Falcon Heavy launches successfully
Capitalism in space: The Falcon Heavy successfully launched tonight, and is presently deploying the 24 satellites on board.
They successfully landed the two first stage side boosters, but the core stage apparently just missed hitting the drone ship in the Atlantic. You could see it come down, but not on the pad. While SpaceX has now successfully recovered all six side boosters on all three Falcon Heavy launches, they have not yet succeeded in recovering the core stage.
The mission’s full success will not be known for several hours, as the satellite deployments unfold. So far the first two satellites have been deployed successfully.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
8 China
8 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
3 India
The U.S. has now widened its lead over China in the national rankings, 13 to 8.
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Capitalism in space: The Falcon Heavy successfully launched tonight, and is presently deploying the 24 satellites on board.
They successfully landed the two first stage side boosters, but the core stage apparently just missed hitting the drone ship in the Atlantic. You could see it come down, but not on the pad. While SpaceX has now successfully recovered all six side boosters on all three Falcon Heavy launches, they have not yet succeeded in recovering the core stage.
The mission’s full success will not be known for several hours, as the satellite deployments unfold. So far the first two satellites have been deployed successfully.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
8 China
8 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
3 India
The U.S. has now widened its lead over China in the national rankings, 13 to 8.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
And I saw that GO Ms Tree (Renamed Mr Steven) may have caught a fairing.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-first-successful-falcon-fairing-catch-mr-steven-ms-tree/
Woo Hoo! More reuse than pretty much any other launch (Shuttle excluded due to reuse definitions. Has to cost LESS to reuse than otherwise to count).
This never gets old.
Always some new and interesting twist. Maybe not every flight, but they do not quite seem to stop innovating. How lovely.
Flight FH2 landed its center core (B1055) — one out of three (so far) ain’t bad considering that we used to loose 100% of the rockets!
V-Man: Just so there is no confusion, I was very careful what I wrote. While they did successfully land the core on the second Falcon Heavy launch, they did not really recover it.
geoffc: Thank you! I have posted this on the main page.
@V-Man I know. I thought about qualifying that. BUt I thought, no one would be petty enough to pick a nit that small. I was incorrect. :) On the internet there are NO nits too small to pick!
The difference between landing a stage and recovering a stage and all that.
Should count as 1 out of 3, and dang it was exciting. And I fully agree, totally awesome compared to every other launcher on the planet.
Not being able to secure it in high seas is just nitty gritty details that they already had a solution (Xoomba/Roomba) that was not modified in time in for the F-H launch to properly grab it. (Though rumour was it had been modified for this landing attempt). (Grab points on the booster, used by Xoomba on F9 are used to connect the side boosters to the core, so the Xoomba connector needed to be modified).
They didn’t recover the core, but the side boosters landed just fine. It was like watching a 1950’s sci fi movie. Gotta love living in the future.
Chris Lopes wrote: “Gotta love living in the future.”
For a while, we thought it would never get here. I’m so glad that it did.
The best part is that it looks like there is even more future to come.
I noticed that several of the satellites are technology demonstration or test satellites. It seems to me that the number of these new technologies has increased over the past decade. This bodes well for the future, where Chris Lopes reminds us we will live, some day.
It seems that the reduced cost of access to space makes technology innovation testing less expensive and, as expected by economics, more common.