Comments on: SpaceX successfully launches another 49 Starlink satellites

By: wayne

wayne — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 03:23:52 +0000

Questioner–

“SpaceX Loses 40 Satellites To Solar Storm”
Scott Manley (Feb 9, 2022)
https://youtu.be/9kIcEFyEPgA
11:02

By: wayne

wayne — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 03:20:03 +0000

questioner–
interesting stuff.

a quick backgrounder….

“How Do Starlink Satellites Navigate To Their Final Operational Orbits?”
Scott Manley (august 2021)
https://youtu.be/VIQr1UyhwWk
12:34

By: Questioner

Questioner — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 22:27:04 +0000

The sun defended the astronomers against Musk’s insolence!

“How the sun JUST destroyed 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUqOZLIiKpQ

By: Questioner

Questioner — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 22:14:53 +0000

What happened here?

“Fireballs over Puerto Rico likely from doomed Starlink batch”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUlAz_Oxv4Q

By: Alton

Alton — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 23:43:09 +0000

One Hundred and Five….

Successful Landing recoveries……

The Fifties! Has now arrived…

In 2022 !!!

By: Edward

Edward — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 22:36:08 +0000

From the Ars Technica article:

The Falcon 9 rocket has now launched a total of 139 times. Of those, one mission failed, the launch of an International Space Station supply mission for NASA, in June 2015. Not included in this launch tally is the pre-flight failure of a Falcon 9 rocket and its Amos-6 satellite during a static fire test in September 2016.

Also not included in this launch tally is the partial failure of a Falcon 9 rocket on another, though earlier, ISS supply mission, in which the supply mission was completed, but due to an engine failure, the secondary payload was not released into orbit, as it may have endangered the ISS.

It is hard to find a comparable tally, but three payloads were lost atop three different Falcon 9 rockets.

The conclusion of the article is telling:

Now it has pushed some of its boosters to fly 11 flights, and SpaceX has never lost a mission on a reused first stage, even though founder Elon Musk and other officials have explicitly said they are pushing the technology to find its limits.

That would seem to be a fairly powerful argument in favor of the safety of reusable launch.

It was a mere seven years ago that people were doubting the economics and safety of reusing these boosters.

By: David K

David K — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:22:32 +0000

Starship will probably be the one to beat the R-7 record. If they really want a million people on Mars by the end of the century, they will need at least ten thousand starship launches, probably a lot more.

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 05:04:56 +0000

Sadly it will will not match R-7 that has launched 2000 times or so. You’d think the coking free SSME’s could have been turned around faster.

By: Richard M

Richard M — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:46:27 +0000

P.S. I see Diane has the same reading bookmarks as I do!

By: Richard M

Richard M — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:45:44 +0000

BTW, Bob, Eric Berger has a beautiful entry candidate for your “Capitalism in Space” update files today. Falcon 9 has not only flown more times than the Shuttle in a third of the time (all while iterating to develop first stage landing and reuse!), but it now has more consecutive successful launches than any other launch vehicle in history (112). And at such a low cost!

Amazing what entrepreneurship can accomplish, isn’t it?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/

By: Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:32:34 +0000

This also marks 112 consecutive successful flights, most of which were flown on re-used boosters. That’s the highest number of consecutive successes of any rocket, past or present.

A somewhat more useless factoid: Falcon 9 has flown as many successful flights as the Space Shuttle, in one-third the time.