SpaceX launches and lands 1st stage for record 10th time
During a launch yesterday of another sixty Starlink satellites, the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully completed its tenth flight, a new record for such boosters.
The turnaround time for this booster is noted at the link, and shows that they have been steadily shortening that time to less than two months.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
14 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. now leads China 19 to 12 in the national rankings.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
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During a launch yesterday of another sixty Starlink satellites, the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully completed its tenth flight, a new record for such boosters.
The turnaround time for this booster is noted at the link, and shows that they have been steadily shortening that time to less than two months.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
14 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. now leads China 19 to 12 in the national rankings.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Musk had quite a week!
And another launch in just 6 days scheduled. Starlink 26 (out of order from 27 reported above) is scheduled for May 15. And 27 was just a few days after the previous rate!
14 launches so far. Almost 10% of their entire launch history in the last 100 days! Amazing.
And all boosters in those 14 are reused. No new ones flown yet in 2021.
Elon Musk Monologue – SNL
https://youtu.be/fCF8I_X1qKI
5:35
Alas the SNL stuff was pretty terrible. I would say Wayne Gretzky level of terrible. (Great hockey player, NOT an actor. Same for Musk, great CEO, great at starting billion dollar companies, not an actor).
I wish him well, perhaps not as an actor.
Bob, When you post the US national ratings (and other countries if they have separate launch groups) could you break out the complete list who underlies the the national total. I can figure out sixteen of the nineteen USlaunches, but am drawing a blank on the other three.
And wouldn’t it be a hoot if SpaceX beats China to the moon….
Col Beausabre: I stop listing all the launches once the numbers get high enough and the trailing competitors only have only one launch or so. To list them all so you can see the full totals would make this list too long, at least from my perspective.
If you want to answer your question about the other three U.S. launches, do a search on BtB for “launch race”. This will give you all my updates since the start of the year. You need only scroll back to when those other launches occurred.
I still do not understand why SpaceX does not try to bring the 2nd stage back for a soft landing. If there was enough fuel to quickly slow the craft down could it land in one piece? Since Starship will be able to deorbit itself and land, does that mean a SpaceX 2nd stage could theoretically do the same?
Starship is the only second stage worth the effort to bring back. The Kistler two-stage trashcan would have.
I enjoyed Elon Musk’s SNL monologue. Autism is his superpower.
It was a fascinating glimpse at his mother. Parents (or lack thereof) play a pivotal role in a child’s success (or failure).
“… Starship is the only second stage worth the effort to bring back. …”
what is the effort? Carrying the extra fuel needed to slow the craft down? Looking to understand why SpaceX has not even tried to land a 2nd stage.
Steve Richter: SpaceX initially considered seeing if it could return the second stage of the Falcon 9, and abandoned the effort when they did a cost benefit analysis. Instead, Musk and the company shifted its development effort to Starship/Superheavy, beginning with reusability right from the start. They will not only get a bigger rocket, they will get more capability for less.
Steve Richter asked: “what is the effort? Carrying the extra fuel needed to slow the craft down? Looking to understand why SpaceX has not even tried to land a 2nd stage.”
The effort: is to put reentry heat shielding on the stage where it is needed. Adding legs is another effort; this may seem simple, but finding hard points on the tanks could be tricky, depending upon whether the middle bulkhead between the tanks is located in a usable place.
The cost: every pound added to the upper stage, including the fuel needed for landing, reduces one pound of payload capacity.
If the Falcon 9 had a long life ahead of it, then there could be an argument for reducing the capacity in order to reduce the overall cost, but since Starship is likely to make most Falcon 9 launches obsolete, it is unlikely that the effort would be cost effective.
Notice how differently Starship is designed than the Falcon 9 upper stage. Designing a reusable upper stage from scratch allows for a cost/benefit analysis from the beginning, allowing for time to design reusability into the craft rather than retrofit it later. Payload capacity can be less affected that way. The necessary tradeoffs and compromises can be considered early in development rather than after it is too late to make appropriate changes. This is one reason why Starship will reenter and land in a completely new way than any other spacecraft. They get to design these efficiencies into the spacecraft from the beginning.
I forgot an important cost for Steve Richter’s question. Working on a reusable second stage takes up engineering talent that could be used on other projects, such as Starship or Crew Dragon. It is a lost opportunity cost.
When running a company, it is important to spend research and development money on areas that will or are most likely to generate revenue, especially the most revenue, or to reduce the cost of operations. A reusable second stage should reduce the cost of operations, but even if the break even point is within the life expectancy of the Falcon 9, the effort may be more wisely spent on Starship, whose break even point could be within just a few years. This kind of thinking went into the decision to make and to continue making Falcon Heavy, which cost about half a billion dollars, but it has not yet launched enough times to have reached the break even point.
An important question is whether or not Falcon Heavy was worth the effort, not just for the break even point, but did they learn enough about rocketry for it to have been worth the distraction from Starship?
Starlink, on the other hand, probably is worth the effort. Not only does it involve satellite and communication engineers rather than rocket engineers, but at a price of $100 per month, the annual revenue for every million customers is $1.2 billion. If they only sign up two million customers, then Starlink’s first shell could break even in a single year. Starlink could be a bigger cash cow than Starship.
But Starlink has also supplied SpaceX with a lot of experience in operating on a high launch cadence, with fourteen launches this year.
Another important question: if Falcon Heavy has not been a big money maker, then why would Starship be a better launcher? The answer is that Starship is being made to cost less than a Falcon 9, even with a reusable upper stage, so Starship should become popular even if it does not often launch near full capacity.