Six months ago, I made a prediction about SpaceX: As good as 2022 was for the space company, 2023 would be even better. And while the future is never certain, it's starting to look like that prediction's coming true.
2022 was a grand year for Elon Musk's pioneering space company, as the company rode the success of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket to a record-setting 61 successful spaceflights in a single year. This was an impressive accomplishment, something no other space company had ever done before. But with SpaceX already launching rockets more frequently than once per week, Musk then climbed even farther out on a limb in August, and predicted that in 2023 the company would hit a new milestone: 100 rockets launched in 2023.
Yeah, aiming for up to 100 flights next year
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2022
And SpaceX is already nearly halfway there.
Image source: Getty Images.
100 rockets for Elon
The first six months of 2023 saw SpaceX launch a total of 44 times (if you include one aborted test flight of its new Starship megarocket). And while that appears to put the company on a flight path to only 88 flights by year's end, launches at SpaceX are continuing to accelerate in frequency -- and frequently come in spurts.
The first couple weeks of July, for example, saw SpaceX launch four separate times (including three batches of Starlink satellites). And seeing as SpaceX controls both Starlink and the rockets that launch it, SpaceX is really in control of how frequently those launches go up -- and has the ability to juice the launch rate even more if necessary to reach is 100-launches-per-year goal.
Why would SpaceX do that? Well, to hit the goal of course -- that would produce a nice headline for SpaceX at the end of the year, and you can't ignore the PR value for the company of hitting a nice, round number like "100" by the end of the year. More practically, though, the more SpaceX launches, and the more often it reuses rockets it's already built, the lower its cost per launch falls as it spreads out fixed costs across more missions. This should help SpaceX to expand its profit margins while holding prices steady -- or conversely, permits the company to lower its prices for non-Starlink customers, and underprice competing space companies.
Meanwhile at ULA...
And speaking of competing space companies, things aren't going terribly well for SpaceX's largest competitor in space launch, United Launch Alliance (or ULA), the joint venture between Boeing (BA +2.57%) and Lockheed Martin (LMT 1.03%).
NYSE: LMT
Key Data Points
In March of this year, ULA suffered an anomaly while testing the Centaur second stage of its Vulcan Centaur rocket. (Specifically, the rocket blew up.) An investigation of the anomaly revealed a crack in the rocket's hydrogen tank.
Now, ULA has already come up with a fix for future Centaurs ("Centauri"?): adding an extra stainless steel ring to strengthen the tank that contains the hydrogen gas. But that's not ULA's only problem. It turns out that on June 30, the Vulcan program suffered a second mishap when a Blue Origin-built BE-4 rocket engine -- Vulcan needs two of these for each first stage -- also exploded during testing.
Again, ULA has a workaround for this failure. (And in any case, it's better to discover flaws like this during testing than in the middle of an actual rocket launch.) The test engine was intended for use on Vulcan's second launch, while the engines for Vulcan's first launch have already passed their tests. So the company still thinks that first Vulcan launch is good to go.
As for the engine that blew up, Blue Origin says it has already identified the "proximate cause" of the failure, and it's presumably working on a fix for future versions of the engine. Still, the fact that any of the engines that Blue Origin is building for ULA are still blowing up has to worry ULA, and it's probably going to have an impact on the company's schedule for flying the rocket.
And, in fact, ULA CEO Tory Bruno says that Vulcan Centaur's inaugural space flight, which was supposed to happen in May (after the Centaur explosion but before the BE-4 explosion) will now be postponed to late 2023, reports Space.com. Blue Origin insists it will be able to fix the engine problem, resume production, and "stay ahead of our customer's launch needs," but this will take time, and could slow down production and delay future launches even further.
What it means for investors
While it's still possible that ULA will succeed in getting its first "certification" launch of the Vulcan Centaur off the ground this year, it's looking less likely the company can launch all three of the Vulcan missions that it wanted to launch this year. (Two such flights would be needed to "certify" the rocket as safe to carry national security payloads, and the third flight would carry one such payload to orbit this year.)
So as SpaceX races ahead and sets new records in spaceflight, ULA continues to lag behind. Suffice it to say this isn't great news for the company's owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who at last report were still trying to find a buyer for their subsidiary.
Whoever eventually buys ULA is going to end up owning a work in progress.
