T+341: The Launch Shortage, SpaceX Going Alone (with Caleb Henry)

And it is the thing on everyone's list, which is it is impossible to buy a launch at the current time.

SpaceX is winding down Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy.

Starship is not flying payloads for other people yet.

Slash, we'll see if you think ever.

Yeah.

That's a topic.

And Vulcan's offline.

New Glenn's offline.

Atlas 5, there's not many left.

There's no, you can't go anywhere for launches.

And everyone's concerned about it.

Launch vehicles, launch providers, satellite makers, constellation operators, DOD, NASA, everyone's concerned about it.

So where do we stand? What do we do about it?

Yeah, the interesting thing, or just a starting point for it, before SpaceX was doing 20, 40, 100, 165 launches a year, Launch was the big bottleneck that everyone talked about.

You used to have to go, if you're gonna buy a launch, you did this 24, 36, even maybe 48 months in advance just to make sure that they had enough time, you had enough time, everything could be prepared.

Like it was the single moment.

And then of course you had your, what, five to 10% failure rate.

So you might lose the whole thing and have to start all over again, spend a whole decade doing the same thing.

SpaceX.

When you say it that way, it does truly sound like another, a complete other time in history.

Yeah.

I remember watching a CEO freak out and try to call off a launch once that I attended like 30 minutes before.

And they obviously couldn't, like the whole rocket was fueled and everything.

And he was just like having a conniption.

It's because he got the jitters and he was so nervous that it wasn't going to work.

And it is the thing on everyone's list, which is it is impossible to buy a launch at the current time.

SpaceX is winding down Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy.

Starship is not flying payloads for other people yet.

Slash, we'll see if you think ever.

Yeah.

That's a topic.

And Vulcan's offline.

New Glenn's offline.

Atlas 5, there's not many left.

There's no, you can't go anywhere for launches.

And everyone's concerned about it.

Launch vehicles, launch providers, satellite makers, constellation operators, DOD, NASA, everyone's concerned about it.

So where do we stand? What do we do about it?

Yeah, the interesting thing, or just a starting point for it, before SpaceX was doing 20, 40, 100, 165 launches a year, Launch was the big bottleneck that everyone talked about.

You used to have to go, if you're gonna buy a launch, you did this 24, 36, even maybe 48 months in advance just to make sure that they had enough time, you had enough time, everything could be prepared.

Like it was the single moment.

And then of course you had your, what, five to 10% failure rate.

So you might lose the whole thing and have to start all over again, spend a whole decade doing the same thing.

SpaceX.

When you say it that way, it does truly sound like another, a complete other time in history.

Yeah.

I remember watching a CEO freak out and try to call off a launch once that I attended like 30 minutes before.

And they obviously couldn't, like the whole rocket was fueled and everything.

And he was just like having a conniption.

It's because he got the jitters and he was so nervous that it wasn't going to work.