SpaceX launches 116 payloads on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission
SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.
The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.
These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.
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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.
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SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.
The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.
These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.
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.
Robert writes:
“These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost [was] high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.”
This, in a nutshell, is the way that the market system “works,” making what were once unaffordable luxuries accessible to more and more people and democratizing the space frontier. Those with long memories will remember Nikita Khrushchev’s historic visit to the United States in 1959, in which he witnessed this phenomenon at first hand*. Sixty-five years later, the neo-Khrushchev’s among us still haven’t absorbed this lesson, and — unencumbered by history, logic, or common sense — they are once again calling for price controls and a managed, soviet-style economy.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_visit_by_Nikita_Khrushchev_to_the_United_States
The market system, need anyone be reminded, is not an ideology — although some people treat it as such — but a distillation of thousands of years of human experience in terms of what works (and what doesn’t) in terms meeting the needs of individuals and society in a fair, efficient, and moral fashion. As such, it is one of humanity’s greatest “inventions” and we ignore it at our peril.
Yet it says nowhere “by the market, of the market and for the market.”
Imagine if slavery still existed…with some states free and others slave.
Businessmen might well move to slave states for free labor–and the libertarian mantra would be “see? Government regulation ran those businesses off.”
The market has another name you know.
Mammon.
The free market allowed industry to move overseas and helped build China into a power where industry towns collapsed.
Jeff Wright asked: “Imagine if slavery still existed . . .”
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-still-have-slavery
I have long thought that it would be a fantastic legacy if the descendants of slaves in this country were to work to eradicate that vile institution. There seems to be more interest in complaining about minor differences, rather than helping a brother out.
I remember talk radio in the 90’s calling unions selfish and how great free trade was to people overseas.
They sounded like today’s anti-trumpers.
Jeff — You have a point, but quoting myself, “The market system, need anyone be reminded, is not an ideology — although some people treat it as such.”
The market system — my definition — is an “operating system” that a helps human beings allocate scarce resources in rational and productive, ways that (ideally) provide maximum benefits to both individuals and to society. And, yes, as in anything else, this way of doing things has defects (“market failures”) aplenty, given the veil of uncertainty and our fallen human nature. Sure, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman tried to make a secular religion out of it, and a lot of people bought into this notion with the results that you cite, including out-sourcing, off-shoring, and the hollowing out of the American industrial heartland, among others*.
*All of these failures have been well documented, from Marx to Thomas Piketty, and, yes, it’s not a “perfect” system.
To simplify things even more (Jeff, did you ever take Econ 101?), over thousands of years, human beings have evolved two different kinds of systems for dealing with the creation and distribution of material goods. In the first system, the command economy, those in charge simply decree what shall be produced and who gets it. This approach seems to be inextricably bound up with the idea of *scarcity*, and command economies, if not based on the paucity of products and resources at the outset, inevitably seem to end up in this state. (We see this happening in places like Venezuela in real time.) Nice enough if you are in charge, though.
The market system, in contrast, seems to have evolved through centuries of trial and error as a response to the problem of how to deal with the increasing availability of resources and production of goods and services and, of fundamental importance, as an alternative to the constraints and inequities of the command system. Moreover — and the free market fundamentalists get this part right — once something like the basic elements of a market system are put in place, the creative energies of individuals and groups of individuals (from limited stock companies like the East India Company to our modern corporations) are unleashed, and more goods and services are created in the classic example of a positive feedback loop, exactly as we have witnessed in the rise of China’s economy. (Note, however, that abundance can create its own problems, cf, the Great Depression.)
Finally — and this is getting uncomfortably long — consider that these “operating systems” almost universally (well, there is the example of the Ferengi) exist within the context of some overarching system of morality and ethics which set limits on what the market system is allowed to decide and — critically — toward what ultimate ends it deployed.** In the case of the United States***, the creative power (along with its tendency toward “creative destruction”) of the market system was constrained and channeled within the strictures of our Judeo-Christian culture, and our unique American civilization has been the result. The take-away is that the market system can “power” different kinds of societies, both “good” and “bad,” depending on what you believe in.
**China is the perfect example of a command society that has incorporated all of the functional parts of a market system — again, it’s a *tool*, not a philosophy — to insure maximum productivity, increase its power on the world stage, and to keep its population pacified.
As has often been reported, one of the great failures of American foreign policy was the mistaken belief that the adoption of the mechanics of a market system by the CCP would lead to the liberalization / democratization of its government. Wishful thinking in its purest form. Means versus ends, if you will.
*** Jeff, it sounds almost like you buy into the thesis of the 1619 Project. Do you *really* believe that the United States was “founded” on nothing but greed and slavery?
Milt: Very nicely put.
“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.
He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”
― Adam Smith
Keynes V. Hayek
https://youtu.be/GTQnarzmTOc
10:09
I am sure the union violence in the 80s and 90s had nothing to do with that. And the UAW destroying Detroit did not help.
I will never work for a union company outside of a right to work state.
I’m very much of two minds about unions and free trade. Unions are more the more complex issue. Free trade is simple: It is a benefit to both when partners have the same standards.
Of course, now we get to quibble about what “standards” means. At the least, the externalities need to be similar.
For example, if the only cost difference between building something in the US vs building it in China is labor, that benefits both: The Chinese get richer; Americans get cheaper stuff. At some point, balance will be reached (in terms of labor, it has been for quite some time now). It’s the government hand on the scale – in opposite directions – that make it such a bad deal. China will do almost anything to support industry. America will do almost anything to hobble it.
While we can blame “free trade”, it’s is equally valid to blame BOTH governments. If nothing else, we should never have applied the concept of “free trade” to China. In either case, it is a US government failure (either by hobbling industry or allowing “free trade”), not a trade failure.
NAFTA is a more difficult case.
Mark–
What you bring up is Absolute Vs. Comparative advantage in production.
[See Adam Smith on absolute and David Ricardo on comparative.]
“Absolute advantage is the ability of an entity to produce a product or service at a lower absolute cost per unit using a smaller number of inputs or a more efficient process than another entity producing the same good or service. Comparative advantage refers to the ability to produce goods and services at a lower opportunity cost, not necessarily at a greater volume or quality.”
Robert wrote: “These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost [was] high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.”
Milt responded to Robert: “This, in a nutshell, is the way that the market system ‘works,’ making what were once unaffordable luxuries accessible to more and more people and democratizing the space frontier.”
Robert’s comment emphasizes the best part of the free market system: the incentive for improvement (this is how the market system ‘works’ and exceeds). Typically, this is an improvement in the price due to a reduction in the resources needed to produce the goods or services (or it can be improvements in quality, function, service, or availability), and profit is the reward for that improvement. This is the case with Falcon 9 and the Transporter service for small satellites, lower cost and also greater availability.
Command economies have no such internal incentive. However, command economies operate in the international free market, the competition between nations for commerce. This explains why China is so busy copying everyone else’s improvements, because China wants to continue to compete internationally, and she has found a way to avoid most of the cost of developing the improvements to their products.
As Robert notes, not only did the existing small satellite companies benefit, but an abundance of new small satellite companies have been founded to take advantage of this revived industry (new industry, if you consider that this generation is commercial, not military or civil). The increased demand for smallsat launches will help to feed the nascent smallsat launch companies that currently exist and the startups that will soon vie for their own niches.
Another advantage of the free market system is that the buyers of the goods and services drive the production through their demand. In the 1990s, satellite operators begged for lower cost launches, explaining that there would be a great boom in demand for launch services if the price were reduced to $2,000 per pound, in 1990s dollars. At that time, the U.S. had a command economy for orbital launches and most space projects, and the economic commanders had a monopoly on launchers, a near monopsony on space projects, and no interest or real incentive to reduce those costs. These days, SpaceX provides launches at that price point, and the demand came true. Even without Starlink launches, SpaceX’s launch cadence alone is greater than the total of the US’s launches through 2017, because SpaceX also improved the availability of launch vehicles.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-global-launch-industry-in-2023-a-record-third-year-in-a-row-of-growth-with-dark-clouds-lurking/
Other launch providers are now striving to catch up to SpaceX. This is yet another advantage to free markets: the imperative to keep up or drop out causes improvements across the industry and in other industries that are affected.
If it hasn’t yet, the U.S. commercial space industry will soon overtake the government’s monopsony as the majority in space utilization. This has happened with orbital launches, and it is close to happening with space projects. But then, ’There is far more capital available outside of NASA [for use by commercial space marketplace] than there is inside of NASA.’ — paraphrased from an interview with NASA Administrator Bridenstine on the Ben Shapiro radio show on Monday 3 August 2020.
Capitalism is the concept of pooling resources in order to produce goods or services that could not be done by one person or company alone. SpaceX has asked for and received several influxes of funds through this method, and they are using those funds on the very promising new products of Starlink and Starship. Other companies are pooling their resources to create commercial space stations. Capitalism allows for the free market’s incentive for improvement to come far more easily and quickly than one person or company could accomplish alone.
The net result is more prosperity in free market capitalist nations than in command economy nations. The buyers demand what makes them more prosperous, and the producers make it happen to satisfy their customers. Smallsat companies are being satisfied in their demand for launches.
Edward — Exactly. But how can we get more people to understand and appreciate this? It sounds like something that mostly “isn’t taught,” but it is nevertheless one of the foundations of our material well being.
Milt,
Of course it isn’t taught. The Marxists have taken over the schools and teach hatred of non-Marxist ideologies and anyone who doesn’t toe the Marxist line.
How can we get more people to understand and appreciate free markets? I don’t know. Marxism is an emotional response. We cannot overcome emotions with logic or facts or the actual history of abject and deadly failure of Marxism everywhere it has been tried. Leftists have even claimed that these failures weren’t really Marxism, but they cannot say what they really were.
It is too comforting to leftist and Marxists that someone else will take care of them — “to each according to his need” — caretakers who are better than them — “from each according to his ability.” It is so nice, so comforting, to have mom and dad care for you your entire life. How can we get these people to grow up and take care of themselves, much less get them to help someone else to grow up?
It is like the smoker who wants higher taxes on cigarettes so that he will have the final incentive to quit smoking, even though the last ten taxes imposed on cigarettes didn’t get him to quit smoking. No tax will get him to quit. He wants someone else to be responsible for his health, even though that someone else has never managed to help. The current tax didn’t help, and the next tax won’t either. He has to grow up and take responsibility and take his own action to quit smoking. No one else can do it for him, but he thinks just one more government tax can. He is acting emotionally, not logically or intelligently.
Leftists and Marxists work the same way: emotionally.