What’s Next for SpaceX?
By: Leo Ferguson
Tags: Spacex, Future, Starship, Starlink, Mars

Future Projects Already In Motion

While the lunar lander for Artemis missions could certainly be a large project for SpaceX in the future, by no means is it their most complex or time consuming endeavor. In fact, the lunar lander is only one variant of one of their biggest projects, Starship. Below are some of SpaceX’s largest and potentially most groundbreaking developments, that are either already partially in use or in the testing phase.

Starship

Possibly one of the most well-known future projects for SpaceX is the making of Starship. With development beginning back in 2012, Starship will be an absurdly complicated spacecraft with different variants. SpaceX plans to have the first Starship ready to launch by 2023, and a fleet of them manufactured in the years after. They will all be fairly similar, but some Starships will be designed for Earth to Earth transportation, some for transporting large payloads, a few for landing on the Moon during Artemis missions, and some will serve other purposes.

Starship prototype SN11 during high-altitude flight test — Image Credit: SpaceX

With many malfunctions during test flights of prototype Starship rockets, the future was not looking bright for the spacecraft. However, on May 5, 2021 Starship prototype SN15 completed the first successful high-altitude flight test, with all systems functioning nominally and a smooth landing. It’s hard to get a good idea of the scale of it from most pictures, but Starship truly is a massive rocket, and one capable of carrying 100 astronauts into orbit, as well as potentially to Mars one day.

Starlink

Starlink is an incredibly ambitious project aimed to provide high-speed and low-latency internet to locations across the globe for a fraction of the price that many older and more established telecommunication companies are offering.

The difference between normal satellite internet and what Starlink hopes to accomplish isn’t too complex at its core.

For the satellite internet we have today, there is one very large satellite circling the globe, about 22,000 miles above the surface of the Earth. However, the internet being provided is limited to coming from just one satellite, and because that satellite is required to be so far from Earth the internet speeds are often slow.

Starlink, on the other hand, will be a connection of much smaller satellites. They will orbit the Earth significantly closer, at about 300-400 miles above the surface. As of June 2021, around 1,500 Starlink satellites are estimated to be in space and operational. SpaceX plans to launch a total of 12,000 satellites by the end of 2025, and then an additional 30,000 in the years afterwards if they are permitted to.

Depiction of a Starlink satellite orbiting the Earth — Image Credit: SpaceX

The process to connect to and use Starlink’s internet is quite simple. You just need to have a small satellite dish, similar to those used for other internet providers only not quite as large.

According to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, if Starlink could acquire 25 million users then they would be profiting about $30 billion per year, much more than launching satellites earns them as of now. That money could help to fund the manufacturing of Starship and other future projects such as infrastructure on Mars.

While Starlink sounds great, especially considering its low price, there are some pretty big issues caused by the network of satellites. For starters, they can be pretty bright. Even without a telescope you can see some passing through the night sky if you live in the right area.

Unfortunately, Starlink satellites are most bright around dawn and dusk, which is the time when astronomers are performing critical observations to determine if there are any objects that could potentially collide with Earth. To address this, SpaceX has used a dark paint to coat the brightest part of the satellites, but even then they’re still fairly bright. And, with more satellites being added to the network every month the light pollution can only get worse.

Another problem caused by Starlink is space debris. Even though SpaceX has stated that Starlink satellites have the ability to maneuver to avoid other objects in space, there have already been some that are unable to do so. Highly unlikely as it is, if 42,000 Starlink satellites were orbiting the Earth and some of them experienced malfunctions resulting in immovability, the problem could rapidly get out of control.

If a few satellites were to collide that would only create more space debris that could collide with other satellites, and in a worst case scenario there could end up being so much debris circling the Earth that outer space would be deemed unsafe because of the chances of debris hitting rockets as they exit the atmosphere.