SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another sixty Starlink satellites, bringing the total in orbit to over 800.
The company also recovered the first stage, completing its third flight. The fairings were to be picked up in the ocean, rather than caught in a ship’s net, as the last launch one fairing broke the net. SpaceX engineers might have determined ocean recovery is now safer and sufficient for reuse.
This was also the company’s 100th successful launch and its 63rd successful first stage recovery.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
26 China
18 SpaceX
11 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. now leads China 28 to 26 in the national rankings.
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 today successfully launched another sixty Starlink satellites, bringing the total in orbit to over 800.
The company also recovered the first stage, completing its third flight. The fairings were to be picked up in the ocean, rather than caught in a ship’s net, as the last launch one fairing broke the net. SpaceX engineers might have determined ocean recovery is now safer and sufficient for reuse.
This was also the company’s 100th successful launch and its 63rd successful first stage recovery.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
26 China
18 SpaceX
11 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. now leads China 28 to 26 in the national rankings.
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
regarding the upper stage, is it possible for a rocket launch to consist of the 1st stage and its fuel, payload of the mission, then the fuel for an upper stage? The idea being that an orbiting upper stage from a prior launch deorbits enough to come down and match the speed and rendezvous with the just launched rocket, takes on the upper stage fuel + payload of that launch, then proceeds to take the payload up to its final destination.
The savings being both the cost of the upper stage and the weight of the upper stage, that does not have to be launched from Earth time and again.
This article says Falcon 9 upper stages stay in orbit for 2 – 6 months, at which point they disintegrate on reentry.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7814/what-happens-to-the-falcon-9-second-stage-after-payload-separation
100 SpaceX Launches– all at once
Khoa Kiro Kun
September 2020
https://youtu.be/P-sjjFtnGEo?t=343
21:06
– 5 Falcon 1
– 92 Falcon 9
– 3 Falcon Heavy
100 Successful Flights
SpaceX, October 24, 2020
https://youtu.be/Q_s_7iTydYU
1:01
45th launch of a “flight-proven” Falcon 9.
Steve Richter,
Have you been watching the SpaceX Super-Heavy development? Both stages will (I typed “are” at first, correction with “will be”) be re-usable. The disposable upper stage will be a thing of the past.
I see the SpaceX Engineer’s accomplishments are beautiful and dare I say that the Super-Heavy will be a piece of art in my eyes.
“… Both stages will (I typed “are” at first, correction with “will be”) be re-usable. …”
cool. good to know.