Two American launches this evening
This evening two different American companies completed successful commercial launches, doing so from opposites sides of the globe.
First, SpaceX launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with the first stage completing its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This launch was on the evening of June 27th.
Then, a few hours later Rocket Lab completed the first of two quickly scheduled launches for an unnamed commercial customer, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch, on June 28th in New Zealand, was the company’s second launch in less than two days, its fastest turn around yet. As of posting the payload was not yet deployed.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
81 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 81 to 60.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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
This evening two different American companies completed successful commercial launches, doing so from opposites sides of the globe.
First, SpaceX launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with the first stage completing its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This launch was on the evening of June 27th.
Then, a few hours later Rocket Lab completed the first of two quickly scheduled launches for an unnamed commercial customer, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch, on June 28th in New Zealand, was the company’s second launch in less than two days, its fastest turn around yet. As of posting the payload was not yet deployed.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
81 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 81 to 60.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
Little ‘ol Rocket Lab has out-launched Russia 10 to 7, all by itself.
Har far the mighty have fallen.
Putin hurt a lot of good people.
R-7 is still my favorite manned LV, due to seeing that thing shrug off lightning strikes–launch during winds that would keep others grounded–and most of all—burn on the pad without exploding for the longest time…giving ample time for the crew to escape.
There has been nothing like it before or since.
I wish Putin had never come into power.
I would love to have had some R-7’s here in America next to Redstone…to show kids just how far ahead they were.
Ukraine was in its rights to drone the Bear bombers–but seeing those old turboprops destroyed hit me as hard as Russia destroying the AN-225.
Just once I’d like to see a leader not try to kill off aerospace.
Richard M,
I think we may soon have to retire that old chestnut anent Russia. With Ukraine finding new ways to savage Russia militarily and industrially by the day, ongoing retrenchments to its threadbare remaining space program and all of the other problems Russia has – nearly all of which have been self-inflicted it should be noted – how much longer it can be considered to still stand among “the mighty” is a real question.
Jeff Wright,
The R-7 has had a heckuva run, no question. It was Russia’s first big rocket to enter service and, the way things are going, might also be its last to remain so.
I wish for a weekend of erotic abandon with Carmen Electra in a Vegas penthouse. At least my wish is not absolutely foreclosed by the law of cause and effect.
The Bears, Backfires and Blackjacks are pretty things, but being used for evil purposes. I watched their destruction with surprise and delight. More, please, and soonest.
No leader is trying to “kill off aerospace.” Not even Putin – though what he has set in motion is certainly having that effect in Russia. With the exception of a few superannuated dinosaur legacy primes suffering from terminal senescence and incontinence, aerospace is doing just fine pretty much everywhere else.
Something I forgot to note previously is that this latest F9 launch from SLC-40 also represents a new record for the shortest interval between launches at that pad – 56 hours, 32 minutes. That narrowly beats the previous record set in March of 57 hours flat.
SpaceX continues to work down minimum turnaround times at all of its Falcon pads. Apart from weather, the limiting factor for average turnaround is the cycle times of the drone ships and I suspect there is not much more ground to be gained there.
Short of building additional drone ships – which SpaceX may elect not to do given that the Falcons are now probably nearer the ends of their service lives than their beginnings – SpaceX’s only obvious option to continue cutting turnaround times significantly is to make more missions RTLS.
The only missions for which SpaceX can straightforwardly do this are Starlink launches. Taking out a few sats from a load should allow for an RTLS booster landing rather than a drone ship one.
Both adding more drone ships and initiating RTLS Starlink missions would allow reduced pad turnarounds and increased launch cadences. Which direction to go would involve computing the costs vs. benefits of the two approaches.
With drone ships, there are lead time considerations in acquiring one or more additional units. With going to some or all RTLS Starlink missions, there might be non-drone ship limits to further pad turnaround time reductions that make the reduction of sats per launch not worth the additional launch cadence that doing so would allow.
Only SpaceX knows all the relevant values of the variables in these financial calculation exercises. But I will not be surprised if we see at least some experimentation with the RTLS-for-Starlink-missions approach – perhaps even before the end of this year.
“Short of building additional drone ships – which SpaceX may elect not to do given that the Falcons are now probably nearer the ends of their service lives than their beginnings – SpaceX’s only obvious option to continue cutting turnaround times significantly is to make more missions RTLS.”
This year, they are bringing online a new pad at Vandenberg, SLC-6, which will help with cadence. Rumors persist about a new, fourth drone ship.
RTLS for more missions would certainly help, but of course that comes with a cost….
In terms of lovely vehicles used for evil
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russians-plan-to-strike-ukraine-with-a-space-launch-vehicle/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrepperIntel/comments/1gvrv2t/russia_potentially_preparing_to_use_nonnuclear/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_title&embed_host_url=https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/ur-500-super-icbm.24878/
What I want to know is—why did it take a unicorn like Musk to provide America with Falcon?
I have written elsewhere that Vietnam and Great Society were always going to be better supported than Apollo.
I suspect Air Force interference. THE RIGHT STUFF vilified engineers—yet Dragon is rather like Vostok.
Subs, jets—all had top dollars—but rockets were about just getting enough umpf for your payload.
R-7 was overpowered, whereas tiny little Delta II was based on not an ICBM, but an IRBM—Thor.
Again, this may go back to culture.
I was watching a documentary about Groom Lake…Barnes I think was the person interviewed.
There he talked about how aircraft needed to be put back in the hanger before the “ashcan” flew overhead.
—By which he meant a spysat.
That miffed me.
MOL was killed—but the Almaz equivalent—supported…becoming Salyut, Mir, Zvezda…
We killed Saturn IB—they kept Proton until today.
No matter how bad things got—they at least kept a steady presence…where our efforts were of starts and stops—no real lasting commitment over time
Elon should not have had to bail us out.
Jets are sexier than rockets…so maybe that’s part of it.
An old saying about how aerospace turns billionaires into millionaires is still repeated and spooks the donor classes.
LIFTOFF and RE-ENTRY both do a good job—but I am always looking for that “unknown unknown.”
The United States should not have had to rely on an Aspie to get to space—any more than having our guys ride Soyuz.
It just makes me so mad.
Area 51 is an institution—it gives us the best planes on the planet…all while we stretched out Thors to have a Delta II payload shroud not much wider than my waistline.
I just don’t get it.
What worries me, is that Elon is doing such a good job—institutional support for spaceflight might take a worse hit.
WWI fighters were just so much better than the earlier craft..over only a few years. Aviation got constant love. Maybe that’s the difference.