Starlink Makes Money
As part of her talk during the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation conference on February 8th, COO and President of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell, spoke briefly about the company’s profitability.
Beginning with a brief mention of the company’s focus on the production side of their rockets - specifically their prototype Starship vehicle - Shotwell made the point that Starship needs to launch hundreds of flights before people can ride along safely, which means Starship likely won’t be profitable for some time.
That’s mostly what Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsules are for. Gwynne noted that the two vehicles are the current workhorses of the company, and are the things making money for SpaceX. Aside from their many, many contracts for things like satellite deployments and rideshares, the company also raised $750 million USD in its most recent round of funding, mostly on the confidence of Falcon 9’s incredible reliability and mission turnaround times.
But that’s not the only thing SpaceX has going for it.
As a final bit of the conversation, Shotwell mentioned that Starlink - SpaceX’s satellite internet network - will begin making money this year!
SpaceX has launched over 3,500 satellites to date, and has been launching them since 2019. Over the course of 2022, Starlink has seen its user count grow very quickly, and new partners in the Cruise-line industry have pumped enough money into the program that Shotwell says enabled Starlink to have its first cash-flow positive quarter in 2022.
Given that SpaceX was given approval by the FCC to launch another 7,500 next generation Starlink V2 satellites, the growth of SpaceX’s broadband service will likely keep the cash-flow going - and support other company endeavours.
Currently it looks like Starlink’s V2 satellites require the still-in-testing Starship for deployment, but CEO Elon Musk has predicted the first test flight of the Super Heavy system will be in March - and if all goes well we could see some test deployments by year’s end.
SpaceX might also figure out some way to launch the V2s if Starship runs into some snags in the testing process, but for now it’s a very good sign that the company has started being profitable in another way.
It’s going to be a big year for all of Elon’s companies, it seems.