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The Trend Toward Rocket Reusability
Launchpad Newsletter
May 28, 2024
Your Comprehensive Guide to the New Space Economy
G. Pettit here,
Welcome to the Launchpad Newsletter, your top source for political, economic, and social developments in the New Space Economy, built by real entrepreneurs shaping it.
Ready-for-launch into the insights of the most impactful industry of the 21st Century.
This Week’s Next-Gen Newsflash
🚀 Did you catch that image of the fast-flying space junk that Japanese space startup Astroscale is about to catch and de-orbit in the world’s first commercial debris cleanup?
🛰️ In case you haven’t heard, a new Taikonaut crew has arrived to join the Chinese Tiangong space station
☄️ Boeing has no plans of flying private missions on its newly debuted Starliner crew capsule, instead favoring government missions to the ISS for now
Today’s Subject of Space: The Push for Reusability
While all eyes were on SpaceX and its historic maiden launch of Starship on April 20th 2023, earlier that same week, China quietly reaffirmed their own plans to build a fully reusable heavy lift launch vehicle: their three-stage, 500 ton Long March-9.
The Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicles (CALT) initially designed it as expendable, but the recent push for reusability maintains the growing strategic shift seen across the launch market: expendable rockets are on the way out.
Relativity Space canceled their expendable 3D printed Terran-1 after only a single launch to bet the farm on their larger, partially reusable Terran-R. SpaceX might obsolete their own Falcon program through the fully reusable Starship (especially once crewed launches to ISS end in 2031, tourniqueting that revenue source). And Blue Origin skipped the existing launch market altogether to go all in on the ultra heavy-lift New Glenn.
Everywhere you look, reusability is the hottest headline in aerospace followed by payload capacity. Bigger rockets, less waste. If you don't adapt, you get the opposite, like European ARIANESPACE's still under development Ariane-6: completely expendable, and arguably obsolete before its maiden flight.
China, as it often does, is thinking ahead. But with Long March-9's debut slated for 2033, they have some catching up to do with the leading American aerospace industry.
Nonetheless, forward-thinking technological competition is a positive sum for everyone.
State of the New Space Economy
Looking for a job in the aerospace sector? Click here to explore open positions at Blue Origin. As always, they’re poaching top talent from across the country to fuel their rapid rise!
The space economy employed 360,000 jobs in the private sector alone as of 2021, growing ~5% annually. (Maybe we should add job listings join our newsletter topic lineup?)
Over the past 3 years, manufacturing has quickly overtaken information as the largest domains within the space economy, thanks in part to the rapid launch and production cadence of launch companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab
Space Launch Agency
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