SpaceX has consistently launched ~90% of the mass to orbit for the whole planet Earth over the last several years[1][2]. There's no one else who could more credibly make such a claim.
They seem to have constructed a rocket with 10x the payload to LEO of the one they used to put those 10k satellites in orbit, and even demonstrated payload deployment. So I'd say 100k looks do-able for them today.
10x that seems aspirational, but not comically so. Folks hate Musk, but that seems to cause them to not see the engineering going on in front of them.
> They seem to have constructed a rocket with 10x the payload to LEO of the one they used to put those 10k satellites in orbit
They seem to have constructed a rocket that consistently gets heavier and more complex and more expensive and farthrt behind schedule and hasn't demonstrated specified payload.
I checked the publicly released stats over Starship's development, and this is what I found: compared with the initial ~5,000 t / ~73.5 MN concept, the latest V3-class Starship/Super Heavy is trending toward roughly 35%+ more loaded propellant mass and about 40% more maximum liftoff thrust if you use the FAA’s ~103 MN figure. Payload capability has also moved upward from the early 100+ t reusable LEO baseline to SpaceX’s current public claim of up to 150 t fully reusable and 250 t expendable.
Starship has never met claimed specs and capabilities. It is so far behind schedule that it won't meet specs in time to remain relevant. Which is a generous way of saying it never will.
Agreed. They're already stretching starship. And there's long been talk of a wider version yet. Starship is already pretty impressive considering it's just about exactly the size of Sea Dragon.
While true, this is insufficient to make the new claim credible. If the proposed satellites only weighed 100kg and remain on orbit for 3 years, to keep a million up requires:
They've been approved for 44 Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and are aiming for 160 total launches in 2026. They've recently purchased a giant tract of land in Louisana to build a third starport. 222/year is looking doable.
At this point, 160 Starship launches in 2026 would be close to every weekday.
They already have three launch sites for Falcon and can't do 200.
(Also see edit, my first post relied on Apple's autocomplete for maths and it used a short ton, plus point about these numbers corresponding to a mere 100 kg per satellite).
The 160 launches figure includes falcons. Seems like Starship fuels and flight tests faster than Falcon though. And if they manage to reuse second stages, then that eliminates a significant manufacturing bottleneck.
If you're counting Falcons, you are making my point for me: even with those, on three launch sites, they still can't get close to the minimum for an extremely small, to the point of being unreasonable, target satellite mass.
Further, until they actually do solve upper stage reuse, it is an "if" which can kill the economics of the vehicle itself, let alone reach the eventual potential cost reductions necessary for space based data centres to be worthwhile.
I don't see any reason a non-renewable Starship upper stage would kill the economics of the vehicle. No one else has a renewable upper stage yet, so there's no competition in that space until someone else does. Stoke have an interesting design but it hasn't flown yet and is only about the size of Falcon.
If they do manage to reuse the upper stage, then they should have no problem exceeding falcon launch cadence. Starship is much easier to build than Falcon. Welding is simpler and less expensive than the carbon composites used on Falcon upper stages.
Musk would be "the most credible" at claiming he'll have 1000 trillion dollar by 2050, it doesn't mean it's credible at all.