SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites, bringing the size of the constellation to 240 satellites.
They also successfully recovered the first stage, which was making its third flight. They also caught one of the two fairing halves in the ship net, recovering the second half out of the ocean.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
3 China
2 SpaceX
1 Arianespace (Europe)
The launch replay is embedded below the fold.
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Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites, bringing the size of the constellation to 240 satellites.
They also successfully recovered the first stage, which was making its third flight. They also caught one of the two fairing halves in the ship net, recovering the second half out of the ocean.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
3 China
2 SpaceX
1 Arianespace (Europe)
The launch replay is embedded below the fold.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
Did they succeed with the fairing recoveries?
MDN: I have updated the post. One fairing captured in the net, the other recovered from the ocean.
Third landing for this core, having now launched from all three launch pads.
So their Starlink missions have mostly used 3rd and 4th flight of boosters. Talk about reducing costs!
Now if only they would release costs on refurb, and how much cheaper a re-flown booster is vs a new one.
Interestingly if you look at the Wiki tracking cores, there have not been a lot of new cores added to the fleet in a while. Seems like manufacturing rate of Booster cores is severly reduced or else they are storing a bunch of them somewhere.
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/cores
Nice problem to have. Too many usable cores to refly…
Pleasantly surprised to see video of the fairing, and nice to see the barge landing without the signal dropping off at the last second.
There’s a nice view of the shockwave–>
https://youtu.be/1KmBDCiL7MU?t=745
Given that F9 1st and 2nd stages are made on mostly the same tooling, the reduction in S1 construction has almost certainly been compensated for by increased S2 construction to support the desired mission cadence. I wouldn’t be surprised if S2 production never slackened last year, even though the overall mission count was down. It would be good to have a stash of new S2’s in the barn going into 2020 to support the planned tripling or more of average launch cadence.