Missing the Mark on SpaceX, Falcon Heavy

Andy Pasztor hasn’t been very fond of SpaceX over the years, but his recent article on SpaceX’s double-launch weekend is something else. Let’s start here:

After using previously flown main engines to blast a Bulgarian telecommunications satellite into orbit Friday from a Florida launchpad, the closely held company on Sunday afternoon used a California Air Force base to send a batch of 10 smaller satellites into space for Iridium Communications Inc., SpaceX’s largest commercial customer.

They used a little bit more than just the engines.

Juggling launch dates, which happens to a lesser extent with every rocket operator, is further complicated for SpaceX because it has to match customer technical needs with a range of rocket variants the company flies to orbit.

Right now, SpaceX flies one variant of one launch vehicle. Arianespace flies 3 different vehicles with 2 configurations of Ariane 5. The king of configuration, ULA, flies 17 total configurations—4 Delta IV Medium configurations, Delta IV Heavy, and 12 Atlas V configurations. And those numbers don’t include the upcoming dual engine Centaur variants, which will push ULA’s configuration count to double digits.

How any honest, thinking journalist could write such a sentence about SpaceX boggles my mind.

And finally, on Falcon Heavy:

After years of delays, the company plans to launch its significantly beefed-up derivative rocket, called the Falcon Heavy, for the first time later this year. The demonstration flight will be closely watched by both the Pentagon and satellite operators, prospective customers eager to benefit from the Falcon Heavy’s greater power versus the Falcon 9.

This is right down the middle of what is typically said about Falcon Heavy—it’s been delayed years, SpaceX might finally get around to it this year, and tons of customers are clamoring to fly on it.

To be fair, it isn’t only Pasztor who is missing the mark on Falcon Heavy—it’s just about everyone.

Quite honestly, there is almost zero current demand for it. The only known payloads on SpaceX’s manifest that Falcon 9 could not lift are Red Dragon missions and the private lunar flight.

All other manifested Falcon Heavy flights are launches that SpaceX could fly on Falcon 9 but would rather not, because they hate flying Falcon 9 expendably. STP-2 only requires Falcon Heavy because the Air Force is using the low-priority research mission to certify the launch vehicle—it is nowhere close to a Falcon Heavy-class payload.

The lack of existing demand now doesn’t mean there aren’t payloads that will require Falcon Heavy once it’s flying—there is almost certainly an “If you build, it they will come.” dynamic at play. But the idea that there are customers elbowing each other out of the way like it’s Black Friday at Target is a bit of an embellishment.