Tonight’s SpaceX launch
Capitalism in space: Tonight SpaceX is hoping to launch another 60 Starlink smallsats as part of its planned huge constellation aimed at providing internet access worldwide.
The launch is scheduled for 9:19 pm Eastern, with a 20 minute launch window. I have embedded the live stream below the fold if you wish to watch, beginning fifteen minutes before launch. Or you can go to SpaceX’s own website instead.
The launch has some significance. First, with this launch SpaceX will leap-frog a number of other satellite companies attempting to accomplish the same thing. Though it only began pursuing this project about two years ago, with this launch SpaceX will have the largest satellite constellation of any company in orbit.
Second, the first stage will be flying for the fourth time, a record, and all flown since September 2018, a mere sixteen months. That’s once every four months, a pace that far exceeds anything the space shuttle ever accomplished. Moreover, SpaceX intends to land it and reuse it again. The launch savings from this reuse guarantees that they will be able to undercut those other satellite companies when they begin offering services on the Starlink constellation. [Note: My readers corrected me: SpaceX has already launched a first stage four times.]
The company will also make another attempt to recover one fairing half.
UPDATE: The launch appears successful, including a successful landing of the first stage.
SpaceX right now is the leader in the 2020 launch race, as they are the only one to have completed a launch in 2020.
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
Capitalism in space: Tonight SpaceX is hoping to launch another 60 Starlink smallsats as part of its planned huge constellation aimed at providing internet access worldwide.
The launch is scheduled for 9:19 pm Eastern, with a 20 minute launch window. I have embedded the live stream below the fold if you wish to watch, beginning fifteen minutes before launch. Or you can go to SpaceX’s own website instead.
The launch has some significance. First, with this launch SpaceX will leap-frog a number of other satellite companies attempting to accomplish the same thing. Though it only began pursuing this project about two years ago, with this launch SpaceX will have the largest satellite constellation of any company in orbit.
Second, the first stage will be flying for the fourth time, a record, and all flown since September 2018, a mere sixteen months. That’s once every four months, a pace that far exceeds anything the space shuttle ever accomplished. Moreover, SpaceX intends to land it and reuse it again. The launch savings from this reuse guarantees that they will be able to undercut those other satellite companies when they begin offering services on the Starlink constellation. [Note: My readers corrected me: SpaceX has already launched a first stage four times.]
The company will also make another attempt to recover one fairing half.
UPDATE: The launch appears successful, including a successful landing of the first stage.
SpaceX right now is the leader in the 2020 launch race, as they are the only one to have completed a launch in 2020.
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
Actually, the launch is scheduled for 9:19 PM EST tonight. It’s the backup launch opportunity tomorrow that will – if there is a delay tonight – take place at 8:57 PM EST.
And this is the SECOND booster (B1049, Telestar18V, Iridium8, Starlink 0.9, and now Starlink2 ) core that will hit 4 flights. Starlink-1 (B1048 did Iridium7, SAOCom, PSN-6 and Starlink1) in Nov, was the first 4 flight core.
I believe this is the second Falcon 9 to launch 4 times. Still exciting, and I still plan to watch the recovery.
Dick Eagleson: Already fixed. Thank you however.
Gosh, I can’t keep count anymore. Thank you.
Will Starlink allow people in countries like China to receive internet without government censorship?
I guess the hardware the receive the signal would still need to get into the hands of the consumer.
Just wondering about the political ramifications of unfiltered info for people in countries where the government controls all aspects of its citizen’s lives.
(Sorry to get political on a space topic!)
Cool!
Fairing half NOT caught.
Pete,
Starlink, and all other non-Chinese LEO-based broadband services will certainly be banned by the PRC. Starlink, in particular, will do on-orbit routing via laser links, which means the path from any non-Chinese info source to a notional Chinese Starlink user would completely bypass the Great Firewall of China and all other Internet censoring functions at a national level.
It will not be possible for individual Chinese to be open Starlink subscribers so long as the PRC is in power, but Starlink ground terminal equipment – like existing small-aperture dishes for GEO-based services – could become a significant item of black market trade in China and other authoritarian countries. Ground-to-satellite links via phased-array antennae are difficult-to-impossible to detect via traditional RF direction-finding techniques.
I hope Starlink allows free access by “bootleg” users in un-free parts of the world as it would cost little or nothing to allow this and would generate considerable goodwill which could be regularized and monetized once the PRC and other tyrannical regimes fade into history.
2×4 times reused first stages…. Elon gets a lot of flack ( some of it deserved..) but mannnn…. He will go down in history as the man that changed space travel, at least in our generation for all of history… I doff my hat ( it’s a fedora…. Don’t judge me) to the man! I’m just happy to be alive to watch this stuff going down!
Dick–
thanks for that explanation, great stuff!
Lee–
–we’re living in the future! (although it often feels like 1968-ish sometimes…on a number of levels.)
-I tend to think the electric cars and/or solar panels are a bridge slightly-too-far, here and now, but on the upside he’s willing to put in the heavy lifting.
When it comes to rockets–nothing wins like success.
One thing Elon understands better than most— reusability of the expensive-part allows him to go to scale as if printing money.
–I’d love to see what SpaceX’s fixed and marginal cost-curves look like.
If you have 2 hours to spare— watch the complete Joe Rogan interview with Musk, it gives you a better look inside his mind.
Lee:
Yes, Elon Musk has achieved all of these beautiful things. You have to admire that. Of course, the ultimate success of a drastic reduction in space launch costs must still be shown.
But one thing annoys me about musk. This is his support for the crazy climate hysteria. I agree with the owner of this blog, it is not true and is mainly used to seize and maintain political power. If Musk really wants an inexpensive, environmentally compatible electrical world, he should support modern forms of nuclear energy instead of solar panels and windmills that destroy the landscape and nature. Btw, not all Liberals/Greens are lost. Some are able to learn their lessons from the real world. At least, this particular Lefty (see link) has achieved a complete 180 degree turn in relation to the topic mentioned.
Why renewables can’t save the planet | Michael Shellenberger |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w
My gosh when are people going to wake up. They have had anti-gravity propulsion for eons. This rocket technology is just another brainwashing distraction that have kept people thinking that is all there is. Why do you think President Trump announced SPACE FORCE? It is no more than a coming soft disclosure as to what we have and to what is really going on. We all are just going to have withstand the shock when the truth comes out.
Space X did what? When? Again?
I don’t even think Musk gets too exited about the Falcon 9’s performance. Anymore its just expected.