The 27th edition of the World Space Business Week (WSBW) kicked off on Monday, September 16, with a packed program of panels full of high-level speakers. This week in Paris, space company executives and analysts have gathered for what is likely one of the largest events of the year, second only to the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), scheduled for October in Milan, Italy.
The most interesting panel of the morning, called “Launching Into the Future”, saw the participation of some of the biggest rocket companies in the world. The speakers were:
- Stephanie Bednarek, Vice President Commercial Sales, SpaceX
- Jarrett Jones, SVP of New Glenn, Blue Origin
- Tom Burkholder, Senior Director, Business Development and Sales, United Launch Alliance (ULA)
- Steven Rutgers, Chief Commercial Officer, Arianespace
- Nobuyuki Shiina, Deputy General Manager – Space System, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
After a quick round of status updates from each of them, the conversation shifted to the future of the heavy-lift launch vehicles. And that’s where things got interesting…
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Go big or go home
The question that opened the debate was: is there enough demand for all these heavy-lift launches?
Tom Burkholder, ULA, said that “Vulcan was designed for the most stressing orbits,” but looking how the market evolved, also with NGSO (non-geostationary orbit) constellations, they “evolved to also offer a LEO-optimized upper stage.”
On the other side, New Glenn was designed since the beginning targeting 40 metric tons to LEO, with a single vehicle configuration, while also providing GTO capability. “We’re now seeing the NGSO market blowing up with opportunity to expand,” said Jarret Jones. He also mentioned human spaceflight, which they expect to implement in the future.
“Ariane 6 is very well adapted for constellations: with large fairings so you can launch a lot of satellites in one go, it has a re-ignitable upper stage that can re-ignite three times and put constellations in three different orbital planes and altitude,” said Steven Rutgers, CCO at Arianespace. “This [NGSO] is a very strong market and it represents a significant opportunity for us going forward.”
Nobuyuki Shiina, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, also clarified the capability of their rockets: “Each customer has a completely different and unique demand, and MHI is capable of course of LEO, GEO, Lunar Transfer orbit and deep space.” Then, he added a very interesting point: “In three years from now we may see more demand of mass transportation to LEO because of the post-ISS, and we have to catch up to this demand.”
“Between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, SpaceX is able to address the current market today: small satellites to LEO, larger satellites to GTO, MEO, and beyond,” stated Stephanie Bednarek, VP at SpaceX. “As Starship continues to demonstrate success, this will change how we think about satellites design and launch, and we’re encouraging customers and satellites manufacturers to start changing the paradigm on how satellites are designed. When you’re not mass limited, when you’re not volume limited, it really opens interesting use-cases. It’s going to be a really big shift on how we see satellites design.”
Notably, Jones echoed this sentiment: “We made a design change early on, we wanted the larger fairings. […] The future is going to be much different when you’re not stuck to a 5 meters fairings. It’s provoking innovation as well.”
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Launches, launches, launches
For those who attended the panel, one word clearly captures the future of these companies: launches—emphasis on the plural.
“Companies are wanting to do more in space,” said Jarret Jones, “and that’s part of our vision: open up space for everyone. […] Our plan is: get on the scene, get to rate quickly, which is what we plan to do. It’s one thing to launch, but then you have to get to rate, and that’s what we’re really focusing on.”
“We’re launching 148 times this year, Falcon rate is going to continue to increase. Satellites should not be on the ground: we want them in space, and we want to find creative solutions to launch everything we can.” said Stephanie Bednarek. “What’s going to be challenging as new vehicles come online is bringing that cadence up, that’s something SpaceX had to learn and go through, but what reusability is enabling us is really incredible. Cadence is just tough, it’s hard.”
On the other hand, Arianespace acknowledged a couple of challenging years, impacted by the invasion of Ukraine and the transition from Ariane 5 to Ariane 6. “Nine to ten launches a year [for Ariane 6], three to four of those for European institutions and six for commercial customers,” said Rutgers talking about the cadence.
“We’re launching soon [NET November, ed], but we also have the material, the planning, the actual rocket going down the factory, so we can quicky go into 2025 with a re-launch and then launching again,” said Jones. He than added reusability into the equation: “We have to figure out the reusability factor. On this first launch we have two primary objectives: get to orbit, land the booster. Easy to say, but it’s super critical.”
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Schedules and launches
The discussion then shifted to the near-term plans and launches for each of these rockets, with ULA preparing for the second Vulcan launch on October 4th, and two more missions scheduled before the end of the year. This would bring ULA to a total of four Vulcan launches in 2024.
On the other hand, after its maiden fight in July, and the result of the investigation on the upper stage failure concluded, Ariane 6 is scheduled to fly a second mission by the end of this year for the French Ministry of Defense. Then, in 2025, the rocket will eventually launch 6 mission, a mixture of Galileo launches and commercial missions.
The H3 rocket, Mitsubishi’s newest launcher, will fly 6 launches per year starting 2025. They’ll step up to 8 launches per year in 2027.
Blue Origin, after NASA’s decision to move ESCAPADE to 2025, will fly a single New Glenn mission this year, targeted no earllier than November. Then, with the capability to fly up to 12 launches next year, they plan to have between 8 to 10 launches, pending the results from the first two. Notably, in 2026, they’re going for 24 launches in a single year, according to Jones, doubling the launch rate and capacity.
Starship: the elephant in the room
During the WSBW there’s always this impression that, if SpaceX isn’t in the room, then it doesn’t exist.
Don’t get me wrong, of course everyone is well-aware of SpaceX’s existence and work, but during several discussions, wheter they’d be on launches, competition, constellations, or costs, SpaceX seemed to have been momentarily forgotten.
Nevertheless, in this panel the question was really straightforward to Stephanie Bednarek: what’s the latest with Starhip?
“We’re targeting flight 5 for November at this point. We’re going to attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster mid-air, it will be a good show,” she said. “We want to increase our flight rate, we learn more from flying than we do on the ground.”
Asked about the plans for Falcon while Starship comes online, Bednarek said (unsurprisingly) that they plan to fly Falcon for years, and its flight rate will continue to increase still for a while. “We want to make sure our customers are comfortable flying on Starship, so we will overlap for some years.”
Then, Bednarek, which works for SpaceX since 16 years, briefly mentioned the company’s plans for launch locations, reiterating that their currently focus is to “fly Starship at a rate from Starbase,” with a second launch pad coming up online smoothly. They also have future plans to eventually expand Starship’s launches to east coast, at Cape Canaveral.
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Finally, launch costs
Of course, in the spirit of the WSBW conference, the panel touched the financial side of the heavy-lift launcher.
Ariane 6 was highlighted as being 40% cheaper than its predecessor, Ariane 5, though Steven Rutgers from Arianespace acknowledged the growing competition and the impact of inflation on both the launch and satellite manufacturing markets.
Stephanie Bednarek from SpaceX emphasized their rideshare program, which offers costs as low as $6,000 per kilogram. This has enabled over 1,000 satellites to be launched for more than 130 different customers, an achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without such competitive pricing.
Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries noted the rising material and manufacturing costs in Japan, which prompted the company to create a task force to reduce prices. Nobuyuki Shiina stressed that pricing remains the top factor when customers choose a launch provider.
On the GEO market, Arianespace pointed out that while the number of GEO orders remains steady, with a growth in the direct to GEO injection missions, the trend toward smaller spacecraft is intensifying. As these smaller satellites face rising manufacturing costs and competition from constellations like Starlink, the squeeze is becoming more evident. For now, GEO-level orders are holding, but future developments will reveal how the market adapts.
As time ran out, the panel closed to make space for the following WSBW session. One of the latest statement which closed the Q&A session was: will new medium-class launch vehicles steal a part of the market?
“More is better, competition is a good thing,” said Stephanie Bednarek, “but I keep an eye on everyone. I want to learn from competitor too.”
For our complete coverage of the WSBW, please click here.
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