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SpaceX successfully launches military satellite

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched a National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite, using a first stage booster for the second time in only two months.

The booster successfully landed at Vandenberg Space Force base.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

14 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 21 to 11 in the national rankings.

Genesis cover

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

5 comments

  • Max

    Another successful launch leaving SpaceX still at the top of the game. I was worried there might be a chance of sabotage just to damage musk’s reputation seeding doubt as he expands into the political arena.
    Such an action would get its most mileage in the state of California.

    When normal people are watching TV, I’m sitting in the hot tub after dark watching stars, satellites, planes fly over…
    (Orion and Gemini are leaving as Taurus makes an entrance… The red giant octoris is dominant in the eastern sky)
    A extremely bright object passed over me at 8:30 in Salt Lake from the direction of North California towards Denver. (W-N/W to E-S/E)
    2 to 3 times brighter than the space station, traveling better than 4x the speed. In the first second I assumed it to be a falling star expecting it to explode… maybe a satellite reentering? It did not flare or change luminosity as it crossed the sky, (about 20 seconds) losing it in the clouds over the mountains. Unusual spectacular event, especially over a brightly lit city with the moon coming up.
    It could’ve been a rocket, wrong time and place for the SpaceX launch.

  • Jeff Wright

    I also spend a lot of time out of doors. The tornadic supercell that hit Oak Grove in 1998 passed aloft…right over my parents home. A blessing that they were spared…another twister touched down not many miles from them. You don’t want to see that sky…a lightning filled hellmouth. I will never forget it.

  • sippin_bourbon

    Mr Z,

    Perhaps I missed it.
    Did you post a roll up of last years numbers?

  • sippin_bourbon: Yes, I did my annual report at the start of the year. See:

    2021: The year that private enterprise took over rocketry

  • GaryMike

    Max,

    Please forgive me for suffering my pedant genes kicking in.

    I didn’t actually check this so as to allow you some wiggle room. I’m not a nun with a ruler. ;)

    “octoris”

    Did you mean Arcturas?

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