Falcon Heavy launches successfully for 1st time since 2019
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully put a military reconnaissance satellite using its Falcon Heavy rocket, its first launch since 2019.
The two side boosters and core stage all made their first flight. The core stage was intentionally not recovered, as it needed to use all its fuel for getting the satellite to its orbit. The two side boosters successfully landed at SpaceX’s two landing sites at Cape Canaveral.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
50 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 70 to 47, though it still trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 70.
This year’s 70 successful launches ties the previous high for the United States in a single year, set in 1966. With two months still left in the year, it looks like that record will be broken, by a lot.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully put a military reconnaissance satellite using its Falcon Heavy rocket, its first launch since 2019.
The two side boosters and core stage all made their first flight. The core stage was intentionally not recovered, as it needed to use all its fuel for getting the satellite to its orbit. The two side boosters successfully landed at SpaceX’s two landing sites at Cape Canaveral.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
50 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 70 to 47, though it still trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 70.
This year’s 70 successful launches ties the previous high for the United States in a single year, set in 1966. With two months still left in the year, it looks like that record will be broken, by a lot.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
This was fun to watch. They had cameras on each booster.
Watching from one booster, you could see the landing burn of the other.
Lots of good shots on this one.
That was beautiful!
Especially the booster landings.
Q: At what point will the Chinese steal this tech ability to land those boosters from SpaceX?
(Why can they not do this?)
I am sure they are hard at work trying to do so.
A wonderful stat I read on arstechnica is that SpaceX now has more landings than launches this year!
I noticed that there was a distinct delay in the commencement of the boost-back burns between the two side boosters. This had the effect of introducing a delay between the two in all subsequent events up to touchdown.
In the previous FH flights I was under the impression that everything happened much closer to simultaneously, although not perfectly so. I am sure this phasing was intentional, but I wonder what purpose it served?
Ray,
Not only that, but watching the boosters separate, it SEEMED that there was about a .5 second delay between them. While watching I attributed that to signal delay. Now I am not so sure.
After separation, nothing was simultaneous. Was still very cool.
Maybe for filming purposes.
I bet that center core bracing could take an oblique wing pivot an nose gear-with the landing legs replaced by a single B-52 landing gear bogie.
Elon should keep the Falcon Heavy supported. In reality, I think it has a better chance of being accepted for human transportation than the Starship. The Star Ship death dive is baked into the cake and will really mess everything up when it finally happens.
SpaceX has been so successful that they may have forgotten that Nemesis is quietly waiting. I’m hoping someone at a high level there realizes this but is going along with all the current optimism because that the thing to do right now.
from a programmer’s perspective, seeing boosters land simultaneously is mindblowing
the PID loops controlling guidance must be incredible
shows the power of tolerating failure — remember, SpaceX crashed dozens of very expensive rockets perfecting that technology at a time when few thought reuse was possible
to this day no one else has landed an orbital rocket and few are even trying
Back in its Glory Days when NASA launched their rockets the Birds would fly about but always returned