Surprise, surprise: SpaceX plans to set more spaceflight records this year.
Elon Musk's company launched 96 orbital missions in 2023, a big jump from the previous record of 61, set a year earlier. And SpaceX is planning another big jump in 2024, a jump that will be well above the century mark.
"As we look to next year, we want to grow [our] flight rate to about 12 flights per month, or 144 flights," Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX vice president for construction and flight reliability, said Oct. 18 during a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science hearing.
That amounts to one launch every 2.8 days, a rhythm that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. But SpaceX has a history of reframing our ideas of what's possible in space travel to make this ambitious goal seem eminently achievable.
Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed space travel
Starlink will take the lead
About two-thirds of SpaceX's launches in 2023 were for building out Starlink, the company's mega-constellation with satellite internet. This trend will probably continue in 2024, because the network is far from complete.
According to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, Starlink currently consists of approximately 5,230 operational spacecraft. But SpaceX has approval to place a total of 12,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), and the company has applied for approval for another 30,000 on top of that.
So Starlink batches should continue flying from both coasts through 2024 - Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
We'll also see even more SpaceX astronaut launches this year.
The company launched three crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2023: two for NASA and one for Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that plans to launch its own outpost in LEO in a few years.
SpaceX will launch five astronaut missions this year, if all goes according to plan. The Crew-8 and Crew-9 flights for NASA will launch in February and August, respectively. Axiom's Ax-3 mission will launch on January 17, and the Ax-4 is not scheduled to launch until October. And in April, SpaceX plans to launch Polaris Dawn, a free-flying mission to LEO featuring the first-ever spacewalk by a private astronaut.
Related: SpaceX's Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space in photos (gallery)
The spaceship is preparing to take off
Ninety-one of SpaceX's 96 orbital missions last year were carried out by its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, with the company's powerful Falcon Heavy responsible for the other five.
But 2023 also saw two test flights of the launch vehicle that SpaceX believes will revolutionize space travel and exploration: Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy both have reusable first stages, a serious breakthrough in space technology. But Starship, which stands about 400 feet tall when fully stacked, is designed to be completely reusable. Indeed, Musk wants Starship's massive Super Heavy booster to land directly at the launch pad after takeoff, to allow for quick inspection, renovation and re-aeration.
Starship's two test flights took off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas in April and November last year, respectively. Both missions aimed to send the vehicle's upper stage around most of the Earth, with a landing aimed at a patch of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
The flight in April didn't last long. Starship suffered from several serious problems, including failure to separate the two stages, and SpaceX deliberately destroyed the tumbling vehicle just four minutes after launch.
Starship made progress on its second flight; Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines all fired as planned, and the booster successfully separated from the upper stage. But this mission also ended early, with the destruction of the upper stage about eight minutes into the flight.
We don't have to wait long for flight number three. Last week, SpaceX tested the engines of its latest Starship prototype, which it plans to launch once it receives a license from the US Federal Aviation Administration. (The FAA is currently overseeing an investigation into what happened during the Starship's November flight.)
SpaceX is also working to ready other Starship vehicles, in keeping with the company's development philosophy, which prioritizes frequent test flights and rapid iteration.
"I think by the end of the year they might have mastered it in a functional way. Not on cadence, but just on demonstrating reusability," said Justus Parmar, CEO of venture capital and advisory firm Fortuna Investments, which focuses heavily on the space industry, said of SpaceX's Starship efforts. "So that's going to be huge."
Time is of the essence for Starship's development. NASA chose the giant vehicle as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s. The plan calls for Starship to take astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time during the Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in late 2025 or 2026.
Related: NASA's Artemis Program: Everything You Need to Know
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Private space flights are on the rise
The past two years have been tough for investors in most areas, and space has been no exception.
"Growth has been crushed," Parmar told Space.com. "Everything is down 70 to 90%."
But he sees a change coming. This year, money will again flow into the space ecosystem in a serious way, potentially leading to a 'banner year' in 2025, Parmar predicts.
"The technology is the furthest it's ever been, and yet we have valuations that are somewhat the lowest they've ever been in some capacity. So I think the setup with new capital is really promising," he said.
Low prices and rapidly advancing technology are not the only decisive factors. The continued success of SpaceX, which dominates the private space industry, shows investors that there is money to be made on the latter front as well. And that is crucial, says Parmar.
"In any nascent or emerging industry you always need a frontrunner - you need a success story," he said. "If there are no winners in the industry, no one will ever support [it]."
Google was one such frontrunner in the early 2000s, when investors needed a success story after the dot-com bubble burst, Parmar noted. Google ultimately reshaped the entire Internet economy, and SpaceX may be able to do something similar in the latter field.
That's not to say SpaceX will be the only space company to have a big 2024. Parmar thinks Blue Origin, which Amazon's Jeff Bezos founded in 2000, is poised for a breakout year.
Blue Origin just got a new CEO: Dave Limp, Amazon's senior vice president of devices and services. Additionally, Bezos recently announced that he is moving from Seattle to Miami. He broke the news in an Instagram post, which also noted that "Blue Origin's operations are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral." The Space Coast is just a few hundred miles from Bezos' new home in South Florida
These signs indicate that Bezos is prioritizing Blue Origin more than in the past and is more actively involved in the company's operations, Parmar said. (Like SpaceX, Blue Origin has bold ambitions; Bezos has said he wants to help humanity expand its footprint into the solar system.)
"I think everything they've done is just going to accelerate," Parmar said. "He goes all the way."
