SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches the heaviest geosynchronous communications satellite ever
SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon Heavy rocket to place a Hughes geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, the heaviest ever, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The two side boosters successfully completed their third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral only a few seconds apart. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights. The center core stage was not recovered as planned.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 49.
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SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon Heavy rocket to place a Hughes geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, the heaviest ever, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The two side boosters successfully completed their third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral only a few seconds apart. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights. The center core stage was not recovered as planned.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 49.
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.
Its nice to see the Falcon heavy flights becoming more frequent and companies using it to launch heavier satellites. Starship will elicipe falcon heavy but until the FAA allows more testing. Falcon heavy can keep soldering on.
Musk is such a failure and grifter
Falcon Heavy must have a higher thrust / weight ratio than F9, because it sure gets out off the pad fast, even with last night’s massive payload!!
They make it look so easy.
That might be a nice mission to close out the upcoming book on Falcon 9.
The company of Hughes—one eccentric billionaire–gets a ride thanks to another…..
I may be wrong, but I never thought of Howard Hughes as having quite the same kind of involvement in Hughes as Elon in SpaceX or Tesla. Hughes inherited the thriving Hughes Tool Co, I believe, and although he certainly flew, I don’t think he had the engineering chops that Elon does! He was also prone to some questionable judgements, and pretty freaky phobias.
Ray, If nothing else, Hughes should be celebrated for his rolefin getting the immortal Lockheed Constellation airliner (Lockheed named it’s civilian aircraft after stars – Beta, Vega, etc, so the legend is that Hughes wanted to surpass individual stars). off the ground. (get it?).
“Lockheed had been working on the L-044 Excalibur, a four-engined, pressurized airliner, since 1937. In 1939, Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA), at the instigation of major stockholder Howard Hughes, requested a 40-passenger transcontinental airliner with a range of 3,500 mi (5,600 km)[2]—well beyond the capabilities of the Excalibur design. TWA’s requirements led to the L-049 Constellation, designed by Lockheed engineers, including Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard”
“Several different models of the Constellation series were produced, although they all featured the distinctive triple-tail and dolphin-shaped fuselage. Most were powered by four 18-cylinder Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclones. In total, 856 were produced between 1943 and 1958 at Lockheed’s plant in Burbank, California, and used as both a civil airliner and as a military and civilian cargo transport. Among their famous uses was during the Berlin and the Biafran airlifts. Three served as the presidential aircraft for Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of which is featured at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.”
I grew up in New Jersey and can remember C-121 Connies manned by members of the New Jersey Air Guard flying from McGuire Air Force Base to Vietnam to medevac the wounded and sick in the late Sixties as part of their monthly training assemblies