SpaceX launches cargo Dragon to ISS
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to put a cargo Dragon capsule into orbit and on its way to ISS.
The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The Dragon freighter is making its third flight, and will dock with ISS on the morning of March 16th.
The 2023 launch race:
17 SpaceX
9 China
4 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 18 to 9 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 18 to 15. SpaceX alone leads entire world, including the rest of the U.S., 17 to 16.
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 tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to put a cargo Dragon capsule into orbit and on its way to ISS.
The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The Dragon freighter is making its third flight, and will dock with ISS on the morning of March 16th.
The 2023 launch race:
17 SpaceX
9 China
4 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 18 to 9 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 18 to 15. SpaceX alone leads entire world, including the rest of the U.S., 17 to 16.
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
So the pace is now a launch every 4.3 days. Rated out for the year, they’re on pace for, let’s see…85 launches.
Yeah, that’s a little short of Elon’s goal. But that’s still insane: 85 launches of a single rocket type. By a private company. In a single year. And they will land and recover the first stage for all of them. With no failures. And I’m not even counting any Starship launches!
Not even the Soviet Union in its glory days pulled that off. Let us never take this for granted.
Richard M wrote, “Not even the Soviet Union in its glory days pulled that off.”
Actually this is not quite accurate. Credit should be given where credit is due. From 1975 to 1988 the Soviet Union consistently topped 85 launches per year, and from 1968 to 1990 topped 70 launches each year.
Of course, none used a reusable first stage, and of course all had the backing of an entire nation, instead of the resources of a single private company. Nonetheless, during its last decades the Soviets had a very vigorous space industry run by its top-down government.
Hi Bob,
I certainly do not wish to be remiss in giving full credit to the Soviet space program, which – however noxious its ruling regime was – did some truly impressive things!
But I was trying to add the qualifiers here, and maybe I was sloppy about it. They DID have a number of years where they topped 85 orbital launches, but a) they employed multiple launch vehicle types, b) they always had at least a couple failures, and c) they never landed and reused any of the rockets. And this is SpaceX’s real set of unique achievements.
Richard M: Of course all of your additional points illustrate well the amazing nature of SpaceX’s achievement, without doubt.