OneWeb does a deal for SpaceX to launch their satellites.

[Suff]

OneWeb to resume satellite launches through agreement with SpaceX
Agreement will enable OneWeb to resume its launch programme and complete satellite constellation for industry-grade secure connectivity around the world.
London, U.K., 21 March, 2022 – OneWeb, the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company, announced today that the company and SpaceX entered into an agreement that will enable OneWeb to resume satellite launches.

IMO it was only a matter of time.

The interesting thing will be how much this speeds up the OneWeb deployment and if any questions will be asked in Government as to why OneWeb, which we spent a lot of money on, was spending $100m to launch 36 satellites when SpaceX can launch 72 for $50m????

[Workingman]

Well they had to find someone / somewhere else as Soyuz and Baikonur are now out of bounds; it is not a commercial decision.

Also I am not sure about the numbers. I looked ages ago, when the rescue package was put in place, and Reuters was reporting $1.4m per satellite launch so 36 would be $50.4 million. Business insider says that a Falcon 9 launch is $62m.

[Suff]

Yep, but this launch, just cancelled, was reported as $80 to $100m paid in full in advance. Perhaps this was incorrect.

Spacex has the cheapest launch in the business, they charge you $62m for a new rocket or $50m for a reused booster.

This might sound like the same, except Soyuz has a max lift of 7.8 tonnes. Falcon 9 a max lift of 22 tonnes. Also this launch weight was under 6 tonnes with packaging, so it is likely to be volume was the issue.

Falcon 9 has more than twice the volume of Soyuz and more than twice the weight.

Therefore it is safe to assume that with a reused booster Oneweb could launch twice the load for the same price or rideshare for half the price.

In fact rideshare could be cheaper if they shared with more dense payloads which took more of the per kg cost.

Either way if it were me auditing it, I would be asking questions.

[Workingman]

I understand all that but for this multi £billion enterprise OneWeb is not going to use second-hand Falcon boosters. Soyuz has a 100% success rate for One Web, Falcon 2nds have failed and are unknown.

[Suff]

No Falcon 9's, using a re-used booster, have failed on launch. Since they upgraded their thrusters on the drone platforms, they haven't missed one. Since they found one of their suppliers had failed to remove a protective varnish on some of the booster parts, after treatment and cleaned them all off, there have been no failures to boost back to the landing.

The first Falcon heavy central booster ran out of igniter fuel and didn't make the landing. That has since been rectified.

There hasn't been a Falcon fail on take off since 2016. Even NASA use re-used boosters and the US space force are considering it. SpaceX has had two destroyed cargo's. One was a failure during launch in 2015. The other was during fuelling in 2016. SpaceX has now launched more rockets than the United Launch alliance and the planned cadence for 2022 is going to leave ULA even further behind.

Interesting point to note. As of the start of this year SpaceX has boosted more mass to orbit than every other launch provider on the planet..... Since space launches began! A growing, number of which were on re-used boosters. This re-use of boosters will continue. F9 boosters were designed for 10x re-use. At the last Starlink launch, the booster managed it's 12th landing. Although I'm yet to see a photo of it landing as the lights went out after it landed. Might have been just a tad hard.

Also if you recall, just a few years ago, one of the Soyuz ISS missions had an aborted take-off. OK for the human cargo, had it been an satellite lift? Total loss.

Further reading to understand.

F9 launch stats. Including re-used boosters.
Relative launches so far in 2022 compared to the rest of the world
History of F9 booster re-use but located at the time they transitioned to normal re-use. Note it was 5 years ago without a single re-used booster failure on launch.

Just looking at SpaceX launches schedulled for customers, they have 33 launches planned for 2022. But SpaceX also has a schedule of 2x Starlink launches a month pencilled in. Without OneWeb, SpaceX are intending to launch 1/3 the lifetime launch cadence of ULA in one year. By the end of May SpaceX will have launched more missions than Soyuz. By the end of 2025, SpaceX will have launched more missions than ULA and Soyuz together.

The vast majority of these missions will be flown on re-used boosters. Yes they are going to start failing to land and SpaceX will need more new boosters. It costs SpaceX $35m to make a booster. They tend to fly them at least 8 times on average. Some missions require expendable boosters because they need a bigger push.

However, by 2025, Starship will take over. The booster for Starship is designed to be able to land, re-fuel and launch again in 2 hours. F9 takes 50 days.

We have finally hit the 21st century in space technology and it is dramatic, to say the least. Personally I want to know why OneWeb and the UK government wanted to use an old, antiquated, expensive, 20th century launch provider. Instead of a cheap, modern and thoroughly 21st century launch provider.