SpaceX is looking to have a busy 2022. Between the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches peppered throughout the year and Starship, Elon Musk’s space launch company has a busy schedule ahead of it.
But is it busy enough? After a memo from SpaceX head Elon Musk was recently leaked to CNBC, that’s come into question. As we look to the future of SpaceX in 2022, we’ll see how there’s something missing in SpaceX’s launch schedule, why a leaked memo led to such media fervor, and how everybody may be asking the wrong question.
SpaceX had a busy 2021…
2021 was already a busy launch year for SpaceX. The Falcon 9 has had 28 launches so far — all successful — with another three planed, and hit a variety of milestones while doing it. January of 2021 featured SpaceX’s first Transporter mission, Transporter-1, which carried a record 143 satellites into orbit, including satellites for Swarm Technologies, ICEYE, Kepler, and D-Orbit along with SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites. In April, a Falcon 9 carried crew into orbit for the second time, delivering astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour. In June, Transporter-2 carried another 88 SmallSats into orbit as part of its second large-scale rideshare mission.
In September, the Inspiration4 mission had a Falcon 9 carry the Crew Dragon Resilience into LEO with SpaceX’s first all-civilian crew led by billionaire (and qualified jet pilot) Jared Isaacman, followed by another astronaut-crewed mission in November. A Falcon 9 also carried the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission into space in November, on its way to test planetary defense against near-earth objects. And by time of writing, SpaceX has 1732 Starlink satellites in its LEO constellation, with Falcon 9s lifting nearly 850 Starlink nodes into low earth orbit in 2021.
Throughout 2021, tests were also ongoing on SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship vehicle. Tests in February and March resulted in (often explosive) failure upon either launch or landing, but progress was steady. The May test of the SN15 prototype at SpaceX’s Pad A at Boca Chica, Texas saw it successfully launch and land. That helps clear the way for its upcoming orbital test.
… And SpaceX’s Falcon rockets will have a busy 2022
In 2022, SpaceX plans to increase its cadence even further. The Falcon launches will continue to go strong, with at least 39 planned. Note we have mentioned Starship yet, that’s coming. January 2022 will see the launch of SpaceX’s third Transporter SmallSat rideshare mission, which will carry a variety of satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). That will be followed by several more Transporter missions in March, June, and October, all going to SSO. SpaceX will launch the Intuitive Machines lander to the Moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, with more lunar missions in the fall.
The first quarter of 2022 will feature Axiom-1, a Crew Dragon carrying the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station including Canadian philanthropist Mark Pathy. SpaceX will also be doing several national security missions for the US Government, including a Falcon Heavy launching satellites into geosynchronous orbit for the US Space Force (USSF) and a satellite launch for the National Reconnaissance Office in February.
The second quarter will have Falcon Heavy rockets carry a USSF satellite and Viasat-3 into geosynchronous orbit, with a Falcon 9 carrying Egyptian satellite operator NileSat’s NileSat-301 into geosynchronous orbit as well. There will also be two Dragon missions to the International Space Station: the April Crew-4 mission that will carry NASA and ESA astronauts on April 15th, and the 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the ISS in May. It will deliver both supplies and parts for the ISS Roll-Out solar arrays.
(According to coverage at Teslarati, this will be one of the heaviest unpressurized payloads carried by a Dragon spacecraft. Another Dragon mission in the fall will supply the remaining parts.)
July to September will feature several interesting experiments. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, South Korea’s first lunar mission, will carry South Korean and American experiments into lunar orbit. The NASA Psyche mission will have a Falcon Heavy carry a spacecraft that will go and analyze the metal-rich Psyche asteroid. SpaceX will be launching more national security assets for the NRO, USSF, and the Space Development Agency. They will also launch more communications satellites beyond LEO. SES’s O3B mPOWER satellite will be going into medium earth orbit, and Hispasat’s Amazonas Nexus will be going to geosynchronous orbit.
Finally, fall missions not mentioned earlier will see a second Axiom mission, Ax-2, headed by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, as well as another crewed mission (Crew-5) carrying NASA and JAXA astronauts to the ISS. There are GPS launches scheduled, and a surface water survey (SWOT) Earth observation satellite by NASA, the UK Space Agency, France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatial. and with Canadian participation.
Starlink Now Depends on Starship
But something seems missing when you look at the Falcon missions: Starlink. While Starlink satellites were a familiar element for anyone watching SpaceX’s 2021 launch streams, their presence in the upcoming missions seems muted. That’s at the heart of the memo controversy.
The popular media was abuzz with the news that Elon Musk was saying in his leaked memo that “SpaceX could go bankrupt” if it didn’t speed up production of Raptor engines for Starship. But what often went unsaid was that SpaceX’s launch business is as brisk as ever.
The issue, as it turns out, is that the second generation “Gen2” Starlink satellites — according to Musk’s memo — are too large to be launched in sufficient quantities by the Falcon 9 rocket and its Merlin engines. And since their laser communications and other capabilities are seen as crucial parts of the future Starlink constellation, the company needs Starship launches to make Starlink fully operational. There will need to be a lot of launches, too, considering the constellation’s end goal size: over 30,000 satellites.
That is why all those Falcon missions are only part of the story. While Starship testing and production is scaling up quickly, with a test firing of the Super Heavy booster coming up soon and the orbital test happening in early 2022, it’s clear that SpaceX wants to put the Starship to work, and needs to put Starship to work in order to expand Starlink availability and capabilities enough to make the service fully viable.
That’s why his memo suggested that they wanted to launch Starships every two weeks. They need that pace to get Starlink running and the cash flowing. With necessary refurbishment time, that’ll require a lot of Starships and hundreds of Raptor engines. And Musk is clearly concerned that Raptor production is not only behind, it’s badly behind.
That’s why there’s no detailed Starship schedule like the Falcon schedule discussed earlier, even while Starship production has been moving incredibly quickly. Even if Starships are only carrying Starlink satellites, limiting liability, the testing still needs to finish and production needs to ramp up in earnest before anybody can predict if Musk will hit that blistering pace.
The Business Side
Meanwhile, everybody’s asking “will SpaceX go bankrupt?” The answer is “it’s unlikely.” In fact, it’s incredibly unlikely that SpaceX will go “bankrupt” any time soon. They have prospective investors by the thousands, and have the US government as a customer. Their launch business is safe.
Still, though, they do need Starlink to work. As we saw in our analysis of SpaceX’s valuation, Starlink was always intended to be spun off and eventually go public. It would attract investors and customers, serving as a needed source of cash flow while SpaceX stays privately-owned and focused on its goal of bringing humans to Mars.
A SpaceX that has to solicit investment is a SpaceX that would be under pressure to go public by investors that are looking to make their exit. Even the most devoutly space-focused venture capitalists are also very focused on profitable exits, as we saw in our profiles of Spaced Ventures and the Seraphim Fund. The people pouring money into SpaceX will not wait for the Mars colony: they’ll want to sell their shares to the public.
A publicly-owned SpaceX could become focused on the next quarter, not on getting to Mars. With swiftly-growing competition in the launch provider space, a publicly-owned SpaceX without Starlink might well give up on Mars entirely.
So Musk’s frustration is understandable. SpaceX’s existence may not be in jeopardy, but its mission might be. A lot is riding on Starship’s orbital launch test, including its founder’s peace of mind, and possibly the entire nature of the company. SpaceX will have a future, but the coming year could be pivotal for what that future will look like.
In the meantime, click here to read more SpaceX coverage here on SpaceQ, including our previously-mentioned analysis of their eye-popping valuation.