New Falcon 9 successfully launches used Dragon cargo ship
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has successfully launched a used Dragon cargo ship to ISS using a new Falcon 9 rocket.
They also successfully landed the first stage, the 39th time they have done so. Dragon will arrive at ISS in two days.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
6 China
5 SpaceX
4 Europe (Arianespace)
3 Russia
The U.S. has extended its lead over China 9-6 in the national rankings.
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Capitalism in space: SpaceX has successfully launched a used Dragon cargo ship to ISS using a new Falcon 9 rocket.
They also successfully landed the first stage, the 39th time they have done so. Dragon will arrive at ISS in two days.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
6 China
5 SpaceX
4 Europe (Arianespace)
3 Russia
The U.S. has extended its lead over China 9-6 in the national rankings.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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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 if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The Sea landings are particularly impressive.
Shouldn’t be too very long before a child watches a launch video pre-2015 and asks their parent: “Mommy, why are they throwing the rocket away?”
How do you count the falcon heavy (flight 2) center core? It landed, but did not make it back to port?
Saw someone call that landed but not recovered. What a wonderful time we live in, where that is a distinction with a difference!
I would count it as a successful landing…. The body of the stage broke off, but apparently the engines were ok.
“The operation was successful, but the patient died”
29 August 1829, Savannah Georgian (Savannah, GA), pg. 3, col. 1:
A successful operation!—A late paper has the following paragraph: “Amputation at the hip joint. This operation was performed about two months ago at Odinburgh (Edinburgh) by Mr. Liston. The operation was successful, but the patient died!“
The point of the whole exercise was recover and bring an intact booster back to dry land for processing. Anything else is a failure
Col Beausabre wrote: “The point of the whole exercise was recover and bring an intact booster back to dry land for processing. Anything else is a failure”
It depends upon how you look at it.
When I was a kid, I thought of rocket launches as being a part of the mission, like an Apollo mission. To me, a mission that failed after a successful launch was a failure, and it did not matter to me that the rocket was a success. That a rocket was called a success for a failed mission seemed like saying “the operation was a success; the patient died.”
Once I got into the industry, the distinction became clear: a rocket that succeeded got a check in the win column, and a failed payload was not the rocket’s fault.
So how do we want to look at this particular launch, landing, and recovery?
The rocket worked and put a functional payload into proper orbit. The launch was a success. The mission is, so far, a success.
The center core landed on the drone ship. A success for the landing system.
The center core was lost during recovery operations. A failure for the recovery system as well as for the company’s long-term operations. The company now has to build another core to replace the lost core, costing money, costing some amount of reputation, and possibly costing schedule (although I think the schedule is currently stretched out enough that it is not affected). Because the expensive engines were recovered, the financial cost may have been lower than it could have been.
We should also remember that SpaceX launched while knowing that they had a fair chance of losing the center core. This decision was made to maintain schedule, another important consideration. For SpaceX, keeping their customers happy was worth the risk of the loss of the center core. The consequences of this loss are not very high — no injuries, just an extra expense that they might have avoided had things worked out differently. I count this as a success for schedule and customer satisfaction.
Blue Origin plans to land its New Glenn first stages on a moving ship, because this should be more stable than a stationary ship.