Wow really puts the current heavy lift market into perspective with 4 Starship prototype launches and 2 Falcon Heavy.
I don’t think prototype testing really reflects on the market either way. Starship is going to enable new markets, with designs that are currently unlaunchable and incredibly inexpensive tonnage to orbit.
Heavy was deprecated because advancements with F9 made it nearly as capable, and only certain mission profiles require the extra cores. The engineering to adapt F9 into Heavy was onerous enough to make upgraded Heavy not worthwhile for few payloads.
Heavy was deprecated because advancements with F9 made it nearly as capable
Most of those advancements translated directly into improved FH performance as well. I think the main reason we don’t see more FH launches is the difficulty they’ve had in recovering the center core.
It is thought that a fully reusable FH might be cheaper than an expending an F9, but since they’ve had a low success rate at recovering the center core, expending an older F9 booster seems to be their preference.
Had you expected the heavy lift market to be larger or smaller?
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