SpaceX: 10,000 Launches Annually

Chris Forrester -- Hardly mentioned in the huge SpaceX IPO Prospectus published last Wednesday (May 20) was information repeated by the company's President & COO Gwynne Shotwell, and confirmed by FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, that SpaceX wants to be launching 10,000 rockets annually within 5 years.

Bedford said he met with Shotwell, who told him about the company's ambitious goals. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 deploying about 2,500 satellites. However, Bedford told journalists after a FAA meeting with the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, on May 19 that the FAA would need to see greater reliability before approving such a goal. "We need to see a lot more reliability," Bedford told reporters after the forum.

Bedford told journalists that he had had a "very frank" discussion with Shotwell, and reminded journalists that Donald Trump wants to get to the Moon before 2028 [and ahead of the US general elections due in 2028]: "To do that, we are going to have to work with industry to unlock that innovation," Bedford added.

The 10,000 launch target sounds crazily ambitious but when you mix the daily routine of building and replacing Starlink satellites, adding Version-3 satellites, plus launching Dragon cargo and astronaut missions to the International Space Station, as well as building up orbital data centres (a promised 1 million craft) and not forgetting Lunar ambitions and the obligations that would be placed on SpaceX for human support on the Moon, and the target seems much more reasonable.

Then there's Mars. Whether the world will see any activity in Musk's oft-repeated ultimate Mars ambition is to establish a self-sustaining, million-person civilization on the Red Planet to ensure humanity becomes a multi-planetary species, is currently debatable. But powered by SpaceX's massive, fully reusable Starship rockets, this long-term vision spans several interconnected phases, not least first getting to the Moon.

However, first Musk must build that city on the Moon. Musk is on record as saying that building "a self-growing city on the Moon," and arguing that it could be achieved in less than a decade, compared with more than 20 years for a similar plan for Mars. Remember, it is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (a six-month trip time), whereas rockets can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2-day trip time).

"Musk's ultimate goal is to get civilization to Mars. It's going to be very expensive, and as a soon-to-be public company, SpaceX needs to appease shareholders," said Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments, a venture capital firm invested in SpaceX, speaking before the IPO.

But the 10,000 rocket launches would boil down to a (claimed) launch cadence of a flight almost every hour! It is a spectacular ambition but never underestimate the ability of SpaceX - and Shotwell's team - of achieving what only a few years ago were considered impossible targets.

SpaceX currently flies about 160 orbital missions a year. It completed 154 launches in 2025 and hit 50 by late April 2026. The entire world managed about 250 launches during 2025. FAA Deputy Associate Administrator Minh Nguyen, speaking at the ASCEND 2026 conference in Washington DC on May 19 that the agency expects "another 1,000 launches and re-entries, likely in the next four or five years.

The FAA has approved SpaceX for a combined 195 launches per year across its four currently active sites. Starbase in Texas holds a 25-launch annual cap after the FAA raised it from just five in May 2025.

It is no wonder that Shotwell's team is looking for additional launch sites. The current position is that Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A was cleared for 44 Starship launches per year in a February 2026 environmental impact statement. Two new Starship pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station can handle 76 annually. Vandenberg in California was recently approved for 50 Falcon 9 launches, up from 36.

But consider this: A standard Boeing or Airbus intercontinental jet can see passengers de-planed, and the aircraft turned around, fuelled, catering on board and passengers in their seats within about an hour when the pressures are on! Low-cost airlines in Europe can do the same in nearer 45 minutes.

Indeed, SpaceX is no longer merely dominant in space. It has built something closer to a private monopoly on low-Earth orbit - and its IPO Prospectus lays out plans to entrench that position by orders of magnitude.

"You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great -- and that's what being a space-faring civilization is all about. It's about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars," states Musk.

The IPO explains: "[We] identify and create new trillion-dollar market opportunities. We focus on market opportunities that are useful for humanity and that present trillion-dollar opportunities, including global broadband and mobile connectivity for consumers, enterprises, and governments; and AI applications and computational infrastructure. We prioritize opportunities where structural inefficiencies or legacy technological limitations have constrained supply."

Three out of every four active manoeuvrable satellites in orbit are now SpaceX's. So are roughly two-thirds of all operational satellites of any kind. The Elon Musk-controlled company has launched some 80% of all mass to orbit globally every year since 2023. As at last week this equates to 9600 active Starlink satellite in orbit.

SpaceX generally, including Starlink and now its X, Grok and xAI segments, are looking like spectacularly successful businesses. Time will tell whether the investing public shares that view but SpaceX - in the IPO - pulls no punches saying that it will not be paying shareholders a dividend for the foreseeable future.