On February 20, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, outlined an ambitious plan, stating that the Starship vehicle will eventually launch more than 10,000 satellites into orbit each year. The remarks were made in response to a technology blogger on the social platform X (formerly Twitter), who noted that the number of active Starlink satellites is expected to exceed 10,000 as early as next month.

What does launching 10,000 satellites per year signify? According to data from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, since the dawn of the space age, approximately 15,000 satellites have been launched globally by early 2025. Musk's proposal implies that Starship's annual launch volume could approach or even surpass the total number of satellites launched by humanity over several decades.

The current design payload capacity of Starship is approximately 150 tons to low Earth orbit and 100 tons to geostationary orbit. Based on SpaceX's second-generation Starlink satellites, the full-size version weighs an estimated 1.25 tons, while the optimized mini version ranges from 0.5 to 0.8 tons. Theoretically, Starship could carry up to about 100 second-generation Starlink satellites per launch, aligning with the expected target for the third-generation Starship (V3) variant: deploying 100 Starlink satellites in a single mission.

In March of last year, Musk disclosed that the third-generation Starship system is undergoing design refinements, with confidence in achieving a 100-ton payload capacity to orbit by 2026. The system is expected to be fully reusable and reach a launch frequency of once per week within 12 months after that.

From a purely numerical perspective, if each Starship V3 launch carries 100 satellites, achieving 10,000 satellite launches annually would require 100 launches per year—equivalent to one launch every 3.65 days. This remains a significant step beyond Musk's earlier projection of achieving weekly launches by around 2027.

It is important to note that the Falcon 9 rocket required over a decade of iteration to achieve its current reliability and launch frequency. For Starship to rapidly scale its launch cadence to 100 missions per year in a short time frame represents a substantial engineering challenge.

However, if the goal of launching 10,000 satellites per year is realized, it would further solidify SpaceX's dominant position in the commercial space sector.