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The World's Busiest Spaceport Is About To Get a Lot Quieter, At Least For Now (arstechnica.com) 30

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-an-era dept.
SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month.

It wasn't long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX's launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida's east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015.

"From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship," Dontchev wrote on X. "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg." "Yep, that'll be louder -- but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so," writes schwit1. SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually."

Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)

The World's Busiest Spaceport Is About To Get a Lot Quieter, At Least For Now More | Reply

The World's Busiest Spaceport Is About To Get a Lot Quieter, At Least For Now

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  • "Further Reading" is hilarious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday August 29, 2026 @09:02AM (#66312618) Homepage

    Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)

    TL/DR, the author thinks that SpaceX shutting down Falcon 9 launches from Florida was secretly a magnanimous gesture by a charitable Elon Musk to boost the competition:

    I therefore honestly believe that SpaceX’s decision was not entirely based on its own internal needs. Those needs certainly were the main motive, but based on Elon Musk’s passionate dream of making the human race multi-planetary, as well as his repeated willingness to help his competitors when they needed SpaceX to launch their satellites, I believe he recognized that SpaceX’s dominance could be hurting the rest of the rocket industry, and that the instant it made business sense to clear the field for these competitors, he was quite willing to do so.

    LOL.

  • What does California have over Florida, in terms of orbital launches?

    Turning down customers seems like a very odd choice, regardless of what the sycophantic and deluded blog writer thinks.

    Starship launches are still "forever" away. They're not even worth consideration at this time.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      They've been launching dummysats from Starship for a number of launches now, so I'm not sure why you think they're "forever away". The only reasons they've been using dummysats and not actual satellites is 1) Not wanting to risk more valuable payloads thusfar, and 2) wanting to keep Starship suborbital (e.g. trajectory that reintersects the atmosphere) at just under orbital velocity until they can verify deorbit reliability (failure to do so would leave that massive ship falling onto a random point on Eart

    • Because of the direction the earth orbits, California has a big ocean for failures to drop into. Plus Florida is a fucking armpit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      Launched to polar orbits. It's the safest location to do so outside of Alaska.

    • Turning down customers seems like a very odd choice,

      How do you get from "no more Starlink launches on Falcon 9 in Florida" to turning down customers? Starlink IS part of SpaceX. What customer is being turned down? If Amazon Leo were to say "hey SpaceX we are WAY behind on our launches can you do a few dozen launches on Falcon 9 from Florida for us", SpaceX would do them (for a price of course). They have before.

      • However, the company has also apparently indicated to a wide range of small payload customers that it is no longer taking orders for its many-smallsat Transporter launches, and I suspect the same applies for its larger many-payload Bandwagon launches.

        It is in the "Further reading" article. https://behindtheblack.com/beh... [behindtheblack.com]

    • The only Falcon 9 launches killed ate the Starlink ones, none of its other launches for putting stuff up there for clients are killed. The project for putting Starlink v2 satellites in space has finished, and v3 are being delivered by Starship. 1 Starship launch can carry up to 60 Starlink v3 in one flight, remember one v3 satellite replaces about 10 v2 satellites. And going forward Starship will carry and deliver a bunch if v3 satellites with every new orbital testflight, which are planned with a cadence o
  • "cadence" is a word I saw once every several years. Now it's a word I see once a week.

    • "Launch cadence" has been a standard term in the industry for a long time. https://books.google.com/ngram... [google.com]

    • Ars had a bit of an AI embarrassment a few months ago and have sworn that all future articles will be written by humans. Frankly, I don't believe a word of it. But, that's their official claim.

      Regardless, cadence isn't at all uncommon and not a strong indicator of AI generation. No single word is an indicator of AI generation. Your unfamiliarity with a word does not indicate AI generation. I frequently use "cadence" where appropriate. Do you think that I'm an AI, Greg?

    • "cadence" is a word I saw once every several years. Now it's a word I see once a week.

      You're obviously not an electrical engineer then. ;-)

  • Yet he doesn't seem to be able to decouple from it completely.

    1. Vandenburg Air force base is the premier launch site in the United States to launch satellites into polar orbit due to launch safety concerns.
    2. Musk's Hawthorn design center designs the rockets and the motors. I suspect Musk can't close this down unless he finds other talented engineers to work in southern states with shitty labor laws.
    3. Musk hasn't closed the Tesla plant in Fremont but of all the locations which could eventually close, this

  • Cape Canaveral nee Kennedy renovated by President Donald J. Trump and paid for by the Trump Kennedy Fund.

  • It's the bottom of the world. Less fuel required. You just cut the rope and they will fall into orbit! LOL

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