Catching Super Heavy: Halfway There with No Competitors in Sight

Catching a hovering seven-story tall rocket is no mean feat. Apparently, catching up with SpaceX’s feats is not done.

If SpaceX and Starship proved anything during the latest suborbital test launch, it’s that the company can put on a show:

Something New, Something Old

Unsurprisingly, the company’s launch tower caught Starship’s first stage after returning from launch. However, seeing it happen is another thing entirely. It was terrific, in the way that seeing the two Falcon Heavy boosters land on the pads in synchrony from the first launch was. It was a memorable first. 

The rest of the test—well, it ran its suborbital course. It retained ICBM characteristics and was, in many ways, similar to the previous launch. As with the previous launch, Starlink kept Starship connected, but it seemed steadier (maybe?). Its feed streamed to anyone in the world from launch to re-entry. A buoy near Starship’s impact point, probably also connected to Starlink, provided footage of the spacecraft’s destruction. Starlink seems to have played a more prominent role for SpaceX.

Fewer parts melted off Starship on reentry than in the previous test, but some parts still melted off. The fact that some parts were falling off showed that the company still needs to work on its reentry tech. Starship appeared to hover over the water before it fell, which is also progress. But it’s far from reusable.

Overall, the test demonstrates that SpaceX has a firm grasp of the first stage, launch, and landing. Again, that’s not surprising considering its Falcon 9 experience (despite the change in how Super Heavy lands). It’s gratifying to see that progress. However, Starship is not yet operational–not in reusable form, especially if it’s launching from Florida. 

For example, the company must show that a returning booster that misses its launch mark at high speed will still not pose harm to locals or neighboring launch infrastructure, especially if it doesn’t terminate as it should (Murphy works like that). That will be an exciting test to watch. Ultimately, things like tests take time, which savvy competitors should take advantage of.

Playing the Heavy

What SpaceX showed in its fifth Starship test launch should concern launch providers worldwide: a seemingly working, reusable, and extremely capable first-stage booster, Super Heavy. Super Heavy shouldn’t have been challenged at all by merely launching the Starship second stage during the latest test. Based on the company’s PR, it can loft more to orbit than competitors' current and projected launch vehicles. Other launch services should be grateful that SpaceX is focusing on making both stages reusable, which is increasing Starship’s development time. 

Super Heavy is more capable than Blue Origin’s New Glenn first stage, able to carry (again, theoretically) over triple New Glenn’s mass capability to LEO. Super Heavy is closer to operational status than New Glenn as well. Blue Origin could change that situation if it chose. The company could theoretically place an object in space and leave it there–a feat Starship has yet to do. But, even if Blue Origin were to successfully conduct a New Glenn launch soon, how much of a pause would the company take between the first launch and the rest?

Even this year’s newcomers, Ariane 6 and Vulcan, aren’t competitive with Starship, a fact that has been observed for a while. Either one barely competes with Falcon 9, but Starship? Fuggedaboutit!! How is it that two launch providers–Arianespace and ULA–decided to create rockets that can’t compete with a 15-year-old rocket? 

The company building the rocket that might compete–Blue Origin–has been struggling to conduct a first launch for nearly that length of time. How can all of them be that much out of step? Their missteps may indicate problems with the incentive structure with the launch “market,” which I’ve analyzed. 

Deafened by Static

It may be that the slow nature of military and government customers caused one or both companies to view the launch market as static. They don’t expect growth. They know they will get their rightful share of government contracts and might occasionally get a commercial customer. They still act that way. Ben Thompson (who authors the Stratechery blog) noted this about the behavior of some key European space figures:

“Wörner’s statement is like Bowles in the way in which it sees the world as static; Bowles couldn’t see ahead to a world where SpaceX actually figured out how to reuse rockets by landing them on drone ships, much less the version 2 example of catching a much larger rocket that we saw this weekend. Wörner, meanwhile, can’t see backwards: the reason why SpaceX has so much more volume, both from external customers and from itself (Starlink), is because it is cheap. Cheapness creates scale, which makes things even cheaper, and the ultimate output is entirely new markets.”

For clarification, I don’t agree with Thompson that lower cost is the primary driver for the Falcon 9’s dominance. However, his observation of this static view from competitors and their sponsors explains some of these companies' decisions.

In his article, Thompson mentioned a 2013 Singapore event where Richard Bowles, an Arianespace executive, answered some SpaceX-focused questions at the time. He kept referring to SpaceX’s vision as a dream that required no Arianespace response. On the other hand, in 2024, Jan Woerner didn’t see the European launch market expanding beyond ten flights per year. Conveniently, neither outlook required Europeans to change their launch businesses and technologies. A similar outlook and belief in static market dependence probably drives ULA. 

Arianespace is still led by someone who, just last month, advised all Europeans to ignore competitors such as SpaceX. From European Spaceflight: 

When asked how Europe could compete with the likes of SpaceX, Israël clarified that we should “stop just comparing SpaceX and Elon Musk with Arianespace.” His reasoning for this was that SpaceX is not just a launch company but one that controls a broader value chain that includes satellite manufacturing and operation through Starlink.

How better to believe the market is the same as it ever was than to pretend the competition isn’t real? Again, the only action required from his view is to entice European governments to turn to ArianeGroup to build the next European rocket (again, the static view). Why would Europe do this after Ariane 6?

Of course, Starship needs to be operational for these companies to panic. Even when it becomes operational, it still won’t resolve the space industry’s problem of relying on a single company for most of its launches. But, neither Arianespace nor ULA has mentioned possible new rockets for competing with Starship, hoping their latest offerings will help them compete against the Falcon 9. Their rockets appear to be good, but their launch costs will primarily keep them in the domain of government contracts (which is the point, I suppose). 

The companies see no need for reusability, lower costs, or launching larger payloads (which is different from Blue Origin’s view). The market they catered to didn’t require it, so why should they change what they do?

The Second-Stage of Rocket-building

Still, based on the latest Starship test launch, I have to wonder if SpaceX’s fixation on second-stage reusability is blinding it to an opportunity. Much of the excitement surrounding Starship stems from plans to make it fully reusable. Any premise that allows some people to believe that human space transportation is just around the corner conjures that excitement and the resulting support. The potential lower launch costs of an entire reusable system are just as intriguing. 

However, SpaceX just showed in the October 2024 test that it’s about halfway to that goal, taking many, many years to get just that far. The first test launch of an integrated BFR was supposed to occur in 2019. It did not happen. Hence, my reason for mentioning Super Heavy’s potential earlier. 

A few others and I wonder what the trades would be if, while reusability continues development, SpaceX used a disposable upper stage for Starship. The company has probably considered that option. It may have concluded that it’s so far ahead of potential competitors that there’s no hurry to get a fully reusable Starship operational. SpaceX did this with the Falcon 9 for a few flights before foregoing second-stage reusability for it.

There’s also the fact that potential customers aren’t ready with any spacecraft that could leverage Starship’s mass capabilities. The only demand for Starship seems to be SpaceX itself. NASA would love to have a lander, too. But that lander will have to be different, anyway, because landing on the Moon from space is much different than attempting the same on Earth. 

Based on recent reporting, SpaceX isn’t above having a launch tower catch the upper stage, either–a change that makes landing legs unnecessary. That change may mean there will be at least two kinds of Starships–those explicitly designed to land on Earth and those intended to land on the Moon. 

Any change, including non-reusability, will probably take years more. However, with the company’s progress and the genuine lack of any competitors even attempting to field a Starship-equivalent system, SpaceX seems to have time. 

It’s not like the customers can go anywhere else.

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