Two launches in the past day
The beat goes on. Since yesterday afternoon there have been two more global rocket launches, by Russia and SpaceX.
First, Russia launched the sixth GPS-type satellite as part of its next generation Glonass constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The rocket’s lower stage fell several different drop zones in Russia. No word if they landed near any habitable areas.
Next, SpaceX this morning launched another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
117 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 117 to 92.
As for the rankings for the most reuse by a rocket, this is the present leader board:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
27 Falcon 9 booster B1063
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
The beat goes on. Since yesterday afternoon there have been two more global rocket launches, by Russia and SpaceX.
First, Russia launched the sixth GPS-type satellite as part of its next generation Glonass constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia. The rocket’s lower stage fell several different drop zones in Russia. No word if they landed near any habitable areas.
Next, SpaceX this morning launched another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
117 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 117 to 92.
As for the rankings for the most reuse by a rocket, this is the present leader board:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
27 Falcon 9 booster B1063
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
I love the new reused rocket leader board! I hope this becomes a regular feature!
Richard M: Yes, I intend to include this whenever one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 boosters moves up in these rankings. I got tired of comparing the two Wikipedia pages to figure it out. This way it is there, easy to see.
If new site features are up for discussion, I’d like to see separate subtotals for Falcons and Starships in addition to SpaceX’s overall year-to-date launch totals. Even better would be a Starlink vs. non-Starlink breakdown of the Falcon and Starship launch subtotals.
I used to be able to get stats like those – and many others besides – on the site elonx.net, but the site ceased being updated at mid-year and I fear its former proprietor may have passed on.
The F-1s, though liquid, are likened by some to solid in terms of the ride. F-1 had partitions, Glushko used multiple nozzles—no one has used both.
https://www.spacevoyaging.com/insights/2023/06/22/rocketdyne-f-1-our-golden-chariot-to-the-sky/
The claim is that kerosene use is harsher than methane—yet Falcon’s Merlin engines seem more trouble free than Raptors.
Many worried about coking deposits—perhaps a factor in shuttle engine choice.
But as you point out—these Falcons have flown about as many times as many orbiters.
One of the secrets apparently is the use…of walnuts:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63090.200
My parents had a neighbor lady who lived by PREVENTION magazine, Organic Gardening.
She bragged about using walnut hull juice as hair dye.
If Starship can’t work—maybe new shuttles with a prime for the orbiter, but SpaceX engines?
I use walnut hulls to clean my brass for reloading.
I have since used it for cleaning a bunch of small metal parts.
I can see using it to blast off soot on Rocket engines.
If walnut hulls are up for discussion, I have used them with good results for media blasting.
Not sure how this came up, but…
Well, yes, coking *is* the problem for kerolox. It’s always going to be a constraint on reuse.
But Merlin 1D is a mature engine. The Merlin has been around in some form for two decades now, and it has been refined and iterated to be an optimized engine. There’s little room to do more with it. It’s an operational piece of hardware, not a development article.
This, however, is not the case with Raptor, which is very much still in development — these are all basically still prototypes. I don’t think it’s fair to compare Raptor to Merlin in this regard, because these are two engines in very different stages of their existence. Raptor 3 has yet to debut on a launch yet, and it is supposed to address a lot of these issues that the Raptor 2 is struggling with.
Jeff Wright wrote: “Falcon’s Merlin engines seem more trouble free than Raptors.”
We should hope so! The Merlins have been operational for more than a decade, and the Raptors are still in development. Kerosene has been boosting payloads to orbit for two-thirds of a century, and methane has been doing so for only a couple of years. Harsher or not, we should know how to fly with kerosene, by now, otherwise we might want to switch to something else.