[__d]

Falcon9 has basically no market: the only thing that keeps it flying is Starlink.

The whole AI/orbital datacentres/launch thing is a giant grift.

[laughing_man]

Falcon 9 has easily enough market launching commercial satellites to keep it flying outside of Starlink. It's the most efficient launcher in the world from a cost perspective. Falcon 9 was making money before Starlink existed.

[__d]

That's not what Glynne said. The whole justification for Starlink was to create demand for Falcon.

[laughing_man]

That's not the same thing as saying there was no market for F9. SpaceX wanted to have a larger market. They were already making money. A lot of money. They could slightly undercut the price legacy providers were offering with a much larger profit margin.

[jve]

I can believe that as people questioned the need for _rapid_ reusability without the market. However saying that F9 has no market besides starlink is false. Take a look at Q1'24. report: https://payloadspace.com/payload-research-q1-space-industry-... 20 starlink / 11 commercial

2025 report https://spacedaily.com/t-spacex-launched-165-falcon-9-rocket...

123 Starlink / 42 commercial. Almost 1 commercial launch per week. I don't think any other launcher does 42 launches per year apart from china.

And the way F9 enabled Starlink is spectacular - a money printing machine on itself for SpaceX.