SpaceX launches 21 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
93 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 76.
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SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
93 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 76.
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.
Not sure if it is just my imagination, but I watch every F9 launch and landing, and it seems to me that the landings are getting more like near-bullseyes every time.
Ray–
Interesting observation.
In-general, do we know the mean circular error for these landings?
FWIW, Co-Pilot chat says it is 1-5 meters. This does not sound like a CEP value, but a typical range, and I could not find the data behind it, or any other reference.
For catching Superheavy, if we assume say 3 meters, and the diameter of the stage is 9 meters, this seems insufficiently accurate to avoid damaging the hull of the booster.
Could SpaceX have supplemental short-range guidance sensors built into the chopsticks? Looks like it might be needed.
Super Heavies, like F9 1st stages, have cold gas nitrogen thrusters to handle fine adjustments to vehicle position at the very low speeds and altitudes just before landing when the grid fins no longer have enough control authority.
Dick, thanks, didn’t know that they had those thrusters, but having them is one thing and having the precise location of the vehicle (to < 1 meter?) is another. That's what is concerning me.
Ray-
I’d modify my pondering, because these are guided landings, we just don’t know the fine tolerances involved.
As to precise location, do they use GPS or that ground based doppler stuff? (don’t know what it’s called)