Our World Runs on Satellites. What Happens when We Can't Launch More?

Our world runs on satellites. What happens when we can't launch more?

“Like riding a broomstick in a hurricane.” This is reportedly how one SpaceX engineer described the intense atmospheric reentry of the first Falcon 9 rocket to go to space and then successfully land back here. That moment, on December 21, 2015, marked the beginning of a dizzying decade-long spell for the space sector, as engineers no longer had to worry about getting their technology into space. Now, the industry’s main challenges were building …

Falcon 9 ushered in the modern space economy – retiring it could leave the industry vulnerable

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches on April 19, 2023. AP Photo/John RaouxMore than 50% of the nearly 330 spaceflights to low Earth orbit in 2025 were done on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is much smaller than SpaceX’s flashy Starship rocket, but for the past 16 years it has been a reliable choice for launching satellites to orbit. It has carried payloads ranging from Earth-imaging sensors feeding smartphone map apps to environmental monitori…

The Launch Crunch Is Coming as Falcon 9 Winds Down – SatNews

A Wall Street analyst and a venture investor at Silicon Valley Space Week both expect launch to get scarcer and pricier as SpaceX moves its business to Starship.