Payloads used to dictate the terms of launch. That's finally changing. - Ars Technica
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It wasn’t easy to find anyone outside of SpaceX clamoring for a rocket like Starship just 10 years ago. Today, the space industry can’t wait for Starship to finally deliver.
With a payload capacity of more than 100 metric tons (220,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit, SpaceX’s new rocket is changing the thinking of just about everyone in the space industry. With the unrealized but potentially game-changing benefits of refueling, Starship could carry the same amount of payload to higher orbits, the Moon, or Mars.
It’s important to note that Starship is still very much in its experimental phase, far from proving Elon Musk’s loftiest claims about what it can do. Still, NASA and the US military are considering novel ways to use Starship to fly to the Moon or transport cargo to far-flung war zones. Scientists are eager to use its enormous volume to launch giant space telescopes. Competitors are taking notice. China, the strongest strategic adversary America has ever faced, is looking for its own Starship. Now, some US satellite manufacturers are adapting for the substantial capacity of the world’s most powerful rocket.
This is a reversal of how things usually go in the balance of supply and demand between launch vehicles and satellite operators. Rocket designs have long engineered their vehicles to match trends in the satellite industry. They designed for their customers’ needs, or at least for what their customers were telling them they needed. But in 2026, a new era of abundant super-heavy-lift launch promises to unlock entirely new applications for satellites.
Historically, engineers relied on a few basic assumptions when it came time to design a new rocket. One was that their launch vehicle would deliver a single payload or a small number of satellites to space. These payloads would be stacked on top of their launch vehicle for release at just the right moment, in just the right orbit. Matching satellites and rockets followed a predictable, orderly pattern. Small satellites needed a small rocket, and larger payloads required a heavier launcher.
Perhaps the most fundamental assumption was that these satellites would ride to orbit inside the uppermost part of the rocket, protected by a clamshell-like aerodynamic shroud that would peel away once the launch vehicle soared above the atmosphere and reached the sterile environment of space.
The only launch vehicle to ever challenge these assumptions was NASA’s Space Shuttle, which deployed numerous satellites of all sizes in the first half of its career before it proved a commercial failure. NASA then turned its focus to constructing the International Space Station, a task the Space Shuttle marvelously completed upon retiring in 2011. Ultimately, the Shuttle was outclassed, at least on a commercial basis, by lower-cost expendable rockets. Its unique attributes never had much influence on how engineers designed their satellites.
Today, SpaceX’s Starship rocket is again promising to upend the launch industry and, by extension, the futures of those who build and own satellites. There are other super-heavy-lift rockets coming onto the market, too. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, particularly a yet-t0-fly upgraded variant with more engines, fits in between SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket and Starship.
A Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster lift off from Starbase, Texas.
Credit:<br>SpaceX
A Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster lift off from Starbase, Texas.
Credit:
SpaceX
Taking advantage
Starship’s first real payloads will be SpaceX’s own next-generation Starship V3 broadband satellites. It can carry up to 60 of them on a single launch. Starlink V3s are based on the same stackable, flat-satellite architecture as SpaceX’s existing Starlink satellites.
SpaceX shunned the conventional boxy satellite designs pretty much everyone else has used for more than a half-century. On the Falcon 9, stacks of Starlink satellites still ride to space on top of the rocket, inside a fairing, and then release all at once upon reaching orbit. The company first showed the utility of the flat-packed, stackable satellite architecture with Starlink beginning in 2019.
SpaceX uses a different approach on Starship, with Starlinks riding inside the vehicle’s fuselage, then ejecting through a small door on the side like a Pez dispenser. Pulleys and cables lower each satellite into position for deployment, one at a time, then the door closes to allow the...