The beat goes on: SpaceX launches twice today
UPDATE: This post is changed because I missed an earlier launch today from SpaceX, when it launched 53 payloads, including many smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. It then followed with a successful launch of another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
On the Vandenberg launch, the first stage successfully completed its fifth flight, landing back at its landing zone at Vandenberg. In the Cape Canaveral launch, the first stage completed its thirteenth flight. landing on a droneship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
22 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 25 to 19 in successful launches, while SpaceX now leads the rest of the world, excluding American companies 22 to 19.
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UPDATE: This post is changed because I missed an earlier launch today from SpaceX, when it launched 53 payloads, including many smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. It then followed with a successful launch of another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
On the Vandenberg launch, the first stage successfully completed its fifth flight, landing back at its landing zone at Vandenberg. In the Cape Canaveral launch, the first stage completed its thirteenth flight. landing on a droneship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
22 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 25 to 19 in successful launches, while SpaceX now leads the rest of the world, excluding American companies 22 to 19.
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.
About two hours before it launched those Starlinks from Canaveral, SpaceX also launched its 10th Transporter rideshare mission from Vandenberg. So the SpaceX launch total for 2024 now stands at 22, not 21.
Dick Eagleson: Gosh, I missed that Vandenberg launch entirely. I will post. Thanks.
I wonder if Space X is publishing the engine numbers?
How many flights between overhauls, How many flights on each engine and so on.
At this point that might be the largest cost for Space X.
Mr. Zimmerman: As SpaceX continues to ramp up its Falcon launch cadence, keeping up will only get harder. And when Starship hits its stride it’s really going to be “Katie, bar the door” when it comes to keeping up. That should be about the same time a number of other reusable American launch vehicles start adding materially to the totals. I suspect that, within two or three years, you will be forced to cease making separate posts for each launch and just do a single daily update with a list of the day’s launches and the same updated totals you now publish. As Moon and Mars expeditions ramp up it may become impractical to even allow each launch a separate line in the daily summary and you’ll have to go to a system of just providing subtotal line items for certain types of launches – Starship tankers and Starlink deployments, for example.
pzatchok,
I don’t think Merlins get swapped out all that often. SpaceX recently announced that, while its most-flown 1st stages have racked up 19 launches, there was one particular Merlin that has flown 22 times. Any Merlins that are swapped out probably just go through a repair process and enter the pool of spares again. They might even be installed on “new” Falcon 9 booster stages and sent through the usual certification tests at McGregor.
It is great that the Merlin’s are making multiple launches without more than a “filter” change. But it would be nice to know how often a full take down and rebuild of an engine does cost and how often it happens.
It would also be nice to know what they do to refly one of the capsules.
Oil change, new air filter, rotate the tires. Fill er up.
That is pretty much what its turning into.
If this keeps up, they are gonna need another recovery barge.
pzatchok,
I’d like to know all of those things as well. Perhaps one of Eric Berger’s future books will take a deep dive into the evolving details of F9 operations.
Richard M,
With SLC-6 at Vandy getting into SpaceX service next year I’d say the company needs at least one more drone ship on each coast.