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.
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
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.
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
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