Trump wants 1,000 space launches a year. What if one link breaks?

On Oct. 1 and early Oct. 2, SpaceX completed a remarkable launch sequence. NASA’s Crew-13 lifted from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9. Roughly three hours later, Transporter-18 launched 130 rideshare payloads from Vandenberg. Before midnight in Florida, a Falcon Heavy launched the classified NROL-97 mission from Kennedy Space Center. Three launches, three pads, two coasts, and less than 13 hours separated the first liftoff from the third.

That is an extraordinary demonstration of American launch capacity. It also illustrates a distinction Washington should make explicit as it pursues President Donald Trump’s goal of more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030: throughput and resilience are not the same metric.