares.
That you are comfortable with your delusions is unsurprising. Alleviation of discomfort is why most delusions are created.
if Musk were making money with Falcon he would be significantly expanding the base and volume of revenue flights. its not expanding that much. as you illustrate by small percentages. this means that he cannot lower the price at all to attract more buyers…and in the process put ULA out of business
stock market today is total speculation. it has nothing to do at all with actual value. and its clear that is my definition of real money.
as for Starship. the explosion is a cutting corners example. there are more
The problem with reusability has always been the lack of third party customers given how expensive it is for Legacy Space Firms to build payloads which is why SpaceX has developed a direct consumer based revenue stream with its Starlink system. It’s a beautiful business model that breaks out of the myopic business models of firms like ULA.
Also you of all folks should know that neither the DoD or NASA will allow ULA to be put out of business since they want redundancy in the launch industry. So even if SpaceX was launching for free they would still be giving launches to ULA to keep them going, so why should SpaceX leave money on the table by charging lower rates?
but isnt that the key? SpaceX is launching in total for about the same cost as ULA? the total cost are not that different. so its hard for me to see the advantage
I doubt there is any revenue from Starlink
You are confusing cost and price. It makes perfect sense for SpaceX to price just below ULA if the market is inelastic in that range of the demand curve. The question is what is the profit margin for SpaceX relative to ULA and the answer is based on information you legally have no access to, the actual cost of SpaceX for providing that launch versus the actual cost for ULA.
no
the government does have access to that number(s) and those figures. and the way government contracts is that it will not allow excess profit from one contractor to another. meaning my flight training company (now my wifes) cannot charge Agency X a figure that allows us to make twice the profit FlightSafety does for instance you dont know much about government contracting
sorry
The government has nothing to say about how much a contractor makes unless there is a cost-plus contract involved. SpaceX doesn’t do cost-plus. For most things, the government is mainly concerned that it is not being charged more than commercial customers for the same service.
Sorry, but you are just confusing cost plus with fix price. SpaceX was the low bidder on a fixed price contract which is why they get the launch. And if SpaceX wanted to show the cost was that high all they have to go is follow the practices of for cost plus contracts by Legacy Space.
nope for so many reasons I am quite certain I understand federal contracting rule better than anyone on this page 🙂 and for what I dont know I have a lawyer. the federal government is well aware of what SpaceX (or any contractor) is making or not making in profit. you have no idea what you are talking about
Given that the SpaceX-to-ULA launch cadence disparity is now about 10:1, no, SpaceX and ULA are not launching at anything remotely resembling the same cost. Even without considering reusability, SpaceX can spread its fixed costs over a full order of magnitude more annual launches than ULA.
There is plenty of revenue from Starlink – at least $55 million per month and rising rapidly. What there isn’t yet is profit. But that will come.
If I used revenue in place of profit I was careless and regret the error. for something that size with that ops cost thats not a lot of money…but lets see how it works out
to your first point you cannot spread fixed cost across something that is not paying for them 🙂
You can if your fixed costs are roughly comparable to the other guy’s but you’re getting paid for a lot more launches per year than he is. ULA has done four launches so far this year. SpaceX has done 13 launches that weren’t Starlinks. So the ratio of paid launches over which fixed costs can be spread is more than 3:1. I don’t see that ratio improving during the remainder of this year. And I’m being generous here and assuming Decatur to be roughly comparable to Hawthorne. I’m probably being over-generous to ULA in assuming its four remaining pads at Canaveral and Vandy are roughly equivalent to SpaceX’s three.
I bet his fixed cost are high with all the “navy”
anyway off to celebrat the lunar landing by doing a little flight testing myself. Fly safe
The fixed costs of the SpaceX “Navy” are the same whether it is servicing a lot of launches or few.
no.
the more you run the boats the more expensive they areand those boats are very expensive to run very
The problem with reusability has always been the lack of third party customers”
the problem with reusability is that there are few things done in space by machines and none by humans that make money. and thats what drives increases in traffic
Even leaving the things done by humans aside, there are certainly enough things being done in space by machines that make money to have driven a large increase in traffic. SpaceX may be leading the way and be the major beneficiary of this trend, but said trend is worldwide. Check the numbers.
Lots of cope here.
The number of revenue flights for 2022 is shaping up to be roughly double that of last year. I wouldn’t call a roughly 100% increase a “small percentage.” This is incontrovertible evidence that SpaceX’s existing launch prices have been enough of a cut over erstwhile price levels to stimulate significantly more launch demand – after an initial lag.
There’s also the not-so-small matter that SpaceX, even with recent price increases, is still the low-cost launch provider. We won’t see any launch price cutting until some other outfit actually posts a ride price lower than SpaceX’s current Falcon rate card. By the mid-2020s, that could well happen.
I agree that the stock market these days is much less the amalgamation of human wisdom it once was. But no amount of “speculation” or even outright market chicanery is capable of keeping a zircon pretending to be a diamond aloft for years on end even in an age of program trading, sub-millisecond arbitrage and hedge funds.
Is it your notion that “corner cutting” is only indicated if something goes BOOM? Do accident or miscalculation play no role? Yet you defended the two BOOMs by the 737 MAX even though subsequent investigation clearly proved there was corner-cutting involved there.
Actually external customers would be a better term than revenue flights, as the Starlink launches are generating revenue for SpaceX through the expansion of the Starlink system. When there are sufficient satellites in the new polar shell it will allow the Internet to be delivered anywhere on the surface of the Earth. The recent approval they have received to provide mobile service also opens up the maritime and airline markets for it.
Actually external customers would be a better term than revenue flights, as the Starlink launches are generating revenue for SpaceX through the expansion of the Starlink system.”
an interesting thought but since Starlink is not making a profit either a futile one
Most businesses that require a lot of up-front capex don’t make money right away.
For Starlink missions, SpaceX indeed receives revenues from the payloads, once deployed, but not from the launches.
The launches are a source of internal launch revenue if SpaceX is following standard cost accounting practices, with the Starlink unit “paying” the Falcon 9 unit some set sum for the launch. Good firms have a good managerial accounting system.
Fair enough. Left pocket vs. right pocket.
“if he was making real money on reusability he would be having more customers.”: He does have more customers, SpaceX has beaten ULA on every NASA launch competition since late 2019, ULA hasn’t won a single NASA launch contract since then.
But there’s no way SpaceX can monopolize the entire launch market, since customers want to avoid a monopoly and intentionally spread launch contracts to multiple providers, USAF being the most obvious where they have a hard requirement to maintain two providers. These policies from customers means there’re inherit limit to the percentage of launch market SpaceX can grab, which is exactly why Starlink is so important, it sidesteps satellite owners’ anti-competitive behavior by allowing SpaceX to become a satellite owner itself.
The theory is that Musk’s valuations are based on investments into his enterprises and the effect of that on his stock ownership, and the theoretical money he could make if he were to instantly try to sell it all, and assuming there were buyers willing to buy at that price. There’s no way he has 200 billion on hand as a result of money flowing into his enterprises as a result of selling product. That’s the point people are making when they make this claim.
Then that is what they should say. RGO is claiming that reusability is not superior to expendability where F9 and FH are concerned. That is pretty obviously nonsense. In the grand scheme of RGO’s personal delusions I’d have to rank that belief roughly equal to his notion that Joe Biden is doing a good job in the White House.
Joe biden is doing a fine job in TWH. not as aggressive confronting the evil of trump land but I give him a lot of credit
as for “claiming that reusability is not superior to expendability where F9 and FH are concerned. “
I’ve never said that hence I do not comment on other peoples statements of what I “said” other than to correct them
And I am Marie of Romania. The evil isn’t in “Trump Land,” it’s in Woke Land. I give him a lot of “credit” too – for inflation, recession, open borders, bungling Afghanistan, reversing American energy independence and doing his best to repeal the Constitution.
thats about right. If Musk were to try and convert his stock to hard cash verry quickly his sell off would drive his net value down 🙂
According to Forbes, Musk is worth about as much now as when he first made the Twitter offer. So, if selling stock was part of what he did to raise a war chest, it doesn’t seem to have dinged his net worth.
Well yeah, but investors are only going to invest in Musk’s companies if they think they can get a profit, the fact that he got a lot of eager investors means people believe he’s making a lot of money or will be making a lot of money, which contradicts RGO’s claims.
you can guess whatever you want to guess…but as Spock told Scotty (I think) once “my Guess would be valueless” and so is yours
you will do far better if yo u confine yourself to what I actually said
Yes I am a pilot, but my wife and I have a rather diverse portfolio…and now even the ATT tower I bought for my ham radio station is making money hands over first
I have young kids and expensive hobbies
Congratulations! Wonderful launch!
Look at all that used hardware. Beautiful! I like ’em dirty and used.
Like steam locomotives of a century ago, wearing their soot proudly.
Yep, and exceeding the 10 “reuse before rebuilt” their business model was supposedly based on.
I’d love to see a breakdown of exactly what on a first stage is reused without being replaced or repaired between flights. Structure, tanks, avionics, piping certainly. However, I would be willing to bet that a lot of the decrease in turnaround time comes not from reuse as much as learning how and developing procedures to quickly swap out engines and turbopumps. Why? I can think of no other reason that turnarounds still take at least 20 days. Most much longer. However, I doubt we’ll ever know until (or if) someone on the inside finally writes a book about it.
Yes, those are indeed the big questions and it will likely only emerge when SpaceX reveals the numbers.
Perhaps Eric Berger or Tim Dodd will get the chance to write such a book someday.
One that doesn’t include the early years—that one’s been done.