SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites, flies a first stage for a record 17th time
SpaceX tonight successfully placed 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral using a first stage flying for its seventeenth time, a new record.
That first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
By amortizing the cost for building and flying that first stage, the cost per launch for SpaceX has likely been reduced more than 90%, significantly raising the company’s profit margins, especially when it is launching its own Starlink satellites. Note too that SpaceX has two other boosters that have flown 16 and 15 times, plus others with more than ten flights. And of course, this success once again makes ridiculous the engineers and managers who for more than a half century said such reusability of a rocket first stage was either impossible, or financially impractical, and thus never tried it.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
66 SpaceX
43 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 77 to 43, and the entire world combined 77 to 69. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 66 to 69.
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
SpaceX tonight successfully placed 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral using a first stage flying for its seventeenth time, a new record.
That first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
By amortizing the cost for building and flying that first stage, the cost per launch for SpaceX has likely been reduced more than 90%, significantly raising the company’s profit margins, especially when it is launching its own Starlink satellites. Note too that SpaceX has two other boosters that have flown 16 and 15 times, plus others with more than ten flights. And of course, this success once again makes ridiculous the engineers and managers who for more than a half century said such reusability of a rocket first stage was either impossible, or financially impractical, and thus never tried it.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
66 SpaceX
43 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 77 to 43, and the entire world combined 77 to 69. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 66 to 69.
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
B 1058 (was 1060).
Why the different number assignment?
While launcher reusability could have been more of a focus once the basics of orbital launches were worked out, it’s also true that those engineer’s and manager’s opinions were in no small part influenced by the material and manufacturing science of the day. It is also true that folks responsible for complex stuff working reliably tend to be very conservative in their approach. Even so, once reliable reusability had been commercially demonstrated, there should have been no hesitation.
Blair, I think it just points back to the issue Bob has brought up many times, Big Space had no financial motivation to save money. Congress was a bottomless source of cash.
I’m sure, in none of the NASA projects did anyone ever have to do a business car or cost benefit analysis.
That was somewhat understandable in the Cold War. Not now.
“That was somewhat understandable in the Cold War. Not now.”
Yeah, you don’t need to call an ICBM booster back!
Seriously, I always thought that the fact that engines and rocket bodies were produced by different entities, and then integrated, was a big disincentive! But when you produce both, and integrate them to produce a revenue stream, the picture changes!
One of the engineering breakthroughs realized by SpaceX must have been the understanding that the main engines themselves are already designed to handle the temperatures and stresses typically encountered during re-entry – little in the way of purpose-built shields required!
All you need is a mechanism that can keep the engine-end pointing down, like grid fins, and you can let the atmosphere do most of the work. There goes all that extra fuel that ULA engineers smugly said would preclude a substantial payload!
Blair Ivey wrote: “While launcher reusability could have been more of a focus once the basics of orbital launches were worked out, it’s also true that those engineer’s and manager’s opinions were in no small part influenced by the material and manufacturing science of the day. It is also true that folks responsible for complex stuff working reliably tend to be very conservative in their approach. Even so, once reliable reusability had been commercially demonstrated, there should have been no hesitation.”
There were some attempts at reusability. When NASA was pondering the next project after Apollo, the Space Shuttle, the intention was to have a small manned spacecraft that was reusable. They also pondered using the Saturn V first stage as the booster stage but to put wings on the booster and fly it back to Kennedy for later reuse. The idea was to make space so easily accessible that people would go there often, often enough that it was routine, and that rather than needing space suits in the same way that the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions used, people would work in their regular long- or short-sleeved shirts.
After Nixon refused to support the Space Shuttle or the space program in general, there was political horse trading over the Space Shuttle, and after all the dust settled, the reusable Shuttle was huge, with tradeoffs that resulted in it not working well for any of the multitude of missions it was supposed to perform. It could not launch very often, and it required huge amounts of expensive refurbishment between flights.
Gary‘s point is also true. There was no real incentive to work on reusability.
When the Shuttle was being retired, rather than learn from the problems of the Shuttle and make improvements, NASA and Congress shied away from reusability and returned to expendability, reliving the reasonably successful but unsustainable Apollo model of access to space. After inflation, an Artemis mission costs about as much as an unsustainable Apollo mission, but cannot fly as often. SLS took us backward in technological capability, cost, sustainability, and frequency of access. What a fiasco.
It wasn’t until NASA allowed and encouraged commercial launch companies, as well as space operations and exploration companies, that the commercial companies started incorporating lessons that increased efficiency and even effectiveness in space operations. SpaceX was particularly successful, but there are companies that are up and comers, such as Rocket Lab, which is doing well at giving frequent access for lower prices than Orbital Sciences (later Orbital ATK, now part of Northrup Grumman).
Ray Van Dune noted the ability of the engines to survive some amount of reentry, but SpaceX has a reentry burn that reduces the speed of the booster to the speed where the engines are able to survive reentry. Also, one of the important reasons for the grid fins is to prevent the booster from spinning, which was a problem during one of their early test landings. Extra drag and guiding the booster to the landing site are additional benefits that, as Ray noted, reduce the propellant needed for reaching the landing zone.
In the olden days (a decade ago), geostationary orbit was the most popular orbit, but these days there are more satellites going to various sun synchronous orbits. There is an efficiency in small satellites — a whole industry for small parts — that we didn’t have in decades past, so space is now being used far more often than before.
I cannot wait until space manufacturing begins returning very useful materials from orbit. Who would have guessed that government would be such a huge roadblock ( https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/federal-government-continues-to-block-the-return-of-vardas-commercial-capsule-carrying-drugs-to-treat-hiv/ ) to this very useful application of space, and reusable launchers and spacecraft will make these applications inexpensive, plentiful, and routine. This is a big incentive to turn to reusability.
When we let NASA and government be in charge, as we did in the first half century of the space age, all we got was what NASA and government wanted. Now that We the People are taking charge, we are beginning to get what we want, and were promised by Walt Disney and Werner von Braun, back in the 1950s.