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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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