SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this afternoon successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 26th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Also, as noted by regular reader Richard M, this was also the 500th orbital launch of a Falcon rocket, including the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9, and the Falcon Heavy. And the company has done this in only a bit over fifteen years. Quite amazing.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
69 SpaceX
32 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 69 to 52.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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 this afternoon successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 26th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Also, as noted by regular reader Richard M, this was also the 500th orbital launch of a Falcon rocket, including the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9, and the Falcon Heavy. And the company has done this in only a bit over fifteen years. Quite amazing.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
69 SpaceX
32 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 69 to 52.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
Amazing indeed. And as soon as Independence Day, if not before, SpaceX will have launched its 500th Falcon 9 and, by August, its 500th Falcon 9 Block 5. Somewhere before year’s end SpaceX will also clock its 500th Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Block 5 booster landings. It also seems likely we’ll see a 30th launch and landing by one of the Block 5 fleet leaders. Next year we can reasonably expect SpaceX to blow by the 600 and 700 marks in all of these overall categories and perhaps even a fleet leader hitting the 40 mission mark as SpaceX’s relentless stern chase of the R-7 family’s launch records continues.
Hard to deny at this point that the Falcon 9 is, by just about every metric, the most successful American orbital rocket in history, and there really is not a close second.
Don’t forget they passed 450 landings of an orbital class booster a few weeks ago. So probably 15 launches since that metric. Amazing.
I SURE do miss the “excitement” I had for stuff like this say from 1964 to 1972…this should have been happening in 1982! AFTER we got the old NCP format internet (you remember that one?) for the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations-AS WE WERE PROMISED!!!
It’s ALL just terribly corrupted by demonics now. But I DO wish Elon all success!