SpaceX completes its third launch in less than 48 hours
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully completed its third launch in less than 48 hours, launching a commercial communications satellite.
The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. At this moment, though the satellite is in orbit it has not yet been deployed.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
26 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 35 to 18 in the national rankings, and leads the entire world combined 35 to 29.
At this point the U.S. is halfway to matching its annual record for launches of 70, set in 1966. With the year not quite half over, the U.S. is also only seven launches behind its total of 48 last year, which had been the most launches for the U.S. in a year since 1968. SpaceX itself is only five launches behind its own record of 31 from last year, and is easily on a pace to meet its goal of 60 launches this year.
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
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully completed its third launch in less than 48 hours, launching a commercial communications satellite.
The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. At this moment, though the satellite is in orbit it has not yet been deployed.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
26 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 35 to 18 in the national rankings, and leads the entire world combined 35 to 29.
At this point the U.S. is halfway to matching its annual record for launches of 70, set in 1966. With the year not quite half over, the U.S. is also only seven launches behind its total of 48 last year, which had been the most launches for the U.S. in a year since 1968. SpaceX itself is only five launches behind its own record of 31 from last year, and is easily on a pace to meet its goal of 60 launches this year.
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
Where is Lex Luthor and the BE4?
Spacex is reaching new milestones on it’s way to Mars
USAF man Hyten is on his way to Blue…”Twelve O’Clock High” mode hopefully.
Maximum Effort, or it’s the “Leper colony!”
The nighttime launches are always interesting.
Am I seeing lightning flashes in the background shortly after stage separation? (I watched a low-quality replay, but am downloading the hi-def stream.)
general comment on SpaceX coverage:
I am really (really) tired of hearing the announcer-girl explain how the soot on a re-used first stage got there. She tells that little story every single time.
Wayne,
Yep, that is lightning in the background.
If they’d just let Kate Tice narrate every launch…
“American private enterprise now leads China 35 to 18 in the national rankings, and leads the entire world combined 35 to 29.”
Once again the real story is SpaceX.
It’s 2022 and not only is SpaceX leading by a large margin, it’s still accelerating away from the competition.
Three launches in one weekend! One payload was a German gov’t satellite – it didn’t go up on a European rocket (Ariane 6 is delayed again…).
How different things would be had Musk not had an interest in space.
We would be celebrating the impending debut of an American private enterprise rocket engine to replace the Russian ones launching our important payloads. There would be excitement that finally NASA’s big SLS is stacked and getting through final testing.
And Bob Z would probably be writing pieces about how companies like Rocket Lab are ushering in a future era of true private space launch with cost saving innovations. But of course space is hard, this IS rocket science, so things take time…
Yep lightning, even though the host said nitrogen thrusters… which is strange since as far as I know, cold gaseous nitrogen doesn’t glow in the dark. :)
Whatever, everybody makes mistakes.
To Mitch.
Without Musk China would be ahead…and NASA better funded.. Musk gave people an excuse to let up on the gas—a mistake in my estimation. You go all out across the board.
Without the African-American Elon (today on Juneteenth)…….
NASA would be pushing on it’s BHB’s Prime Directives of Muslim Outreach and deep search into the Islamic History of Sciences (defining the beginnings of Global Warming Science with the discovery of “ZERO”).
And We would still be buying Seats to the ISS, if it had not be deorbited by current land invasions…..
Thus the Current NASA Budget would be lower and the unmanned science probes budget would have been cut by half to start the next Station ….. ten years from now when SLS goes into full production of 2 to 3 stacks (@3 billion each) per Year.
SARC….OFF
…
The concept of (a column-placeholding) zero (in the context of a positional numbering system) was invented by the Babylonians during the 4th century BC. The concept of the number zero (the integer 1 less than 1) was invented by the Hindu mathematician Brahmagupta at around 628 AD.
Meanwhile, the newfangled base-10 positional numbering system (invented during the 1st half of the 1st millennium AD) originally didn’t even have a (column-placeholding) zero, but consisted of nine digits only. By the time that system came to the attention of the West (at around the turn of the 2nd millennium AD) it still possessed only nine digits — not to speak of still being unable to express decimal fractions (writing, e.g., 3.14… for pi) until the 16th century AD when Western mathematicians extended the system so as to include decimal fractions (the Babylonian positional system had possessed such a “fractional” capability since nearly the end of the 3rd millennium BC!).
Mathematical historian Carl B. Boyer put the latter capability’s exceedingly late acquisition by the decimal system thusly: “It is one of the ironies of history that the chief advantage of positional notation — its applicability to fractions — almost entirely escaped the users of the Hindu-Arabic numerals [that is: decimal, base-10 notation] for the first thousand years of their existence.”
Don’t you just hate Elon Musk and all his money? That imperialist wants to colonize – that’s right, COLONIZE – the solar system.! He’s going to enslave the Martians!!
OK, I misspelled COLONIZE in my righteous wrath. Bob, could you fix, please. Thanks! (if only there was an edit option….)
Col: Fixed. I have asked in the past about adding an edit function, but to do so I think would require a very complex set of actions, possibly including requiring people to register, extra work I don’t need.
Sir Bob…..
? ? ? ?
I don’t know if any of you satellite watchers ever have tracked any of the Starlink satellites, but I did the other night. Almost looked like meteors. For about 7-8 minutes a string of them winked in and out – going bright, then fading, then re-appearing. My guess is that they were rotating, revealing more reflective and less reflective surfaces. Pretty interesting contrast to most satellites I’ve watched over the years.
Maths is not my strong point, but it looks like SpaceX has matched China and Russia combined.