Elon Musk has never been short on ambition, but his latest prediction sets a new bar even for SpaceX. On Aug. 24, after SpaceX completed three Falcon launches in just 51 hours, one user on X remarked the company was "getting closer to the airline cadence." Musk's response?
"Yes. In about 6 or 7 years, there will be days where Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours," he posted on X.
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The idea of rockets launching once an hour, every hour, used to sound like science fiction. But Musk's claim builds on real progress. SpaceX has turned Falcon 9 into a workhorse, with boosters now flying more than 30 times each. Starship, the fully reusable mega-rocket still in its early flight phase, is designed to scale that frequency to levels previously unimaginable.
NASA's Space Shuttle, often described as reusable, came with a steep price tag of about $54,500 per kilogram. SpaceX has since shattered that benchmark: Falcon Heavy, its largest current rocket, brings the price down to roughly $2,000 per kilogram. Musk has said Starship should start near $1,000 per kilogram, with a long-term goal of $100, according to The Sunday Times of London.
For satellite operators, governments, and investors, those numbers are game-changing. A launch rate of 24 in 24 hours could make it possible to deploy an entire satellite constellation in a single day, resupply lunar bases in waves, or launch Mars-bound cargo with the frequency of cargo ships leaving a port. What once required years of planning could, in Musk's scenario, be compressed into hours.
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For Musk's vision to work, SpaceX would need to operate more like an airport than a rocket range. That means rapid pad turnarounds, boosters landing and relaunching within hours, hardware durable enough to avoid lengthy repairs, and automation to handle scheduling, fueling, and safety checks almost instantly.
The hurdles, though, are massive. In May, the Federal Aviation Administration raised SpaceX's cap to 25 Starship launches a year from its Boca Chica, Texas site—still a far cry from daily liftoffs. Every mission demands enormous amounts of liquid methane and oxygen, along with careful coordination to keep airspace and shipping lanes clear. And even if Starship delivers on its promise of full reusability, scaling up to hourly launches would require infrastructure and logistics on a scale the industry has never attempted.
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But SpaceX has already made improbable feats look routine. When Musk first promised rocket landings, critics laughed. Today, Falcon 9 boosters are landing and relaunching so reliably that the novelty has worn off. The recent three launches in just over two days show how fast the company is accelerating its pace.
If Musk is right, the era of rockets as rare events could soon give way to something far more radical: launches as common as airline departures. That's not hyperbole—it's the vision Musk himself put forward. And while it may still be years away, the trajectory suggests it's no longer unthinkable.
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