SpaceX launches Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite
SpaceX today successfully launched Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings on this flight completed their tenth and sixteenth time, respectively.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
71 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 83 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 71 to 57.
In just over half a year, SpaceX has now exceeded the annual record of 70 launches by the entire United States, set in 1966 and held until 2022.
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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.
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SpaceX today successfully launched Turkey’s first homebuilt geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings on this flight completed their tenth and sixteenth time, respectively.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
71 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 83 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 71 to 57.
In just over half a year, SpaceX has now exceeded the annual record of 70 launches by the entire United States, set in 1966 and held until 2022.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows 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. 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. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally 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.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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 or subscription:
4. 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.
Bob,
The term “homebuilt,” where a Turkish comsat is concerned, conjures up an image of a few heavily-mustachioed guys in fezzes, baggy pants and embroidered vests building a comsat in a garage with antique hand tools – a Turkish analog of the gestation of small aircraft in so many American garages in decades past and down to the present. But Turksat 6A was built in a factory in clean rooms and required a substantial workforce. The term “domestically produced” fills the bill without the arguably condescending overtones that “homebuilt” carries in this context. A lot of, say, cubesat-class spacecraft are very fairly described as “homebuilt” – especially those constructed by high school and college students. But something that weighs in at 4.2 tonnes and is destined for GEO and an operational lifetime of 15 years or more shouldn’t be described in quite the same way.
Dick Eagleson: I’ve been using the word “homebuilt” for years now to describe “domestically produced” space rockets and spacecraft. You are the first to complain.
I like the former more than the latter because it is very plain English, while the latter has the air of the academic world.
There is a photograph out there of an Indian satellite being pulled by oxen, so I’ll split the difference