SpaceX Smallsat Rideshare Program

Relatively small but very rapidly growing (like the smallsat market in general). A decade ago there were a dozen or so cubesats launched per year. Now there's a few hundred, and that number is projected to continue to grow [1].

Personally I do think that the small launcher market is a bit of a VC-subsidized bubble— I suspect that a lot of the companies in the space are going to fold over the next few years.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat#/media/File:Nanosatell...

> This initial configuration also includes J2 for the Sun, the planets, the Moon, and Vesta, so the resulting effects are felt (precession of Earth orbits, the possibility of heliosynchronous orbits, etc.).

Wow <3. I though the mod only did n-body physics, but it seems it goes beyond that. Thanks!

Not Lagrange points?

I think that's on a contract-by-contract basis. IIRC NASA still had to pay 80% of the costs for CRS-7, but Spacecom got a free launch after their payload was destroyed (that was kind of a weird case since the explosion happened before the point where their launch insurance would've kicked in, and the damage to the company was much larger than just the cost of replacing the payload)

I don’t think insurers ever get money from launch providers.

The insurance for that one got complicated. It was destroyed in a static fire test that would have been a few days before the launch. Their launch insurance wouldn't cover it, because even though it was destroyed by a rocket exploding on the launch pad, it wasn't actually going to launch. They also had marine cargo insurance to cover the satellite before then. However, pre-launch static fires with payload attached are pretty unusual in the launch business and the insurer had no idea this was going to be done. Arguing that they were unaware of the increased risk and that the insured failed to notify them as required, they only made a partial payment on the claim. A lawsuit ensued (no surprise with ~$100 million at stake) and is apparently still ongoing.

A rocket launch company website with an order form and fields labelled "Desired orbit", "Launch date" and "Payload mass". What time to be alive :)

No. Geosynchronous orbits are so far away that cameras can't see much detail. Sun-synchronous low earth orbits are much closer and they always pass over the light side of the planet allowing for consistent observation.

Communications is a huge one. Think satellite TV, telephone, and Internet services.

From the governmental side, another major application is Earth observation, both for science and for weather forecasting.

It makes me wonder if they have any projects planned that they can throw in if there are empty slots.

Maybe they're planning to fill vacancies with their own payloads that are not time sensitive?

another comment mentions starlink launches. If spaceX has 12000 satellites of their own that they need to send up, they can fill up a fair bit of unused capacity.

it sounds like they're essentially selling the opportunity to take the place of a starlink satellite in any given launch. if the customer cancels, no big deal - they'll just send the originally scheduled starlink satellite.

In their graphic, I count 7 15" ports and 8 24" ports, which at their before L-12 pricing is over $50 million. There's also the large port on top, which doesn't list pricing, but is presumably quite a bit more. The L-12 to L-6 pricing would be more as well. I believe their cost for a launch is something in the neighborhood of $30 million so they have quite a bit of margin to make money on this. Especially now that they're routinely reusing first stages and will probably use these flights as the final send-off for stages that are end-of-life.