[cletus]

I'm skeptical because satellites, like pretty much any technology, tend to get smaller over time. I remember reading about how it was profitable for someone to buy up 4 geostationary slots and replace 4 satellites with 1 that was probably smaller than any of the 4 (because geostationary slots can be incredibly valuable).

There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launch vehicle costs almost don't matter.

I'm not yet convinced there's a huge demand for super heavy payloads.

[throwthrowuknow]

They’re expensive (and often delayed and over budget) in part due to the ridiculous demands of fitting everything in a small faring and reducing weight e.g. needing it to fold up and using expensive high strength low weight materials. Lessen those constraints and things get cheaper and easier to build with standard methods and materials.

[Karellen]

> There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launch vehicle costs almost don't matter.

If launch costs are going to be $250M, you need a budget of that order of magnitude to make a mission viable. At that point, you might was well spend anywhere from $50M to $1B on the payload because that's where your budget is. Or, to put it another way, only payloads with a $50M to $1B budget can afford to exist if the launch costs are of the order of $250M.

However, if launch costs are of the order of $5M, then missions with much smaller budgets suddenly become economically viable. And there are a lot more potential missions out there with $10M budgets than there are missions with $500M budgets.

Satellites get smaller not only because the tech gets smaller, but because launch costs/kg are so expensive, or so limited. Currently it's worth spending $10M to reduce your mass by 10%, if doing so means you can reduce your launch costs by $25M. Or, if doing so means you can double your onboard station-keeping fuel, and double the lifespan of the satellite.

If launch costs are less and available upmass is higher, your budget for engineering to reduce your payload mass is less, and so is the reason to do so.

[dotnet00]

There are a couple of great examples of this playing out in "reverse" with some missions that, at pre-F9 launch costs could only afford to be on a rideshare or small launcher and thus were expecting to have to deal with all sorts of limits, only to end up being able to afford a dedicated F9.

There was IXPE, which has been the smallest dedicated payload launched by F9, which otherwise would've had to launch on a much smaller, air-launched pegasus rocket to get to the right inclination. I recall that they were able to simplify some aspects of the satellite deployment due to the roomier vehicle.

There was another mission, maybe Psyche? where the original plan would've required the risk of testing a new kind of engine to get to its deep space destination, but being able to get a dedicated ride instead, that risk was eliminated, such that it was going to be able to get there even if the engine tests failed.

[panick21_]

> tend to get smaller over time

That's not accurate. In fact, currently the industry is going in the opposite direction.

The new space revolution start with cube sats and have now grown bigger. Starlink is the best example. Their v1 sats were small, v1.5 are bigger and v2 are even bigger.

There is lots of investment into bigger buses currently. K2 for example.