If SpaceX gets lucky the BFR development costs could come in at the $2 billion low-end estimate. Elon Musk had estimated that it would cost $2 billion to 10 billion to develop. A few more critical successes over the next year will enable SpaceX to solidify the finances and funding for the BFR. The needed critical successes are the NASA crewed launch certification in mid-2019 and successful Falcon Heavy launches in 2019.
SpaceX has pre-sold a moon orbit tourist flight to a Japanese billionaire. This was likely for $500 to $800 million.
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy already has up to seven launches lined up. Commercial and government launch buyers are seeing the value in using the larger rocket to directly place satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Continued launch success in 2019 could bring the Falcon Heavy to five or six launches per year.
SpaceX should become certified for NASA crewed launches in mid-2019. SpaceX will make about $300 million for each of those launches.
The $2 billion lowball estimate for the BFR development must include
* completing the raptor engine
* building one full BFR rocket
* preparing the test launch site
* all sub-orbital testing
* preparing the launch site and landing sites
* a successful 18-24 month orbital testing program
If the SpaceX BFR succeeds on its first orbital like the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, then the cost of BFR development will be in the $2 billion to $2.5 billion range.
Costs would go up if there were challenges completing the final design and construction of the BFR or in the testing phases.
SpaceX is arranging a $500 million loan via Goldman Sachs. SpaceX could afford another $2 billion in loans with firm Falcon Heavy revenue and the NASA crewed launch revenue.
SpaceX Project Making Progress at Boca Chica Beach Site https://t.co/LP5JJU3TNI
— Michael Scott Iliopoulos (@krgv_mike) October 26, 2018
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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A military version of BFS to transport hundreds of marines need to be developed. Once military takes real interest the money will not be an issue.
BFR need to develop a military version of BFS to transport hundreds of marines. Once military takes real interest the money will not be an issue.
What I like about the BFS is that they can make three variants, a crew variant, fuel variant and cargo variant all based on the same ship design. Once they get those designs locked down they can start producing hundreds of these and lower the production cost dramatically by discontinuing the Falcon Heavy. It’s sort of sad because I really like the Falcon heavy. Haha but when the bfr takes flight the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 will be instantly obsolete and outmoded.
On one of the bullet points a complete bfr ~ does that mean money for the first stage and the ship including hop tests and suborbital testing?
The thing that’s missing from all of this is Starlink. SpaceX must launch half of the constellation by the end of 1Q2024. That’s ~1150 spacecraft and likely 189 F9 launches. Starlink makes BFR look like a small project in comparison. And, unlike BFR, it has a drop-dead date associated with it.(And no, BFR doesn’t magically make Starlink easy to launch. First of all, it won’t be ready until the last possible moment. And beyond that, it’s a terrible platform for deploying stuff into multiple orbital planes, because plane changes are insanely expensive. At the very best, it could chop the number of launches from 2 per plane with an F9 to 1 per plane with a BFR–which still means you have about 95 launches to perform.)
The US goverment should just funded it the falcon heavy already creating a market of its own, imagine what the BFR can do, it could maybe even make putting thousand of solar shade sattelite viable to reduce the impact of climate change
Rockets like that. One rocket could carry enough to put a ship on a near earth asteroid with a big crater on it. To start mining it. Terraforming it and using it as an interplanetary spaceship.
OK, there are two different things going on here:1) There’s the consideration of the second SpaceX license, for the VLEO, which is the PDF you pointed at above.2) There’s the notice of proposed rulemaking. This is DOC-354780A1.pdf.The rulemaking reforms DBS due diligence regulations, but it explicitly retains the six-year drop-dead rule.
OK, there are two different things going on here:
1) There’s the consideration of the second SpaceX license, for the VLEO, which is the PDF you pointed at above.
2) There’s the notice of proposed rulemaking. This is DOC-354780A1.pdf.
The rulemaking reforms DBS due diligence regulations, but it explicitly retains the six-year drop-dead rule.
It’s very dangerous using the cost/mass to LEO metric for LEO launches, because they’re often volume-limited, not mass-limited. For example, I can’t see a way to fit more than 100 Starlink birds into an Adelaide-vintage BFS. With dispensers, that would likely only be 55 tonnes.That’s why I’m more interested in cost/launch.
Just a quick update: I had an error in my model–I forgot to drop the payload mass for the sats deployed in the first orbital plane before burning for the next one. With that, you actually can do two planes (100 birds) in one BFR launch. It’s close, but it works.But there are some other problems:1) These computations are done on the Adelaide version. The DearMoon version doesn’t perform as well, but we don’t know the exact numbers. I’d guess that with the de-rated performance, there will be a problem.2) The other problem is that you can’t launch to 53 degrees from Boca Chica without overflying the US mainland. That’s likely a no-no. BFR would work from Florida, but AFAIK there are no plans to build a BFR pad at the Cape.
I did say the numbers were aspirational. And I like your US $50M figure for 150 metric tons — that comes down to US $334 per kg to LEO, a cost savings compared to a reusable FH at approximately US $1400 per kg to LEO. But your numbers are not to LEO — that is the price to soft land a kg of man-rated pressurized cargo on the surface of Mars. The price to LEO does not need the fuel contained in the tankers — so figure less than US $90 per kg to LEO.
This is from comments in recent weeks — not from Musk or Shotwell, but someone else high up in the management at SpaceX. They didn’t specify when the funding was offered or turned down, but mentioned that it had been. Sorry I do not have a source at hand.
It’s very dangerous using the cost/mass to LEO metric for LEO launches, because they’re often volume-limited, not mass-limited. For example, I can’t see a way to fit more than 100 Starlink birds into an Adelaide-vintage BFS. With dispensers, that would likely only be 55 tonnes.
That’s why I’m more interested in cost/launch.
Just a quick update: I had an error in my model–I forgot to drop the payload mass for the sats deployed in the first orbital plane before burning for the next one. With that, you actually can do two planes (100 birds) in one BFR launch. It’s close, but it works.
But there are some other problems:
1) These computations are done on the Adelaide version. The DearMoon version doesn’t perform as well, but we don’t know the exact numbers. I’d guess that with the de-rated performance, there will be a problem.
2) The other problem is that you can’t launch to 53 degrees from Boca Chica without overflying the US mainland. That’s likely a no-no. BFR would work from Florida, but AFAIK there are no plans to build a BFR pad at the Cape.
How hard is it to extend or renew the license though, especially if they can show concrete progress? Many common business licenses have to be renewed periodically anyway. That’s just part of standard business practice. It shouldn’t cost more than a fraction of the R&D and launch budgets.
How hard is it to extend or renew the license though, especially if they can show concrete progress? Many common business licenses have to be renewed periodically anyway. That’s just part of standard business practice. It shouldn’t cost more than a fraction of the R&D and launch budgets.
250K * 200 = $50M. If you’re doing a full-up 150 t of cargo + passengers (using Adelaide, not Dear Moon, numbers), you can do it with 4 launches: 1 payload + 3 tankers. So the breakeven cost would be $12.5M/launch.Beyond that, the biz case gets weird, because:1) You don’t know what the profit margin would be on the passengers. (They might be loss-leaders!)2) You don’t know what the profit margin would be on cargo.3) I’m pretty sure the $250K number is genuinely aspirational (i.e., it’s been derived by the time-honored process of Rectal Extraction).4) We have no idea how far in the future that aspiration was imagined. What we do know is that, if they’re going to be so foolish to use BFR to deploy Starlink, it’s going to be BFR v1.0, if not a beta version.
Where/when did Space X turn down government funding for BFR?
It is hard to know what the launch costs for BFR will be; at this point we really only have aspirational numbers. Those numbers are pretty spectacular, though… 200 passengers, each paying US $250k, for a passenger launch to Mars plus the associated four or five LEO-refueling launches. That leads to a very low cost per launch — much less than US $10M per.
They’ll obviously just pay for the launches at cost, whether they’re F9 or BFR launches.It seems unlikely that F9 launches cost SpaceX much more than $35M right now. And if block 5 proves out at 10 launches/core, that number will plummet. (I get ~$13M/launch in my model–which you should take with many, many grains of salt.)In contrast, we know what the hype is on BFR launch costs is (I’ve heard <$10M/launch), but note that that isn’t a lot less than the presumed block 5 launch cost, and also isn’t a proven number yet.If BFR could launch 500 birds at a time, it would have a decided cost advantage. But, per the analysis above, that seems unlikely. As usual, you wind up volume-limited well before you wind up mass-limited.
Things like this almost always hit volume restrictions before they hit mass restrictions.
Ah, interesting. But this is the application for the follow-on VLEO constellation, and doesn’t impact the original granted application for the 4425 birds in higher LEO, which were licensed in March, 2018.Also, note this:”25. Waiver of Milestone Requirement. SpaceX requests partial waiver of Section 25.164(b)of the Commission’s rules, which requires NGSO system licensees to launch the space stations, place them into the assigned orbits, and operate them in accordance with the station authorization within six years of grant of the license. SpaceX asks that we apply the six-year milestone only to its initial deployment of 1,600 satellites. SpaceX states that completing its full constellation of over 11,943 satellites over a six-year period would require an unprecedented launch cadence, which would be impractical, and that deployment of its full constellation is not necessary to allow it to commence delivery of broadband service. SpaceX argues that a limited waiver of Section 25.164(b) would not undermine thepurpose of the milestone requirements, as it would not result in, facilitate, or encourage spectrum warehousing. Several commenters argue that a waiver of this requirement would give SpaceX an unfair advantage as it would not require SpaceX to deploy its full constellation within the six-year period without further obligation to deploy the rest of its system.26. We agree with commenters that SpaceX has not provided sufficient grounds for a waiverof the Commission’s final implementation milestone requirement. We note that this issue was addressed in the NGSO FSS rulemaking, and this grant is subject to those rules. Under these new rules, SpaceX’s deployment of 1,600 satellites would not meet the new 6-year milestone requirement that now requires 50 percent of the total number of satellites in the constellation to be launched and operated no later than 6 years after grant of the authorization. Given that, we deny SpaceX’s waiver request. SpaceX can resubmit this request in the future, when it will have more information about the progress of the construction and launching of its satellites and will therefore be in a better position to assess the need and justification for a waiver.”Finally, note that this is not yet a done deal, although it looks like it will be.
I’m not so sure about that. If there’s a single way to mortally wound SpaceX, it would be to have them go all-in on the Starlink constellation and then lose their license. If I were the lobbyists for Boeing, Lockmart, AJR, and Northrup-Grumman, I’d be spending the next six years making the FCC commissioners my best buddies.SpaceX simply can’t afford to miss the 1Q2024 deadline. The political risk of doing so is huge.
The biggest difference may not be in terms of number of launches, but in the cost of those launches. SpaceX is paying for StarLink out of its’ own pocket; a cost reduction would be very helpful.
Probably two cargo versions — one for dropping unpressurized cargo in orbit, and another for delivering cargo to a surface. Or perhaps they will just develop one BFS which can take one of four (or more) variant modules — an openable cargo fairing, a sealed cargo pod, a tanker/refueling pod, and a passenger pod. A modular approach like this has some trade-offs which need to be taken seriously, but may be worth examining.
SpaceX has actively turned away government funding of BFR — it comes with too much red tape. Regarding solar shades — yes, it is a concept that could work well, but a company would need to find a way to make some money off of it, or it will not be sustainable. This is a great place for a government to step in with funding.
250K * 200 = $50M. If you’re doing a full-up 150 t of cargo + passengers (using Adelaide, not Dear Moon, numbers), you can do it with 4 launches: 1 payload + 3 tankers. So the breakeven cost would be $12.5M/launch.
Beyond that, the biz case gets weird, because:
1) You don’t know what the profit margin would be on the passengers. (They might be loss-leaders!)
2) You don’t know what the profit margin would be on cargo.
3) I’m pretty sure the $250K number is genuinely aspirational (i.e., it’s been derived by the time-honored process of Rectal Extraction).
4) We have no idea how far in the future that aspiration was imagined. What we do know is that, if they’re going to be so foolish to use BFR to deploy Starlink, it’s going to be BFR v1.0, if not a beta version.
Where/when did Space X turn down government funding for BFR?
They’ll obviously just pay for the launches at cost, whether they’re F9 or BFR launches.
It seems unlikely that F9 launches cost SpaceX much more than $35M right now. And if block 5 proves out at 10 launches/core, that number will plummet. (I get ~$13M/launch in my model–which you should take with many, many grains of salt.)
In contrast, we know what the hype is on BFR launch costs is (I’ve heard <$10M/launch), but note that that isn't a lot less than the presumed block 5 launch cost, and also isn't a proven number yet. If BFR could launch 500 birds at a time, it would have a decided cost advantage. But, per the analysis above, that seems unlikely. As usual, you wind up volume-limited well before you wind up mass-limited.
Things like this almost always hit volume restrictions before they hit mass restrictions.
Ah, interesting. But this is the application for the follow-on VLEO constellation, and doesn’t impact the original granted application for the 4425 birds in higher LEO, which were licensed in March, 2018.
Also, note this:
“25. Waiver of Milestone Requirement. SpaceX requests partial waiver of Section 25.164(b)
of the Commission’s rules, which requires NGSO system licensees to launch the space stations, place them into the assigned orbits, and operate them in accordance with the station authorization within six years of grant of the license. SpaceX asks that we apply the six-year milestone only to its initial deployment of 1,600 satellites. SpaceX states that completing its full constellation of over 11,943 satellites over a six-year period would require an unprecedented launch cadence, which would be impractical, and that deployment of its full constellation is not necessary to allow it to commence delivery of broadband service. SpaceX argues that a limited waiver of Section 25.164(b) would not undermine the
purpose of the milestone requirements, as it would not result in, facilitate, or encourage spectrum warehousing. Several commenters argue that a waiver of this requirement would give SpaceX an unfair advantage as it would not require SpaceX to deploy its full constellation within the six-year period without further obligation to deploy the rest of its system.
26. We agree with commenters that SpaceX has not provided sufficient grounds for a waiver
of the Commission’s final implementation milestone requirement. We note that this issue was addressed in the NGSO FSS rulemaking, and this grant is subject to those rules. Under these new rules, SpaceX’s deployment of 1,600 satellites would not meet the new 6-year milestone requirement that now requires 50 percent of the total number of satellites in the constellation to be launched and operated no later than 6 years after grant of the authorization. Given that, we deny SpaceX’s waiver request. SpaceX can resubmit this request in the future, when it will have more information about the progress of the construction and launching of its satellites and will therefore be in a better position to assess the need and justification for a waiver.”
Finally, note that this is not yet a done deal, although it looks like it will be.
I’m not so sure about that. If there’s a single way to mortally wound SpaceX, it would be to have them go all-in on the Starlink constellation and then lose their license. If I were the lobbyists for Boeing, Lockmart, AJR, and Northrup-Grumman, I’d be spending the next six years making the FCC commissioners my best buddies.
SpaceX simply can’t afford to miss the 1Q2024 deadline. The political risk of doing so is huge.
The biggest difference may not be in terms of number of launches, but in the cost of those launches. SpaceX is paying for StarLink out of its’ own pocket; a cost reduction would be very helpful.
Of course there’s no demand yet but there will be.
The US goverment should just funded it the falcon heavy already creating a market of its own, imagine what the BFR can do, it could maybe even make putting thousand of solar shade sattelite viable to reduce the impact of climate change
You do understand the is no real demand yet for that kind flight rate. A very high launch rate is required to drive the cost per launch down. If you had a time machine and went back to Europe in 1492 with a fleet of modern ships the demand for trips to the new world would still lag for centuries. Space tourism with trips around the Moon is going to be the quickest and easiest market to access for a high launch rate. 5 BFR’s flying once a month with 25 paying tourists at $10 million each is a $15 billion a year market. Flying a fleet of 5 BFR’s at once allows for easy rescue if there’s a problem on a single ship. There are more than enough ultra rich people in the world to be able to support this. I limited it to 25 customers per BFR for private rooms and a crew of 10-15. Eventually Imagine what you could charge to land on the moon? $25 million each for a week on the Moon for 50 people every month. Or you fly each BFR to Mars once every two years over 10 years that is only 5 flights.
Probably two cargo versions — one for dropping unpressurized cargo in orbit, and another for delivering cargo to a surface. Or perhaps they will just develop one BFS which can take one of four (or more) variant modules — an openable cargo fairing, a sealed cargo pod, a tanker/refueling pod, and a passenger pod. A modular approach like this has some trade-offs which need to be taken seriously, but may be worth examining.
SpaceX has actively turned away government funding of BFR — it comes with too much red tape. Regarding solar shades — yes, it is a concept that could work well, but a company would need to find a way to make some money off of it, or it will not be sustainable. This is a great place for a government to step in with funding.
Exactly the a rapid deployment system of 10 BFR’s that can place troops and equipment anywhere on Earth in under an hour is the ultimate quick strike weapon. The DoD can write a 10 billion dollar check tomorrow and no one at the Pentagon would notice.
Rockets like that. One rocket could carry enough to put a ship on a near earth asteroid with a big crater on it. To start mining it. Terraforming it and using it as an interplanetary spaceship.
I appreciate the work putting numbers to my ‘what if’ scenario, thanks for that.It is interesting, based on those numbers it will only roughly half’s the number of launches needed compared to F9.I would not though so at first blush, considering the large difference in size between BFR and F9.
Leaving aside the huge risk that BFR might not be ready before the license expires (which I believe rules it out as a viable strategy), let’s figure out How well you could do launching Starlinks with a BFR/BFS.The first Starlink inclination is 53 degrees, 1150 km altitude, and 32 planes of 50 birds each. That implies that the ascending nodes (the longitude where the plane crosses the equator) of each plane are 11.25 degrees apart. I’ll spare you the math, but that requires a delta-v of 1140 m/s for each plane change.Each Starlink sat is 386 kg, per the FCC application, which means that, fully fueled, they’re probably about half a toe each. The dimensions are a little weird, because they’re in a fully deployed configuration, but I’m guessing that they’re about 3 x 1.8 x 1.2 m when stowed, and roughly shaped like triangular or trapezoidal prisms (in other words, fairly close in size and shape to Iridium sats).The Adelaide version of the BFS looks like it has a cargo area of about 9 m x 12 m. If that’s the case, you could fit about 4 layers of 25 birds each, or 100 sats. (Note: The recent “Dear Moon” version has rear-facing cargo areas as well, so take this number with an extreme grain of salt. But it seems unlikely that you can do more than 100 a launch. I spent a little bit of time trying to fit things in, but it’s possible that someone who knew what they were doing could do better than this.) So that’s enough to fill out two planes.Payload mass should be (500 kg + SWAG 50 kg of dispenser mass per bird) * 100 = 55 toes.I have a hideous spreadsheet that does the delta-v accounting for the Adelaide BFS, along with 1 refill of a tanker version of the same vehicle. It shows that you can do a launch to the target orbit (I’m SWAGging about 9700 m/s of delta-v) and one 1140 m/s plane-change with one tanker refill pretty easily, but you can’t quite manage on a single launch. (Note that the Dear Moon version was de-rated by a third, but the budget is comfortable enough that it would probably be OK.)So: 2 launches, 100 birds = 50 birds/launch = 1 plane per launch. That’s consistent with what I guessed up above. So the BFR would require only 45 launches, instead of 89 F9 launches. But it’s not like you’re going to get the whole constellation up with only a handful of BFRs.
google: fcc DOC-354775A1.pdf
They changed that rule . Read the Oct 25 2018 FCC license update.
It’s an old FCC rule they’re already in the process of obsoleting/changing. Won’t be an issue.
Google “Starlink licence final date”TL;DR: The licence that lets them have exclusive use of that section of the radio frequencies says that “The US regulatory authority has set a six-year deadline to have an entire large constellation deployed to comply with licensing terms.”So if they aren’t up and ruing by then, the US government doesn’t let them just squat on a valuable band of frequencies.
A military version of BFS to transport hundreds of marines need to be developed. Once military takes real interest the money will not be an issue.
BFR need to develop a military version of BFS to transport hundreds of marines. Once military takes real interest the money will not be an issue.
Of course there’s no demand yet but there will be.
What I like about the BFS is that they can make three variants, a crew variant, fuel variant and cargo variant all based on the same ship design. Once they get those designs locked down they can start producing hundreds of these and lower the production cost dramatically by discontinuing the Falcon Heavy. It’s sort of sad because I really like the Falcon heavy. Haha but when the bfr takes flight the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 will be instantly obsolete and outmoded.
Not only is the fairing volume smaller but the second stage is not currently reusable and they don’t foresee it ever being reusable.
On one of the bullet points a complete bfr ~ does that mean money for the first stage and the ship including hop tests and suborbital testing?
Why does Starlink have a drop-dead date?
Yep, BFR != 3 Falcon HeavyBFR has a wholly different fairing size compared to F9 and FH, which have basically the same fairing size.A lot more launches are required with F9 and FH than BFR.
How about BFR + BFR tanker to refuel, then slowly go up to reach multiple orbital planes and deploy
I appreciate the work putting numbers to my ‘what if’ scenario, thanks for that.
It is interesting, based on those numbers it will only roughly half’s the number of launches needed compared to F9.
I would not though so at first blush, considering the large difference in size between BFR and F9.
Leaving aside the huge risk that BFR might not be ready before the license expires (which I believe rules it out as a viable strategy), let’s figure out How well you could do launching Starlinks with a BFR/BFS.
The first Starlink inclination is 53 degrees, 1150 km altitude, and 32 planes of 50 birds each. That implies that the ascending nodes (the longitude where the plane crosses the equator) of each plane are 11.25 degrees apart. I’ll spare you the math, but that requires a delta-v of 1140 m/s for each plane change.
Each Starlink sat is 386 kg, per the FCC application, which means that, fully fueled, they’re probably about half a tonne each. The dimensions are a little weird, because they’re in a fully deployed configuration, but I’m guessing that they’re about 3 x 1.8 x 1.2 m when stowed, and roughly shaped like triangular or trapezoidal prisms (in other words, fairly close in size and shape to Iridium sats).
The Adelaide version of the BFS looks like it has a cargo area of about 9 m x 12 m. If that’s the case, you could fit about 4 layers of 25 birds each, or 100 sats. (Note: The recent “Dear Moon” version has rear-facing cargo areas as well, so take this number with an extreme grain of salt. But it seems unlikely that you can do more than 100 a launch. I spent a little bit of time trying to fit things in, but it’s possible that someone who knew what they were doing could do better than this.) So that’s enough to fill out two planes.
Payload mass should be (500 kg + SWAG 50 kg of dispenser mass per bird) * 100 = 55 tonnes.
I have a hideous spreadsheet that does the delta-v accounting for the Adelaide BFS, along with 1 refill of a tanker version of the same vehicle. It shows that you can do a launch to the target orbit (I’m SWAGging about 9700 m/s of delta-v) and one 1140 m/s plane-change with one tanker refill pretty easily, but you can’t quite manage on a single launch. (Note that the Dear Moon version was de-rated by a third, but the budget is comfortable enough that it would probably be OK.)
So: 2 launches, 100 birds = 50 birds/launch = 1 plane per launch. That’s consistent with what I guessed up above. So the BFR would require only 45 launches, instead of 89 F9 launches. But it’s not like you’re going to get the whole constellation up with only a handful of BFRs.
google:
fcc DOC-354775A1.pdf
They changed that rule . Read the Oct 25 2018 FCC license update.
It’s an old FCC rule they’re already in the process of obsoleting/changing. Won’t be an issue.
Nope. You’re limited by fairing volume.Even packing 25 Starlink birds per fairing plus 1 spare seems really, really difficult, and almost certainly requires developing a Category 3 fairing for the F9/FH. And any fairing beyond that size is highly unlikely–you’ll snap the second stage in half with any minor guidance deviation.
Google “Starlink licence final date”
TL;DR: The licence that lets them have exclusive use of that section of the radio frequencies says that “The US regulatory authority has set a six-year deadline to have an entire large constellation deployed to comply with licensing terms.”
So if they aren’t up and running by then, the US government doesn’t let them just squat on a valuable band of frequencies.
Or they could just use the Falcon Heavy, which is already flying… 3 times the payload per launch.
The thing that’s missing from all of this is Starlink. SpaceX must launch half of the constellation by the end of 1Q2024. That’s ~1150 spacecraft and likely 189 F9 launches. Starlink makes BFR look like a small project in comparison. And, unlike BFR, it has a drop-dead date associated with it.(And no, BFR doesn’t magically make Starlink easy to launch. First of all, it won’t be ready until the last possible moment. And beyond that, it’s a terrible platform for deploying stuff into multiple orbital planes, because plane changes are insanely expensive. At the very best, it could chop the number of launches from 2 per plane with an F9 to 1 per plane with a BFR–which still means you have about 95 launches to perform.)
Why does Starlink have a drop-dead date?
Yep, BFR != 3 Falcon Heavy
BFR has a wholly different fairing size compared to F9 and FH, which have basically the same fairing size.
A lot more launches are required with F9 and FH than BFR.
Nope. You’re limited by fairing volume.
Even packing 25 Starlink birds per fairing plus 1 spare seems really, really difficult, and almost certainly requires developing a Category 3 fairing for the F9/FH. And any fairing beyond that size is highly unlikely–you’ll snap the second stage in half with any minor guidance deviation.
Or they could just use the Falcon Heavy, which is already flying… 3 times the payload per launch.
The thing that’s missing from all of this is Starlink. SpaceX must launch half of the constellation by the end of 1Q2024. That’s ~1150 spacecraft and likely 189 F9 launches. Starlink makes BFR look like a small project in comparison. And, unlike BFR, it has a drop-dead date associated with it.
(And no, BFR doesn’t magically make Starlink easy to launch. First of all, it won’t be ready until the last possible moment. And beyond that, it’s a terrible platform for deploying stuff into multiple orbital planes, because plane changes are insanely expensive. At the very best, it could chop the number of launches from 2 per plane with an F9 to 1 per plane with a BFR–which still means you have about 95 launches to perform.)