China launches three classified satellites into orbit
China today successfully launched three classified satellites into orbit, its Long March 11 rocket lifting off from a barge off the coast of China in the South China Sea.
No information at all was released about the three satellites, other than they were “experimental.”
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
94 SpaceX
63 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 63, and the entire world combined 108 to 99. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 99.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
China today successfully launched three classified satellites into orbit, its Long March 11 rocket lifting off from a barge off the coast of China in the South China Sea.
No information at all was released about the three satellites, other than they were “experimental.”
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
94 SpaceX
63 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 63, and the entire world combined 108 to 99. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 99.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The achievements of SpaceX continue to amaze. My only question: where is everyone else. Did all the other American companies only get 18 flights in all year? We need more flights from providers. SpaceX is close to having a monopoly on spaceflight and that could be a big problem later. I love what they are doing but they could start charging much more for flights and there really isn’t anything that could be done about it.
Joe: I intend to address your question about the overall lack of U.S. launches from everyone else in my annual global launch report, which I do after the year is complete.
There appear to be several reasons for the drop in U.S. launches by others, some expected, some not, some good, some bad.
One reason for the low launch rate from other U.S. companies is the loss of Virgin Orbit, which had planned half a dozen flights this year. It isn’t only the U.S. regulators who are stifling the growth of the space industry, the British regulators did not want to be left out of the growth-stifling game. Regulators have become a kind of gatekeeper for launch companies, being able to choose winners and losers, perhaps rewarding friends and punishing enemies, letting their greed for power corrupt their original regulatory purpose.
The need for other small satellite launchers is that each SpaceX Transporter launch puts many smallsats into virtually the same orbit, one of the popular sun synchronous orbits, but these orbits may not be optimal for all smallsats. The other small launchers can put their customers’ satellites into more optimal orbits. SpaceX’s Transporter launches are necessary, for without them we wouldn’t have much of a smallsat industry, but the Transporter launches are limited in their usefulness. This is a benefit of avoiding a SpaceX monopoly.
We certainly do not want SpaceX to replace the previous governmental launch monopoly with its own. When government was in charge of space launches, all we got launched was the intersection of what government’s gatekeepers allowed to be launched on the precious few available rockets and the payloads that could afford the high cost of the limited number of launches. If we replace that gatekeeper with SpaceX, then the only smallsats reaching their optimal orbits will be the ones that want the popular orbits, and launches will be limited to those times when SpaceX gets enough smallsat customers to justify a launch, and SpaceX would, by necessity, become a new type of gatekeeper. The Transporter launches are better than piggyback launches, but in some ways they have similar limitations. We definitely want launch services that specialize in small satellites.. We want more launch services specializing in larger payloads than we have now, just to keep SpaceX honest.
SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the most launched payload. Starlink is not a monopsony, as the government had virtually been for launch services, but it is not so far away from being one. It may be closing in on being the customer for almost a third of all orbital launches, this year, and I would be surprised if it wasn’t more than half the mass launched, this year.
Keep in mind that the purpose of the launch industry is to put useful hardware into orbit or beyond. The number of launches, exceeding 200 this year, indicates that we are getting more usefulness from space, and if the reentry gatekeepers will eventually allow it, we will begin getting products manufactured in space. This year, number of Starlink launches is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 — I haven’t counted the actual number — so in this year there has been well over a hundred other launches of other useful hardware. The commercial space industry is growing, and it is not only the communication satellites that are useful to We the People. We are making tremendous progress, even though it is not as much or as fast as we had expected five years ago.